Swamp Girl

Why are you awake, Mr. Shad? To answer my question, I'm going fishing. And you?

WOW! This bass makes me laugh! I think she's my favorite bass at BR. Tom Brady would hate her. Sure, she's a football, but she's way overinflated!

How long are those rods you guys are using?

You'd make a great scientist, Alex.

I envy both of you. I just don't see bait in Maine. Maine bass are fat, so there's plenty of bait, but I see nothing. I have seen smallmouth rocketing out of the water to eat dragonflies, but that's it.

Exactly the same. Bogs are soggy, so boggers are soggy, and so are boogers.

Excellent fishing tonight. I caught 26 bass in two hours and I didn't use a Whopper Plopper. Most were on a bone-colored popper, but I also scored on a paddletail and Zoom trick worms, my first Trick bass ever. I paddled up my beloved stream, then paddled back to where it widens to a river, and ended in a bog. I caught 12 in the stream, 12 in the river, and only two in the bog, but that's because I was out of light. The big girl came out of the bog. I lead with two ordinary fish, then two pics of the stream and river, and then two nice fish from the stream, one nice fish from the river, and then the bog bass. It was so gratifying to land 26 of the 27 bass I hooked. I added extra split rings to my popper and changed the hooks this afternoon and I think that helped, plus five of my six rods are now MH and that helps too. The only bass I measured is the first one after the two river pics and she was 17", but I think a couple of the others are bigger. The last bass, the bog fish, was a powerhouse. I'm fishing again in the morning. It will be in the forties when I launch, but I don't care because I'm returning to a pond with four-pounders. Here's hoping I can catch a five or six-pounder too!:

@Basstermind: Gorgeous bass! This is all I know about yellow-finned bass: Whatever you do, don't call one "yellow," for if you do, they'll reply, "Who you callin' yella?" and then it's on.

Any other Mainiacs, i.e. Mainers, want to share their tales of glory and woe? I post so much at BR that you likely already know I'm mostly a bogger, i.e. I fish the bogs for bass. By bogs, I mean shallow bodies of water choked with weeds. If there aren't weeds on the surface, they're a couple feet down. They're also choked with bass and bigguns, but lawdy, they are hard to land for they're always within reach of weeds to free them. I live in mid-coast Maine and don't drive far to fish because bass abound here. I prefer largemouth, but catch smallmouth too as well as the ubiquitous pickerel. How 'bout you?

It's embarrassing, but I'll tell it: A have a friend with a cabin on a pond. Sometimes I fish out of his canoe. One evening when I docked, because it was dark, I left the scale in his canoe. Well, it rained tons in Maine this year and by the time he had returned to his cabin a couple days later, my scale was floating in water. I opened it and let it dry for a couple days and replaced the batteries, but it was was dead. However, my new scale arrived yesterday, so I'm good to go! Since I'm confessing, I've felt bad about this thread. I don't know if the catch above reached 20 pounds. There were six fine bass, but without a scale, who knows.

I've tried it a couple times and got a couple bites, but I think I'm setting the hook too slowly. It's hard for me when I feel that tick-tick-tick to immediately set the hook, as I was raised to wait a couple secs before doing so. An old, bad habit to overcome. We're just fishing different water. You'd catch them in Maine on a Whopper Plopper. My best times are four and five in the morning. I'm guessing two and three in the morning would also be great times.

I admit I do this. However, I'm in 15' 6" of canoe and there's nobody else with me. If I were sharing space or had less space, I wouldn't do it. Still, you're right.

Sweden? Wow! Abu makes great reels. About 40 years ago, my favorite reel was a SWEDISH-made Abu Cardinal. I just bought a Vanford, but seriously considered buying an Abu. So glad you're here. Please keep posting and I hope you share some photos too! Say, on the silly side, what does a real Swedish chef think of the Muppets' Swedish Chef?

That's it, Tim. Totally. As you know, I fish the idiots' lure, the Whopper Plopper. What you might not know is that I cast its two treble hooks into slop. I have to hit a wee pocket of open water and then steer the critter through lily pads and wood with my rod tip. I even plot the path for the Plopper, three turns ahead, like a good chess player. If I tick one weed, that cast is ruined and if I tick a tree, that area is ruined. I'm really good at this technique and I do grind, like you do, like all successful fishers do. Thanks, @MIbassyaker. To be frank, I don't know what Zona Live is, but I appreciate the explanation. I assume Zona is a person. I'll google that now!

