Swamp Girl

I agree that this is Glenn's best video. I loved all the fishing gear, but it was great to see Japan beyond the fishing passion too.

@Fried Lemons: Wow! Big bass and what a way to catch them. Say, cyber-buddy, please consider wearing a life jacket. I was in the paddling world for decades and again and again, paddlers died without life jackets. Some were old like me and some were young, just like you.

@Jar11591: That's quite a story. I wonder if they were carp. I've hooked massive carp on crank baits and when they ran, there was no stopping them.

@Bird: That's fast catching, Buddy.

Same as me. Gosh, I had some good times fishing small water.

Atta, angler.

Pat just keeps catching and catching and catching...big gals. Well done, @OHBuckets and @bp_fowler. Today and tomorrow deliver(ed) daytime highs in the mid-fifties and nighttime lows around 40 degrees. Monday will reach 60 degrees, which is when I'll try again to catch more than one, two, or three bass. Here's hoping three mild days will nudge the water temps above the 41 to 44.5 degree surface temps I measured about a week ago, but since I was working the bottom, about eight feet down, I'm guessing the temperature there was in the high thirties.

@Woody B, pray you don't meet that bass again in another ten years. With its appetite, it'll be pushing 30 pounds and if it has the same ferocious attitude, you're gonna need a bigger boat.

Whadda bass!

Because of assertions like yours, I work wood whenever I see it and I have caught some nice bass from laydowns, like a six-pounder last year, but I catch far more bass in weeds. Weird, isn't it, how bass behavior varies? Because I don't also don't consider the rules to be watertight, I lob lures every which way and have caught so many bass where there was nothing to suggest that they'd be there. For about every four casts at structure, my fifth cast is the middle of nothing.

@The Baron, yes, the fish are thinking about you too. They want to dance with you. That's you on the left and a fine bass on the right:

I hate what happened to Clayton's pond. Dang it! Ponds are precious.

I wish I were brave and sturdy enough to fish through the night. When I've launched at 3:50 a.m., I hear bass feeding in all directions. Big galoomps when they hit the surface.

@TnRiver46: You're being humble. I remember your string of 20" and 21" smallies. I also remember that gorgeous wiper.

@pdxfisher: You're right. I'm a dolt.

I sure hope so. I'm averaging two bass a trip!

I love your trip reports. I especially enjoyed this:

4/10? Nah, not with that near 19-incher.

Tim, I've been struggling this Spring, as you likely already know, with water in the low forties at the surface. I'm guessing the water is upper thirties six to ten feet down, where I've caught a few, but boy, they make me work. They don't exactly "hit" the lure. The rod just gets heavy and in the canoe, they are so cold to the touch. However, I'm not fishing big fish water yet because I stashed my canoe at the land I bought and that lake isn't a big bass lake, although I think it's on its way as the fish are an inch longer, on average, then they were in 2022. Soon, I'll bring my lightweight canoe out of the woods when I stash a heavy, old canoe there and use my lightweight canoe to fish for big spring bass. You are brave, Pat.

I love these stories. Thanks, guys!

I agree with @gimruis. I'm not a true nighttime angler. I launch at four in the morning and it's dark, but not for long. Still, in those brief, dark moments, I catch some of my biggest girls. @Pat Brown: Well described, Pat! It is spooky and thrilling.

As I've shared many times, my brothers and I fished farm ponds by tying our fishing poles to our bikes and sallying forth. One farm pond had an overflow pipe that ran under the road and emptied into a pool we could almost hop across. That little pool was brimming with the biggest bullheads I've ever caught, one after another after another. Another time, on the north shore of Lake Michigan, after reading a Field & Stream article circa 1969, I was wading for hours looking for the Volkswagen-sized rock described in the article that held all the smallmouth on that point. I caught nothing until I found the rock and then, out of the next 100 casts, I had hits on perhaps 97 casts.

@PhishLI and @T-Billy are spot on. Plus, big girls are creatures of the night. I spent a lot of time this winter looking back at my 2023 catches and I noted that most of my biggest bass were framed in black.

@MN Fisher: I laughed until I cried. Thank you. @keagbassr: Having seen the consistency of your big bass, I sure with I knew what you do and that it would work for me too!

Another giant crappie, @Team9nine, and ICD scores!