Swamp Girl

If you don't fish with electronics, why not? For example, you might be a shore fisher or it might be a matter of cost. I don't use electronics because it's more for me to carry. I car top my canoe and fish ponds without ramps, so the approaches to the water I fish are often uneven and it's typically dark. Plus, I'm already carrying a minimum of four rods, a big net, camera, pliers, bump board, headlamp, pliers, hook cutter, tacklebox, etc. and I'll be 67 this summer. I also have depth maps for most of the water I fish. Lastly, I fish ponds small enough that I can find fish pretty quickly without electronics and once I catch fish at one spot, I can waypoint it in my mind and return to it again and again.

Side scanning sonar is emptying the world's oceans of fish. There's nowhere for them to hide. When I was young, Jacques Cousteau would state in his specials that the world's oceans held inexhaustible numbers of fish. Well, electronics made that statement wrong.

I'm not smart enough to deduce like ^this,^ but I am just smart enough to recognize and appreciate top-shelf deduction. I agree with @Deleted account on the overall quality of this thread, and I further agree with @AlabamaSpothunter that it's a complex mix, likely with more secret ingredients than Coke and KFC combined. Agreeably yours, OC

@AlabamaSpothunter Yeah, Alex, I'm excited to have a chance to hook some big bass with big lures, but I'm planning to limit my time casting them...to protect my back. I told you that I quit musky fishing because it hurt to cast big lures, day after day, so I'll alternate during the prespawn with swimbaits and the other lures I listed above. I'm looking forward to using the g2 like a wakebait. A 5-pounder hitting it would make my eyes do this:

I think there's ^truth^ to this. However, I've been having a Message chat with another BR poster who's wicked smart, fishes pounded lakes, catches big fish, and fishes some cold days and nights that would shiver the timbers of southern fishers, and he compared the bass puzzle to a Rubik's Cube where the squares of color keep changing. I think he's right. There are,, after all, millions of us who catch bass and whereas some patterns have been perceived and exploited, the pattern only holds until it doesn't and that can change in a Manhattan minute. I do believe, as Alex noted at the beginning of this thread, that it's important to risk a skunk and fish early. Last Friday, the nearest lake to me had open water in the middle, but there's still no way I can launch a canoe. However, when the water along the shorelines is liquid, I'm launching albeit with a wet suit and sticking close to shore, and I'm casting to see what's up. Sure, I want to catch fish, but more than that, want to see how early they stir, fully understanding that the very same Maine bass might stir sooner or later next year, or strike one day and not the next. I won't know unless I'm on the water. I also bought two swimbaits. I've read so many comments here at BR about the size of prespawn bass, so I want to cast a big lure to catch big fish. One is a Shimano and the other is a Blackdog Baits g2 Shellcracker in a bluegill color. I also bought some more jerkbaits and I'll be tossing lipless crankbaits too. Much of the water that I fish is shallow and it was super weedy when I started fishing late last summer, so I'm looking forward to having more water and less weeds and that combo freeing more to cast more than surface lures.

@Darth-Baiter You're thinking big, D-B. I like it. Please invite me on one of your kayak expeditions. If we fish the Amazon, you better hire some muscle. There are some bad men on that river. And don't forget that I'm inviting you over to my Virginia spread to fish the ponds of your choosing.

You're right. Threads wander. Keep it if it doesn't cross any standards.

I would not mind a moderator deleting this thread. I started with building a bass pond or building on a bass lake if money didn't limit the options and the thread wandered off into hookers, God, politics, HOAs, and blow. I was actually looking forward to reading what other bass fishers would build or buy, i.e. their dream set-up. C'mon, local lakes, melt!

I'd buy abutting farms in Virginia, amassing about 2,,000 acres. I'd hire a full-time pond manager and a full-time groundskeeper. I'd then hire a top tier pond-building firm and build five or six ponds, of varying sizes. Four would be managed for trophy largemouth, one for trophy bluegill, and one for smallmouth. I'd also build a remote cabin on a Canadian smallmouth lake, if the Canadian government would permit that. A 2,000 square-foot home or a renovated farm house would be fine. I'd also like a river to be crossing the VA property. I love rivers. How about you?

