Swamp Girl

Ha! So true.

@scbassin: I think you're right that they had moved to the sunny side. It was bait that drew me to them. I don't have any of the new-fangled electronics, but I saw bait on the surface, which is why I moved to the sunny side and thought, "What the heck," and I cast under an overhanging bush, which was the pattern: Bass under bushes. With all the eagles at that bog, if I were a bass, I'd live under a bush too. I have never dead-sticked. Ever. I should. I will!

I fished yesterday and I did what I'm told to do. I studied the depth map, marked the dropoffs abutting shallows, and worked laydowns and points. When that worked only marginally, I then applied what worked last week, I.e. working water about 80' from the shoreline. Meh. The very last thing I tried was the summer pattern, i.e. casting tight to shorelines in the shallowest water and that's where they were. The articles and YouTube videos tell me that their holding tight to shoreline structure isn't where they should be, but they were there and by tight, I mean casting to within inches of the shoreline and getting thumped immediately. Weird, huh? Or maybe not weird. How many of you have caught bass where they're not supposed to be, seasonally? I think more bass need to watch YouTube videos to be where they're supposed to be!

Tom (@WRB) is right: Take nothing for granted. Get busy fishing and whatever else you love. I turn 68 this summer and feel a big difference between 63 and 68. I can't imagine 78. Or 88. Actually, I can. I see my parents, who are 92 and 89, and they're weak and wobbly. So, all of us should get out and fish!

I kept scanning the sky and kept rehearsing in my head what I'd do if an eagle dove on it. If I were an eagle, I'd dive on it: It looked delicious. Did the osprey free itself? Thanks, @Woody B, for the reminder. I have a bag of those in my basement. I'll toss a couple in my knapsack. It had dropped into the forties by the end of my fishing and because a canoe is a wet boat and I had to step into the water to launch, I was soggy. @Bluebasser86's thickest bass should weight 4.49 pounds, according to my length to weight table, so it's more than 1.5 pounds above the norm. I share this so all can numerically appreciate what an exceptional fish she is. Of course, visually appreciating her is easy-peasy.

That lure really wiggles. I was afraid one of the five eagles I saw might eat it. I also got my first hit on a Whopper Plopper. The water is 54 degrees, so surface feeding isn't that far off! @Bluebasser86: That bass makes me laugh! Sooooooooooooo fat!!!! Incredible that she's under 20" and six pounds. Wow.

I fished a bog for the first time in 2024. My prior trips were ponds. I targeted big bass with a big Shimano swimbait and focused on drop offs adjacent to flats, points, and wood. I caught a few, but nothing big. So, then I started poking around and discovered some bass in a summer location, i.e. relating to structure against the shore. I caught 14 in all and lead with a photo of the bog, then four of the bass. I hooked and lost three nice ones at the end of the evening. My hands were just too cold at that point to work well. I saw three eagles at once, two immature adults and likely one of their parents. I also saw loons, geese, and ducks.

Craziest story that happened on a fishing story: I went to northwestern Ontario with an outdoor writer I'd read and admired for years. I simply emailed him and suggested a paddle and portage trip and he agreed. I took him to a favorite lake. Now, this guy was hardcore and had paddled Arctic rivers, where he'd carried a shotgun if they'd met a predatory polar bear. And he was fearless, sleeping on the ground outside and swimming across the lake. Then something happened that scared Mr. Fearless. We had built a campfire and he was sipping from his flask (I don't drink.). About 50 yards away, right before the cliff of another island, a line of lines started to flash the primes: 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, etc. The lights were brief and brilliant, like strobes. I just watched. So did he. After two to three minutes, I said, "Do you see that?" "Yes," he said. "What are you seeing?" I asked. "A line of bright lights. It looks like they're flashing the prime numbers. What do you see?" "Same thing," I said. Then a parallel line started flashing. Then another and another and another and another, faster and faster, much too fast for us to perceive a pattern. The height and width of the flashing was about 10' by 10'. There was no noise. After about ten minutes, I said, "I'm going to light it up." I had a tactical flashlight that turned night into day. "Don't do it, Katie," he said, and I heard fear in his voice. So, I didn't. Then the lights were suddenly gone. No noise ever. The next morning, we paddled over to where we saw the lights, but it was only the cliff and a few clinging trees. He turned the event into a funny column because we both understood that if you see the inexplicable, there will be doubters. So, he played it safe with humor, laughing at us before giving anyone else the chance. I've seen other things I couldn't explain. Spend enough time far from folks and you will too.

