Swamp Girl

Sigh. I have no tractor to share. Don't hate me for my shortcoming.

I had the same reaction when I saw it: A tractor! Bob lives in Heaven, a Bob-built Heaven. Heaven's a LOT of work.

You forgot the U-Wisconsin sweatshirt!

Water cooling down and @Pat Brown is warming up. Woody's scalp has to be warming up too with that thick crop up top, which is a good thing given that winter is only going to get colder and colder and colder.

To be frank, Bob didn't willingly team up with me. I told him to co-author or else and I'd attach photos like this with the caption, "This is the 'or else!'": For those who aren't aware, Bob built a beautiful bass and bluegill pond, which has been attacked by muskrats. So, threaten him with more muskrats and he'll do your bidding.

@Fishlegs: Big bass! Did you get a length or weight on them? @GreenPig: You taunt me with that nasty cap. Sincerely, An old Buckeye

Whoa!

I quit at the end of October, but they were still hitting then. I think I'll fish a little longer next year, like I did last year. I'm two degrees north of you. Three four-pounders in three trips is excellent fishing!

When I wrote for Canoe & Kayak magazine, I had to submit photos with my stories and my editor would never use a photo of a paddler without a PDF because he didn't want the readership to think that paddling without a PDF was okay.

I like the year-end reports because we get to see a bunch of fat fish. I too have good luck with Senkos and poppers and I really, really need to start fishing spinnerbaits. I think of them as pike lures, as I'd use them to catch pike in cabbage. Of course, they're great bass lures too as @TnRiver46 will tell ya.

I'm afraid of fishing because the water is cold. And then there's @PhishLI, another northern angler, who's not only still fishing, but wading cold water. At night, making me feel like a nimboo-wamby wuss. If Phish ever posts a report about catching bass in a hurricane, I won't be surprised. Here's the trailer for that upcoming hurricane fishing report: "It was hard to concentrate on the water with so many bits and bobs of buildings and trees in the air, requiring me to lurch this way and dive that way. It was also hard to cast into those cat 3 winds, but I had to do that, for casting downwind would have meant I'd have had my back to the incomings."

Yep, no arch support.

You have a great doctor. You have great cameras/phones too. My camera is a waterproof Olympus about 40 years old. Holding it with one hand and a wriggling bass with the other is like juggling a baby seal and a newt. You are smart to not name your lake.

@RipzLipz: You and your dad are funny! I catch many of my biggest fish in the dark, but your nighttime photos are way better than mine! Your dad's bass is a big-bellied beast! Here's a Maine fatty and you can see my fist would fit in her mouth. What you can't see is her hunchback, for she bulged every which way. You can also see what I mean about my lousy nighttime photos. Photography's tough if you're an old woman alone in a dark swamp in a tippy canoe: @Pat Brown: I need to slow roll my underspins more. Mostly, I retrieve them lickety-split.

I love those four-pounders. When they reach four pounds/19 inches, that's when they start to pull like pit bulls. Here's a four-pounder with nothing special at all about her build, but I will never forget her parking under my canoe, bending my MH rod until the far fourth of the rod was drowning. I was expecting to boat a seven-pounder, but it was this wiry, relentless lass: Details, Pat, details! I'm dyin' for details!!!

Oh, yeah, I buy soft plastics too. Sometimes I catch ONE bass on soft plastic. Other times, I catch six or ten, but in the end, they all get trashed.

I observe that my last couple TW orders are utterly unsexy: line, weights, hooks, split rings, and snaps. I'm tired of buying lures that don't produce like my tried and true lures. Treble hooks are what I buy most nowadays because I like replacing my hooks every couple weeks.

No need to explain yourself. We all love looking at fat-bottomed gals! You catch fish that make me go:

Gosh, I wish!

I love when you tell this account and look forward to the next telling. Seriously. It's an amazing story and the best stories should be told again and again. When pythons swallow a deer, they chill for a month or two, but not the big bass like Tim's. She had clearly recently fed, again and again, and yet she wanted more...like Audrey in Little Shop of Horrors.

@RipzLipz: Fingers crossed for you to land another, Tim! Those fat bass are so rare. I caught two over 22" in 2023, but the ones I treasure are the big-bellied ones like yours. They're the apex bass, at the peak of their power, whereas the long, skinny ones are the grand ol' dames, great for sure, but past their predatory prime. You know, Tim, that I photograph a lot of my bigger bass on my bump board and looking back at them through the long New England winter, I smile widest when I see that they're sloped, built like mountains. So, I for sure noticed that your girl had recently swallowed what appears to be a softball!

Great catch, @RipzLipz! Big belly on that big girl.

Hula girls, 50 craft beers, and a pizza oven, I'm guessing.

I use my underspins with paddletails mostly in the thickest cover. Heck, I've even used them as surface lures, i.e. a frog, casting them onto a lawn of lily pads so thick that that the underspin scooted atop them until there was an opening...and I've had bass bust through the pads to clobber them before they ever reached an opening. But my bread and butter tactic with underspins is casting into or on the edge of reeds, lily pads, and grasses. I also cast them at shorelines like a surface lure and they've worked in a foot of water many times for me. There's nothing dainty about the underspins I throw, for I saddle them with five-inchish paddletails. They're big lures that I can chuck beyond yonder. Alex, I enjoy fishing with them because I can cast them everywhere and because a paddletail has terrific action and the flash of the underspin's blade is a siren's call for bass. They're my mid-column lure, along with inline spinners, squarebills, and jerkbaits, but my underspins catch more bass than my other three mid-column lures combined. If I'm casting to open water, I'll let them sink sometimes before retrieving, counting to five and then six on the next cast and so on until I find the fish. I like the Owner underspins: Last spring when the water was cold, the underspin was the lure that caught 'em. However, it's a warm water lure too. #theoldkatlovestoplaywithunderspins