Swamp Girl

I'd follow @GreenPig's advice: If the ordinary doesn't work, try the extraordinary.

You're welcome, @Tom Rust, but I think we're opining in a hurricane. FWIW, I admire you for having frosty hair, but you're still ascending to the second or third meadow. You are not going gently into that good night, you are raging, raging, against the dying of the light.

I've experienced this phenomenon in Maine and northwestern Ontario. If you're willing to climb another 45 minutes or its equivalent, fish will rise. I'm grateful for the ease of ramps, which keep most anglers from making the climb. I've told the story of catching five muskies in an hour and losing a sixth, but to reach those muskies, I paddled across one lake, portaged half a mile, paddled across another lake, portaged a quarter, mile, paddled across another lake, bushwhacked a half mile, waded a swamp, and worked my way down a tumbling stream before reaching the lake where where those six muskies were. The adventure and challenge of all that paddling and portaging and bushwhacking equaled the thrill of six muskies in an hour. For those of you who are still young and want to reach such water, I advise now. Go now. The door to such adventure will close sooner than you think.

I think it was a BR article that argued this same point. The writer used a hypothetical pond and said that it could support 100 pounds of bass, whether that number was comprised of 100 one-pounders of 10 ten-pounders. As I recall, the writer also said that you had to keep culling or the pond would revert to more numerous, smaller bass. Well, that sometimes happens. Tom (@WRB) wrote recently that one of the great lakes he fished in California is no longer producing big bass. I don't know if that was due to overfishing, but I've read a couple accounts of the glory days of those two monster-producing lakes and they were pounded. I saw it on a smaller scale on ponds I loved as a child.

I hope you're right about ^this^ assertion, Pat. Why do you believe this to be so? I do think it would thrilling to have FFS finger a fish and then cast to it, knowing it's there, much like spotting a bonefish or seeing a smallie dapple the surface and then casting to the rings. This is my concern, as I stated above. If FFS increases your catch and because tournaments kill bass, there will be a genetic, downsizing shift.

Considering the number of big bass that are found floating following tournaments,* FFS might do to bass fishing what elephant hunting and ivory poaching has done to elephants, with some elephants being born tuskless today or with relatively tiny tusks. With more big females being killed due to the efficiency of FFS in tournaments, more and more big bass genes are being culled from the gene pool. In a 2056 elite tournament, you might see the winning angler lifting two 14-inchers while the crowd cheers. *In-Fisherman: "For example, in a theoretical tournament where 100 bass are caught, we estimated 15 of them would die at a water temperature of 54°F, whereas at 66°F, upward of 34 would be expected to die. Further, bass caught at five tournament events could result in up to 90 percent cumulative mortality at higher temperatures."

What an angler's life you've led. It's worthy of a book.

@riverratryan, do you or anyone else know why your bass's tail is so red? When you boat a musky, their tail and all their fins are red and I always thought it was due to stress.

For sure, Capt. Phil, that's what bass fishing is to you and me and many others at Bass Resource, but there are also others who believe that bass fishing is greatly about a bass boat and FFS. I don't even know if FFS would work where I fish, where there are weeds atop weeds. I know for sure that I'll never drag a battery and screen across a field or carry it through the woods. And I know that anticipation might be what I love most about bass fishing and that my favorite moment might be when I launch, in the drizzling, foggy dark, and cast into that uncertainty. I know @Zcokerknows this thrill. So do @T-Billy and many others who are on the water when all sensible folks are still cozy in their jammies. I have shared many times that some mornings, I don't even target big bass, that I'll go to a pond simply because I don't want the pursuit of big bass to interfere with being grateful for everything else that's beyond yonder. Amen, brother. I shared in another thread how I arranged to buy an old canoe. I don't even know the maker because all its identifiers have been taken by time. That canoe is all I'll need to catch hundreds of bass. I'll leave it at the waterfront property I just bought and go walking through the woods at four in the morning with two rods and a small utility box. And I'll be a kid again. Yeah, I'll be young again.

I'd listen to Big Bass Pat.

My red coatings also don't last long, but I agree with Bankc that the fish won't care.

Me too. I'm just grateful that there are many places jet skis and transducer-bristling boats can't reach, i.e. water without ramps or even a road to reach it.

Four degrees in Maine this morning, but the thaw begins today. We've got a stretch of warm weather for the next two weeks, with highs from the low forties to low fifties and many lows above freezing. Woo-hoo!

When I fish, my head is on a swivel. If I'm watching my lure or line, it's peripherally.* I don't need to see a hit to set the hook. I can feel one and often hear it if I'm fishing on the surface. I'm looking to decide where to cast next*, but I'm also witnessing the beauty of a pond or bog. I'm seeing the kingfishers, ospreys, eagles, beavers, geese, swans, cranes, and deer. I've watched the scopers on YouTube and they stare at a screen. I will not join their numbers. *I've spent years and years on water and I spent a few years studying cognition. I learned from the latter than my time on the water watching isn't just reveling. Much of our thinking is beneath the surface. I might have a hunch about where to cast or a feeling that I should paddle over there, but my hunches and feelings arise from decades on the water, with my unconscious brain tapping deep memories that my conscious brain can't surface. I don't cast willy-nilly. I have hunches. They're good ones. They're rooted in decades of reality. I trust them.

And don't mess around with Jim!

I want wind to be my friend. I want to date wind, marry wind, and bear a brood of breezy children. However, my affection for wind is unrequited. Wind bullies my high, light canoe, so I avoid it. I wish I had a heavy bass boat with Spot-Lock, but when I took one out for a test, it was nearly impossible to paddle. I was camped on a bald island once in Ontario. The wind blew so hard that it flattened my dome tent all night. It was hard to sleep with my tent's ceiling slapping my face, so I rose early, tied on my heaviest spoon, and cast into the wind. Lake trout hit on every cast. If don't know if you guys have fished lakers, but they're not like bluegills, where you catch one after another. They're more like muskies, but on that HOWLING morning, they were just like bluegills. When the wind died, they were POOF, gone.

@Pat Brown: I wonder if the bass felt the cold front coming and went on a feeding spree. Whatever the reason, they're beauties!

@Bluebasser86: Your last bass is quite close to popping! What a fatty.

@TnRiver46: You're a handy friend. @Eric 26: Like Alex, Pat, and others, you are so supportive of your fellow anglers.

Today at a pond I saw a stretch of liquid water atop ice. It measured about 10' by 3' and appeared to be about an inch deep. It's going to drop to 11 degrees on Thursday, but after that, it's warm, with temps from the mid-forties to low fifties and a few nighttime lows above freezing. Heat wave, baby! I hope to see wet ponds in two or three weeks. Maybe a month. So, all y'all keep catching all your bass. Stretch your lines and leads. When our water's wet, I'll do my best to catch up.

Mooneye, aka the freshwater tarpon! Cool catch, @TnRiver46!

I'm sorry to read about your otters, Mike. I once saw a nature show about otters and in the show, the narrator said that most predators struggle to kill, missing most of their prey, but not otters, which is why they're so playful and carefree. They expend energy willy-nilly because they're faster and smarter and more nimble than their prey.

I get a kick out of catching bass on such a plain, old lure.

Way to go, Eric! You're on the board. Gosh, I hope not. In 2023, I fished a bog twice. The first time I went, I had five otters surface by my boat, curious about me. The second time I went, I think I only caught about 5 bass and this was a bog good for 35 bass in 2022.

Hey, old timer! I hope you do get out more this year.