Swamp Girl

No biggie, @you. Just happy to have you in the thread and I love seeing your bass!

It tricked me too.

I tapped the BR Brain Trust yesterday about the wisdom of fishing following Saturday evening's cold front. The guys said to fish away, but to fish the sloppiest slop slowly. Well, they were half right. I caught a new PB (22.25" and 6.71 lbs) fishing the worst slop with a bone-colored Whopper Plopper. She jumped, but not a head-shaking, tail-walking jump. No, she breached like a whale or a mermaid and came to the canoe without much fuss. Then, much like Gandalf, she said without words, "You shall not pass this test," striking weeds three times. I barely had her hooked and barely caught her because I just couldn't get her in the net. She kept adding weeds to her weight. There were so many weeds, too many weeds. I wasn't sure where she was in all those weeds, which were wider than my net. I nearly despaired as she kept diving to gather evermore weeds. In the boat, I removed four big lily pads and literal fistfuls of stringy weeds. Then, I beheld her and was filled with joy all morning. Still am. I caught 28 bass in total and all were fat bog bass. My beshemoth is the last pic. Note how long she is in the photo. She's my first 22" bass. As you likely know, I fished smallmouth bass for decades. Smallmouth are feistier, but I think largemouth are the greater challenge because you don't simply fight a largemouth. You fight the bog too. You don't simply hook a largemouth. You often hook the bog too, in its weeds and wood. Anyway, she's my third six-pounder+ this year, in addition to four five-pounders+ and 32 four-pounders+.

Well, I went and caught my PB. Story and pics in New PB: The Sequel, which I'm about to write. Thanks for all the input, guys!

Smaller and slower in thick cover. Got it. And thanks, guys!

@Pat Brown: Thanks, Pat. I'll try everything. I was fishing when the cold front hit, which was a buffeting wind and the start of ten hours of rain. Even being blown down the pond, I still caught four bass, so I expect I can catch a few more 36 hours later, when things have settled.

I just tied a T-Rigged 12", blue, weightless Zoom worm to one of my rods. I'll start with that, just twitching it under the surface. Fingers crossed!

How long after a cold front before they start feeding again? I'm fishing tomorrow morning and it'll have been about 36 hours before the front hit. Think I'll catch more than a handful?

the jumping ability of a smallmouth + a pike + the gumption of Audie Murphy makes a musky @Dwight Hottle; Way to go, Dwight! Beauty, @12poundbass. So, I shared that a cold front hit yesterday and the bass weren't feeding. The wind will swing from out of the north to out of the west overnight. It'll be 58 degrees tomorrow morning, rising to a high of 76. They have to return to eating, so I'm going to fish in the early morning and hope for the best. Do you think they'll be feeding again tomorrow morning?

Big pike are a blast. For my safety and theirs, I'd release them in the water, but one day in northwestern Ontario, we used a leaky, abandoned boat and a big net to boat and photograph one. It was caught on a F13 Rapala with 6 lb. test and no steel leader.

Gar are southern pike.

A sit-on-top kayak would have helped, for sure. My canoe is 32 lbs. and 15' 6", which means it floats ATOP the water like a water spider. A boat that nestles into the water won't be wind-bullied as much. The advantage of fishing from a bullyable canoe is that when do hook a bass, it feels seven times bigger than it actually is.

I went out this evening, but the bass hammered me. Yep, I was the nail. This nail: The wind has blown out of the south for a week, but later this afternoon, it swung out of the north, dropping the temp about 15 degrees. I knew that could clamp their mouths, but it's also full moonish, so I thought I could still catch a few. Well, a few bitsy bass is all I caught, i.e. four of them. And then the north wind blew me off the bog. I didn't even have to paddle. It pushed me all the way back to the car. So, I loaded the canoe as the sky darkened and scooted before it became Stephen Kingy, with the trees groaning and the high grass rustling.

Speaking of huge, look at the head on his second bass!

You're singing my song and it's a sad one. I'll fish five hours from my canoe and at the session's end, I'm drained. Wiped. A husk. I know this valley. Well, not the very same valley, but I do know this valley.

Ah, you lived in Heaven. Whoa, @N Florida Mike!

Ah, this explains your ability to catch bunches of bass every single trip.

@gimruis just taught Night Fishing 101. @PhishLI gave you a graduate level lesson. I don't night fish, but as anyone who sees my photos knows, I do catch bass in the dark. I'm always torn between using light, which burns my night vision, or going without, to keep my night vision at its maximum. As I told PhishLI the other day, my night vision works right up to the point of netting a black four-pound bass in black water beneath a black sky. Then I'm mostly guessing where the bass is.

I read this and am proud of my clan.

Fat bass!

It's in the bylaws, which makes it the law. #hookathreepounderandleapintothewater

@TnRiver46: This is in the BR bylaws: "Any fisher who goes in the water to retrieve a bass gets to double the weight of the bass."

^These^ fish remind me of teenagers. They're not as bulky and strong as they'll be in their twenties, but lawdy, are they scrappers. Are you bouncing a Ned rig off a weedy bottom? I haven't used a Ned rig once this year fearing I'd be weed fishing.

Bob, won't runoff silt lay a mud base atop your plastic in a few years?