@Dan N: If the day ever comes when I can't appreciate a 3.5 lb. bass, that means I'm dead so buy the coffin and say some prayers. She's a beauty, sweet and deep.

I witnessed a deer who wasn't a long distance swimmer. It was on the Wisconsin side of Lake Pepin, a natural widening of the Mississippi River and was attempting to swim to the Minnesota side, about 1.7 miles distant. It had made it about 20% of the way and was already exhausted. It hadn't yet reached the channel, where a tow or speedboat might hit it, so I used my boat to turn it back. When it reached the Wisconsin shore, it staggered onto land, utterly spent.

@Brian11719: Lady? Ja. Little? Nah!

I need to find ^this^ guy and pin a medal on him.

Beauty, @PhishLI. I've fought a few pickerel that fought as well as four-pound bass. Love that four-pounder! You work so hard to pull a beauty like that out of pounded ponds and employ your considerable craft.

So different than here. Maine is like NYC a century ago, where the Italians had their hood and their Irish had theirs and everyone stayed put.

It sounds right to me. Smallies and largies are very habitat specific. The lake where I bought property has smallmouth and largemouth. If I'm drifting over mud, which grows weeds, I'll catch largemouth. Then suddenly I'll be over rock and I catch smallmouth. It's amazing how they hold tightly to their preferred habitat. I don't catch smallies in weeds. I don't catch largies off rocky bottoms.

Got it.

Is that because of fishing pressure? Your growing season is long enough to grow them bigger. It's nearly late April and our nighttime lows are still in the thirties. Next week, there are a couple daytime highs forecast to only reach the low forties. So, summer is a long time coming when the North Atlantic is your neighbor. ^This^ makes me concede your point. 14 pounds isn't much, not with all those skilled anglers fishing.

You emphasize the wind in your recounting and I'm wondering if you view the wind as more of a help or hindrance. I've enjoyed great fishing in the wind and especially in a motor boat. I've never owned a boat as heavy as yours and I'm guessing you have SpotLock, so the wind wouldn't bully you like it does my canoe. So, is the wind more your friend or foe? I think back to some of the times I had a heavier boat with an anchor and motor and fished windswept shores and enjoyed fast fishing in the wind.

I feel the same about game wardens in Maine and all LEOs.

ME TOO!!!

Nice bag, Michael. 58 degrees? I envy you. You're about the same latitude as me, but the small pond I fished yesterday was 51 degrees.

Huge brown bass, A-Jay!

I've been using braid and mono this spring. With braid, I can feel the soft tick-tick-tick as my lure ricochets off old, rotten weeds. Then there's the sharper sensation of bouncing off rocks. I can be fishing for half an hour getting all kinds of weed and rock feedback, but when a bass hits, I feel the difference...unless the bass swallows my lure and swims toward me. That's the tough hit to descry...for me. I can still sense those hits and set the hook and I catch bass that way, but if you were to ask me why I set the hook, I couldn't begin to explain it.

Pat Brown made the same point last year, that a bass like her is harder to grow in Maine. The water temp yesterday was 51 degrees and about ten days ago, it was in the low forties. Spring's a long time coming this far north. When I fished the Mississippi River, I'd be sitting atop a school and setting the hook as soon as my bait reached their depth. First one boat would join me. Then another and another and another. Sometimes I'd be the hub of twenty boats, many circling me and staring because even atop the fish, they couldn't catch them. If they'd asked, I would have shared why I was catching them and they weren't, but they'd rather circle me and stare.

A shad-colored Keitech on an Owner underspin. I normally cast this lure, but the wind made trolling easier. Here's the close-up I posted in the Latest Catch thread. If you zero in on the mouth, you can see she's past 22". What's funny is her head. It looks small in the photo below, but I could easily have inserted my fist into her mouth: