Swamp Girl

I'm hoping the new outfit will be a horseshoe in my boxing glove when I meet Ms. Mike Tyson again.

So, I gotta tell you guys the full story on the big bass I lost last night. We've gotten a lot of rain in Maine this summer with more than five inches just this week. So, the ponds and bogs are high and the creeks that feed them and empty them are gurgling. Last night, I paddled a couple miles to reach an outlet. It's just a narrow stream, but pretty famous for Atlantic salmon still run up it. If you're imagining yourself wading it and lofting flies to salmon, don't. It's narrow and bush-lined, almost a tunnel, but I know big bass like to park under the bushes and ambush prey. Both sides of the pond where the stream exits are choked with weeds too. So, there's strong current, bushes, weeds, and tight quarters. In short, the bass are easy to entice, but hard to land. I hooked four, but landed one and here's that one bass I landed: The big one hit a white popper that I let drift past some weeds in the stream's middle and then twitched it. I saw a big wake come from under a bush followed by a bigger KERSPLOOSH! I had so little width of water to play the fish and it was all swift. If the bass had run downstream, I would have hung a sign at the entrance of the tunnel that warned, "Abandon all hope ye who fish here." But the bass came into the lake and darted for some lilypads, which made me say a silent "YAY," for I can sometimes wrassle bass from pads, but then it did a 180 and rushed to the fibrous reeds on the other side. It plunged into them and parted them like Moses. All this time I'm trying to muscle her out of there, but she was a tank of muscle and I was spinach-less. Then she freed herself and I wondered why I even picked such a fight, for I was Mike Tyson-ed seconds into the first round. However, I'll go pick another fight with her one day. I've a new bait casting rod with a new reel on the way, which is supposed to arrive on August 22nd, and they might give me the edge.

Three things: 1. Kent is the King of Kindness. 2. Some day, leave the boat and fly to Lakes Ontario or Erie or the St. Lawrence and fish with hired guides or maybe a Bass Resource member. 3. If you ever want to catch 100 smallmouth in a day with many three and four-pounders in the mix and you're able to portage a canoe through the woods, I'll give you the skinny. P. S. - A Mepps brass bladed bare-hooked spinner is an amazing smallmouth lure. I've had two 200+-smallmouth days in my life and both were on the Mepps in northwestern Ontario, but they work just as well as Maine. It's an oldie, but a greatie! I keep a little steel wool handy to polish them, both body and blade. They oxidize so quickly.

I was fishing last night with five outfits and finished with two still working. The three that went down were due to line failure. Two were braid and one was mono and all three had line that knotted itself. I usually replace line each winter, but I think my line is already stressed and needs to be replaced. How often do you replace your line?

I envy you. About half my fish escape. I hooked a beast at a river outlet tonight. So little water, So tight. Cover everywhere. Big current. It ran into reeds and peeled free. Good looking bass, @Team9nine.

I fished a pond this evening instead of a bog. It was windy when I launched, so the first hour was mostly about canoe control. I could see and hear thunderstorms, but they weren't overhead. Had they been closer, I would have gone to shore. I caught 17, including my first bass on the River2Sea BIGmistake. It's a big lure, but the bass hit it. Good job, @IcatchDinks!

At the very least, eat those bass. I know it's against their rules, but still. Agreed. Do what the kayakers do and photograph the bass on a bump board with a tag indicating the fisher's name and the date.

@IcatchDinks: Losing a big one is a sock in the gut. I find myself asking again and again, "What did I do wrong? What should I have done?" I'm sorry and sad for you, bass-buddy.

Gosh, I love this post and I'm going to piggyback T-Billy and say that I love them all. Even winter is wonderful, for that's when I rest, recover, and dream of soft water.

@thediscochef: That's no black bass, brown bass, or green bass. That's a brass bass! If thunderstorms don't prevent it, I'll be fishing for three hours this evening. If the weather report holds, I'll also fish Tuesday and Wednesday mornings too. With light southerly breezes, cloudy skies, and a chance of rain, it should be perfect and I'll be casting floating worms, swim jigs, chatterbaits, a RoboPop in Chrome Shad, and a monstrous BIGmistake in Chubby, which looks like a golden shad.

I LOVE that you're still fishing. You give me hope. I foresee the day when I'll buy a boat with a motor. Maybe a cabin with a dock. And I'll just fish one pond. And if this comes to pass, like you, I'll still be FISHING!

Way to go, Mighty T-Billy! Cool double, Woody!

That catfish looks like Satan's oldest, nastiest sock. I'm sure it'll taste better than it looks! Sorry you lost your PB machine, @thediscochef!

Thanks, @gimruis. You're a young man with a family to support, so you're not free to work for a weather boss. If you were, I think you'd find those slots when bass hit surface lures. If you were to vacation in Maine to go surface fishing with me, you'd be saying, "So, WHEN ARE WE GOING TO FISH, 'cause all we're doing so far is eating lobster and climbing mountains!!!" And I'd say, "Wait for it, wait for it," while I kept checking weather.com. Dinner bell, for sure. My canoe also weighs 32 pounds. Being light, high, and long, it acts like a sail on a breezy morning. I sometimes use a friend's low, wide, and heavy Royalex canoe. That canoe doesn't give a whit about wind.

The weather tells me when to fish. I am 67 and mostly retired and the remaining work I do is from home on my schedule, so I'm free to fish whenever. However, I do have a fishing boss and that boss is the weather report. I rarely fish N, NW, or NE winds for they bring higher pressure. However, a pre-cold front slot, where the colder air is lifting the warmer air in front of it can trigger feeding, but that's a pretty tight slot. I also look at wind speed for two reasons: My solo canoe is 15' 6" long and its high sides mean that it catches a lot of wind. If the wind is over 5 mph, I waste too much time correcting my position. Winds over 5 mph also make it harder to visually track a surface lure. Rain is good. Not a cold front pounding rain, of course, but a warm front steady rain. It increases my stealth by obscuring my mistakes, like bumping my canoe. I am fishing topwater 85% of the time simply because it's the most fun, but I'm also fishing those weather-right mornings 95% of the time. I remember one day last summer and one day this late spring/early summer when they did not want topwater, but were quite ready to feed beneath the surface. In such cases, I will switch and merrily catch them sub-surface. Here are those two trip reports and note the quality of the air both those mornings, i.e. low humidity:

Dang it. Too late!

You guys are making this way more complicated than it is. Want to catch a DD? It can be done in three easy steps with a rope and a boat: 1. Tie a rope to the bow of your boat. 2. Tie the other end of the rope to the stern of Tom's (@WRB's) boat. 3. When Tom's boat stops, do EXACTLY what he does. You are welcome.

You caught the Hunchback of Notre Dame! Note the Cro-Magnon brow ridge too. Is my curse catching just one bass? If so, I agree. #fourorfivetimesin2023Icouldn'tcatchmorethanonebass

Nah. You'd do just fine. You're an all-weather fisherman, Woody, which means you're a scrapper and flexible. You might tip once, just like I did, but you'd adapt, like you adapt to your all-weather fishing challenges. Regarding stealth, one thing that I enjoy almost as much as catching bass is nudging bass. Sometimes the bass don't even know I'm paddling over their pads until my canoe's bow is looming over them and they swirl and scoot. UNLIKE ME!

I love them so much that I'm fishing topwater 80% of the time. I will happily catch fewer fish to catch them up top. I was catching them topwater when the water was still cold. And I catch them topwater some mornings when the Sun is blazing. This morning, the Sun killed the topwater bite, but it often doesn't. #Ithrilltokaspoosh! Heck, yeah!

Good point. Then there are Mexico and California reservoirs with their brown banks and the Everglades maze and the mighty St. Lawrence and the great Great Lakes and muddy streams and mountain rivers and farm ponds and on and on. Bass adapt.

They felt heavy when I laid into them, but I'm thinking that the full worm wasn't even in their mouths and I was only feeling their weight because they'd clamped on the tail end of the worm for a sec or two. I hope so. How long do you wait? It did well. I caught two on a frog, two on a Whopper Plopper, and 18 on the popper.

I had a pretty good morning, but I couldn't get the GOAT to work. It was sub-surface until it was close to my canoe and then it finally surfaced. The main lure was a popper. A T-rigged floating worm garnered some hits, but I set the hook to early to avoid gut-hooking them. Here are few of the 22 bass and the best performing lure:

This morning was strange. I rose at 3:00 a.m. and launched too early. I caught a couple bass in the dark. Then, when it was light enough to see the weeds, they largely weren't there because we had three inches of rain two days ago. Yep, the bog had risen over the weeds. I caught 20 bass before 7:30 and then two bass in the next 1.5 hours. It was a good morning for birds, with owls, eagles, and herons. The pics start with the bog and end with the main lure I used, which had a feathered tail at the start of the morning. Hey, I also caught a couple bass on a frog! I also used a T-rigged six-inch Senko and a T-rigged Rage Tail and had hits on both, but caught nothing because I set the hook so soon so that I don't gut hook them. Here are the pics:

Take a number!