Swamp Girl

The proof is in the pull.

Nice ones, Murph. They sure have that river bass shape, long and lean and nothing but muscle.

I agree with both of these. I don't think 90% of all water is barren. I do think that there are stretches with far fewer fish to no fish, but most water holds some fish. However, as Woody B noted, when it comes to active fish, the percentage of water worth fishing at that moment shrinks.

@LrgmouthShad: Thanks for sharing that you were skunked. I love the whole story and not all have the courage to share their skunks. In the end, every story worth telling is one of struggle to achieve success. @NorcalBassin: I also love when Pops catches bass. I like the ends of the spectrum, i.e. Jake and Pops catching bass. I laugh when I see long-armed bass with their bodies looking as big as the torsos of the anglers. It is a girthy bass!

I'm a mover.

@T-Billy: Atta, angler!

@king fisher: Your post deserves a lot more love. What. a. story!!! As I've shared in the past, I love your sense of humor. I also love your humility. And, of course, we're kin by paddling. @Functional: Of course, Navy fighters and ships have filmed flying objects doing the impossible and commercial pilots have seen the inexplicable for decades, but prudently kept quiet. WWII pilots, both Allied and Axis, saw things they couldn't explain. The American pilots thought they'd seen Nazi secret weapons and the Nazi pilots thought they'd seen American secret weapons. The Americans called them foo fighters.

King, the misrepresentation of fishing success, i.e. portraying it as a big bass on every cast, is why I respect Bass Resource anglers who share their strike-outs in their trip reports. If you only show your great days, you're really not portraying your angling life, with all its challenges and disappointments. So, if I go out and catch zero fish, I share that. If I catch one bass, I share that. Then, when I go out and catch a big bass or a 20 lb.+ bag, that means something. I walked the long, hard road to reach that sublime moment. So true. Sometimes I get caught up in my head, thinking about what I'm supposed to be fishing and where I'm supposed to be fishing and how I'm supposed to be fishing, according to this YouTuber or that article, INSTEAD of keeping my head up and my eyes focused on the moment. I can read water. Paddling thousands of miles has taught me to read water like most people read words.

That 16-incher hitting in such shallow water with that boil sure sounds exciting, ICD!

And here's me thinking he just had to pee. I've heard that kidney stones are the worst. Sympathies, GP.

Cool river, Murph. GP, I figure I'm going to my grave without catching a single spot, but I sure enjoy seeing yours.

I think Tim, Z, and Mike are right. I'm going to focus on the water I fish and learn, HOPEFULLY, more and more about those ponds and bogs and their bass, rather than watching a video to learn about my water and its fish.

@FishTank: Where do you live? It's bad in Maine too. I'm intending to fish on Wednesday and Friday, when it's supposed to drop to 10 mph, which might not sound like much, but in a high-sided, lightweight canoe, I'll spend half my time adjusting the boat. So, five hours of fishing is really 2.5 hours of fishing and 2.5 hours of paddling.

I would only trust such a study if they studied dozens of bodies of water. I'm guessing that there are bodies of water with largely empty water, but I know that there are bodies of water with bass dispersed throughout them.

Heck, yeah. Pat, you fish ponds that are ringed with concrete sidewalks. I imagine you casting between a popcorn stand and a hot dog cart. @PhishLI has to keep an eye open for gangbangers and he wades in water so chilly that his teeth chatter. @AlabamaSpothunter fishes a lake where mansions loom over every inch of the shoreline. And on and on. To reach Wednesday's pond, I'll have to drag my canoe up and over a meadow, through the rocky woods, and then launch by stepping into the chilly water. For Friday's bog, I'll launch by a cascade and paddle up a river to reach the water I'll fish. Then I'll paddle another three miles to reach the other end of the bog. In a double digit wind. Then back. So, yeah, we only have so much in common, mainly our love of bass. P. S. - 20K acres would swallow me. Whole. It would be one of your DDs, Pat, and I would be a tasty shad.

Whew! I figure if someone doesn't want to dance with a four-pounder, they've got one foot in the grave. When osprey dive on bass, they're full throttle. They're like Mounties in that they always get their man, er, bass. Pat, for me, I'm most likely to catch a big bass right now because the weeds haven't yet returned. Last summer, I think I hooked bass as big as last week's bass, but I hooked them deep in a bog and they promptly unhooked themselves with weeds. I hooked last week's bass in open water. Plus, she was still too cold to jump. So, I had every advantage. My photos don't convey how many weeds are in the bogs I fish. Sometimes I'm fishing a foot of water atop weeds and there are weeds on the water to the left and right of my lure. Not my situation. Wednesday's pond is 49 acres. I don't need a 250 hp engine or FFS or even Garmin. I can find them most days.

Amen, brother. ^This^ made me laugh. Stupid 4 lbers? I love those four-pounders! Yes, Mike! That's what I call my hunches, my earned understanding of where, what, and when I'm fishing. @Team9nine: YEP, I see the eagles dive on bass when I'm fishing. And I watched a video of an eagle swimming a musky to shore to eat it. The musky was too big for the eagle to take flight, so the eagle swam with its wings. If an eagle can kill a ten-pound musky, it can kill a DD bass, which means bass must be ever alert for eagles, regardless of their size. Thanks for the photos! I sat under an eagle perched in a tree last year and watched it eat its bass.

Going forward, Pat, I think I'm just going to launch, poke around, and follow my hunches. Like you, I'm not fishing big water, so in a three to five-hour trip, I can fish pert near everywhere. Because I change lures so frequently, I'll eventually discover where they are and what they'll hit. And I'm not going to stay locked onto big fish. I told @thediscocheflast night that I've caught six new PBs in the last year. I went from 5.5 to 6.5 to 6.71 to 6.75 to a likely, unweighed seven-pounder to the unweighed beshemoth I caught last week. That's good enough for me and I frankly think I could fish another ten years and not catch another as big as she was. I don't need to catch an ever bigger bass.* I want to launch my canoe and have a busy, happy boat. In the process of catching many bass, big bass will naturally come aboard, but I don't want to bear the pressure of needing a new PB and another new PB and yet another new PB. Old girls like me still just want to have fun! Here's a photo of her after I lightened it so you can see her massive back:

I think it was the eagles that explained why the bass I caught were under overhanging bushes on the water's edge rather than warmth.* I was fishing a shallow bog and soon, there will be a mat of weeds for the bass to tuck under. I saw two immature eagles and three mature eagles the day I fished, so that's a lot of bass-eating raptors. Without weeds for shelter, the bass bunkered under bushes. I had to cast under bushes to catch one. *If it were warmth, I would have caught bass on the sunny shorelines of the last two ponds I fished and I didn't catch one. Of course, I'm just guessing.

Ohioguy25, the coldest water I've ever fished for smallmouth was northwestern Ontario is late October. The water was cold and the air was cold, but the fishing was hot. A-Jay catches big cold water bass.

That's not my experience. The cloudier it is, the happier I am. My dream fishing weather would be a rainy, foggy night.

@JayMac89: Sweet fish. Sorry you lost that beast by your boat.

Pat, you are a scholar of bass. Or maybe a poet, for you see the world with a poet's precision. And you appreciate it too, as a poet or a samurai would, but I repeat myself, for samurai are poets. I think the tannin in our water makes it impossible for me to see all that you do. Our water is black. Plus, I'm low in a canoe too, so I'm always at a bad angle.

Well, I'll just settle for imagining you heroically wrasslin' the dinosaur to set it free. I would love to see that.

Let's go is right, my friend. Well done and Jake looks bigger day by day. Do tell. Pretty please!!!