Swamp Girl

Three of my favorites. My dogma: Pay attention. There are indicators beyond FFS screens. Listen to your gut. Fishing for more than 50 years means your hunches come from vast experience. You can catch bass where you launch, but you have to be quiet. Speaking of quiet, be quiet after you launch too. Pattern schmattern. When you catch a bass on one lure, try to catch a bass on another. Regarding @A-Jay's comment about "average bass heads," you sure can't descry someone's skill set from Bass Resource threads. Unless you've fished with someone, you can't tell whether they're below average, average, or above average. And you have to fish with them in different places and different weather to really comprehend whether they have the right stuff. When they get stumped, can they crack the code? Do they have the passion to fish when it's cold and howling? Can they feel the bite that's as light as a gnat alighting on their line? Can they keep their cool when a bass has burrowed into weeds? Can they cast into the one pocket that's weed and wood free? And on and on and on.

Well fished, CC!

I think that width is best seen on a bump board. When a fat bass is on a flat surface, it becomes convex. You can see their thickness even on shorter bass, like this one: Then there are bass that add ounces by being deep, like this one: Length is another great way to gain weight. I caught two 6.7-poundish bass in 2023 that weren't fat and weren't deep: just long. They're all so different, which is why I love looking at pics of them.

@Team9nine: You're catching trophies, one after another. I've caught a few that size, maybe three or four giants, which is what you catch in a couple days.

If you watch YouTube fishing videos like I do, you might also like to guess the weights of bass before they're weighed. If you play this game, how do you fare? I'm pretty darn good at guessing the weights. In a video, you get to see the fish turned this way and that before it's weighed, which allows me to be accurate. Sure, you might see the fish thrust at the camera to make it appear larger, but before that and after that, you see it in a more telling context. I am better than nearly all the YouTube anglers who also guess how much their bass weigh before weighing them. Conversely, in a photo with no video, I am clueless when a fish is thrust at the camera to make it appear bigger.

My first guess was close to five pounds, but when you see how distended her jaw is, I'm thinking maybe five and a half pounds.

You failed to memorize the BR rules!

By any chance, do you sound like Barney Fife? "Now, men, there are a few things we gotta get straightened out right at the start to avoid any grief later on. Here at Bass Resource, we have two basic rules. Memorize them so that you can say them in your sleep. The first rule is, 'Obey all rules.' The second rule is, 'Do not wear jeans with holes.' Gentlemen, it has been mathematically proven that you will catch 17% fewer bass per hole in your jeans."

Way to go, Jake! You're a fine apple that fell from a solid tree. @NorcalBassin: Wow, more fat bass at BR! Way to keep pace with the southern boys. #representtheWest

Nice ones, Mike!

Thrilling. Like trying to extract dragons from a thicket of briars.

My fishing britches are so saggy and stained. It's a good thing I don't photograph them. I'd get a citation for sure. I repeat my assertion that the best childhoods come with scabs, scrapes, scuffs, and ripped jeans and by ripped jeans, I mean honestly ripped jeans, not those silly, pre-ripped jeans that are "fashionable."

@gimruis: A coming drop in temperature triggers feeding, but once the cold air is there, that heavy air clamps the fishies' mouths. A front is the leading edge of an air mass. An air mass is a body of air with uniform temperature. If the approaching air mass is cooler than your current air mass, the leading edge of that air mass is a cold front. If the coming air mass is warmer than your current air mass, its leading edge is a warm front. In short, the front of warm or cold air.

@gimruis, every boy worth his salt should have a hole in his jeans. Otherwise, he's wasting his boyhood.

These are the best if you carry your small boat atop your car. They go under your hood and give you great attachment loops: https://www.amazon.com/KAPMOZ-Anchor-Straps-Transport-Lashing/dp/B07GF8FSF5/ref=asc_df_B07GF8FSF5/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=642117830092&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=5265320445569649520&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9002852&hvtargid=pla-1013314769035&psc=1&mcid=0210d1653ca33269a759478286f7204d

I saw the black fuzzy thing, but its meaning didn't register with me. I would LOVE SpotLock.

It's a bufflehead! What a name, huh? @FishTank, that's some impressive paddling, given that wind speed and temp. I once paddled from the top of Minnesota to the Gulf, through the fall and into the winter. Big winds and frosty mornings were much of my life for three months.

^This^ is my favorite advice. To follow up on it, what nearly all fishing shows don't show are hands. To learn, I need to see what a fellow angler's hands are doing. When you're fishing beside someone, you can see what their hands are doing, I.e. how they're working the lure. More great advice from Cap'n Phil.

The guys have given you great advice. Heed and succeed!

@LrgmouthShad: Way. to. fish!

I like keeping these guys handy:

At least you can fish. We're getting another 3-7" of snow this week and when it's not snowing, there's cold, cold rain with nighttime lows around 20 degrees. I want to fish again, but then I think about how cold the one bass I caught was.

Speaking of their amazing ability to catch big bass anywhere and everywhere, I can hear the narrator saying, "Join us next week when Alex pulls two seven-pounders out of a jar of olives and Pat goes big bass hunting in rain drops."

They sure can fish, can't they, and by they, I mean Woody, Alex, Pat, and the rest of the BR crew.

@Koz, I'm going to have a driveway built this spring that will allow me to drive most of the way to the lake. My contractor has to wait for the frost to come out of the roads before using them. It'll be about 450' long and take me to within about 200' of the lake. That's all I can afford at this point, but it's also all I'll need.