I've wondered about the etymology of Menderchuck. Sure, it's fabricated, but from what? When it comes to catching big fish, it's more about the fisher than the lake. @Pat Brown catches giants on busy lakes. @T-Billy catches big muskies, bass, and walleyes in overfished Ohio. @AlabamaSpothunter catches monsters on water lined with mansions. @Woody B has to dodge jet skis and roaring bass boats and still catches many bass every single trip. Beauts too. And on and on. I figure that if I ever fished Menderchuck (I won't. If I were to fish smallmouth again, I'd return to northwestern Ontario and have a lake to myself because I'm a big, fat pig.), I wouldn't catch much anyway at Menderchuck because it's the know-how. It's the fisher. @PhishLI once said that some fishers don't have the gift. I think that's true. As I'm retrieving one cast, I'm already scanning the water for the next cast and there are times when my hair will prickle at a fresh cast because that particular location reminds me of a similar location where a bass erupted, even if I can't describe that particular memory. I studied the brain at a renowned school where smart folks posit that our subconscious is a swarm of busy bees, seeking nectar without our knowing. What was once considered to be intuition or luck is often subconscious conclusions predicated upon memories that we can't articulate because they're buried deep in our brains' files. So, returning to @PhishLI's observation, the gift might be aggregate YEARS on the water, with hundreds of thousands of accumulated memories, and a subconscious busy-beeish enough to find the germane memory that entices the next big fish.

@Pat Brown: Nice ones! Pat, I love how you're always working new lures and being successful with them. I work new lures, but don't have much success. One of the BR guys opined that one doesn't need to use all the lures in their tacklebox, only three well, i.e. a surface lure, a shallow-running lure, and adeep-diving bait. I'd rather master a couple dozen lures, but so far, I've failed. Seeing you score on different lures keeps me trying though!

Are you guys fishing less because of the transition? Shorter days? Hunting? There are not as many pics and stories are being posted and I miss them. I'm going fishing for two hours this evening and five hours tomorrow morning, fishing the little stream that leads to the bog this evening and then tomorrow morning, the pond I fished last Monday morning. So, in two sessions, I'll be fishing a stream, bog, and pond and I'm excited about that. My Zoom Trick worms arrived and I'll be fishing them for the first time in my life. I've rigged some black ones and I just hope it's not too late in the year for them to work well. I'll also be casting my 6th Sense squarebills that Alex (@AlabamaSpothunter) suggested way back when and zooming them. I'll also be working a bone-colored River2Sea popper with extra split rings and upgraded hooks, tricks I learned at BR. Anyone else here decide what they'll be using before they reach the water? It saves me time on the water to have all my outfits rigged and ready. A MH spinning rod to replace the last of my whippy rods also arrived, so now all my rods are wonderfully stout and I've been loving my two new reels too, which replaced one with missing gear teeth and another with a handle that stuck on every rotation. The handles of the new ones turn like the gears are buttered!

I'm out of responses, so I'll have to say that ^this^ is a great post.

I prefer weeds over rocks for lmbs too. If I'm fishing a body of water with smallies and lmbs, as soon as I start catching smallies, I'll look down and see rock. However, if I'm fishing a bog with only lmbs, but without sonar, the only rocks that I knowingly fish are the ones that poke above the water and they nearly always hold largemouth bass.

Free line live bait on six-pound test. I'd be stunned if they didn't hit a minnow or nightcrawler with no weight. Yes, they're hard to cast, but effective. When I was a kid, I also tossed the smallest floating Rapala to catch scores of small bass at a pond.

One of Glenn's videos said that fall is like spring, that they'll go shallow to gorge for winter, but might pull back to points and transition areas if triggered by weather. Also, they might be chasing bait on the surface and if they do, then chase them.

Hi, AJ. Like you, I don't know much about fall fishing, but the videos I've been watching all told me to downsize my latest and that worked Monday morning with more 19-inchers than normal.

Dang it, Bob! Oh well, there's always tomorrow.

You guys are excellent at explaining. Thanks to all of you! I am so excited to try my new Zoom Trick worms with the offset round bend worm hooks.

Thanks, guys. I've used them willy-nilly, not understanding their purposes. I just bought my first Zoom Trick worms, both regular and magnum, and rigged with the old style, straight shank hooks, although I've used the EWGs for most of my soft plastics, but not understanding why. Fishing is complicated. There is so much to learn. So, I'll use the EWGs for thicker plastics and the classic hook for thin worms. Got it!