@roadwarrior Funniest GIF of all time! @TnRiver46 Your observation would make for a cool thread, along the lines of "What's your ideal size body of water for a DD?"

Wow, GP! WOW! Your account literally gave me chills and I'm so happy that you get to fish such a pond. You wrote "ponds." Are there two? Three? Amazing that such big fish come out of such little water. Incredible genetics and growing conditions.

Mr. 86 isn't just a good fisherman. He's also a good man. Good writer too, as Mr. 46 already observed:

I'm observing in this thread that it's more common with smallmouth and largemouth and I'm assuming that OK is a largemouth state.

Thanks for the explanation and for the photo. Clever and funny to paste GreenPig onto your jacket. My screen name is also meaningless. It was the first goofy thing that popped into my head. If you don't mind, I'd love to hear the story of your HUGE green girl. I'll never catch one that big, so I have to live vicariously through those who have. I know about shaky hands. My biggest fish in 2022 was 21.5" and I didn't even photograph it. My hands weren't working and I was in a tiny sit-on-top kayak and I didn't want to tax her even more by keeping her too long out of water, as she'd fought long and hard, so my primary concern was getting her back to her home.

Ah, that explains another time I caught SMB after SMB. We were cold front fishing a wilderness lake in northwestern Ontario. We'd struggled to catch fish because of a cool, howling northwest wind, which bullied our canoes. By the sixth day, my fishing buddies were wind beaten, but I felt guilty that they'd come so far and caught so little, so I kept plugging, dropping a leech below a split shot here and there. Then, about 15 feet off a point, I found them. Seemingly all of them. I dropped my leech about ten feet and my tip twitched. Bass. Then nine more as quickly as I could rebait. I scoot back for the boys at camp and we caught bass after bass after bass after bass. Eventually, I dropped my rod and enjoyed my buddies' joy. It was the same the next morning, our last morning, at the same point. @Pat Brown, I love your story and was grinning through it.

@GreenPig Two questions: Is Green Pig your nickname? I ask because it's on your shirt. Do you have a pic of your massive PB?

Big spot. Not Jupiter Big Red Spot big, but anywhere on Earth big.

Are they structure-centered, Tim? @A-Jay, it's good to see you post again!

Great point, Jeff. Hi, Micaiah. I like your career plan because you could make money being outside and I think acquiring carpentry skills is wise. The guys at Bass Resource catch big bass and are happy to share what they've learned.

There's a great article on the BR front page by M.L. Anderson. Anderson wrote that Rick Clunn said that bass relate to structure 98% of the time. At the end of the article, Anderson also shares this: "One of the hardest things to learn is how long to stay on a spot or a pattern before giving up on it. Clunn knows the current pattern can change during the day, so he calls it current, not "all day." While leaving, biting fish is a mistake, so is dying on a spot. O.T. Fears says he’s caught as many as forty fish off a single treetop. One year in the AllStar Bass Championship, Rob VanderKooi, and his partner won with a 42-pound 6-fish limit, all caught off one tree. If you're catching fish consistently, it can pay to stay put." Have you ever plucked bass after bass from one piece of structure, like apples off a tree? I did. Once. I was wading a point on the north shore of Lake Michigan and catching nothing. I must have waded a mile, casting and not catching. Then I saw a rock about the size of a VW, the only vertical rock I'd seen on this submerged plain of rock. I cast and caught a bass. If I made a hundred casts, I at least had a hit on 97 of them. All the bass on that shallow expanse were clustered around that one rock. There was a guy wading about 30 yards away. He watched me catch fish after fish while he caught none. I waved him over to join me. He said, "Thanks, but they can't all be where you're fishing." But they were. All around one rock. Do you have a similar story?

Atta boy, Cbump! Woody, you are funny! So funny (Did I already mention that you're funny?)!

@Jmurphy87, given the conditions, you could call that a 10-pounder and none of us would disagree.

Fingers crossed for you, Cbump!

That looks like home to me. I love sleeping in a tent. Are you shore fishing?

That looks like a viola, the way it bulges. Magnificent! However, before you feel too big in the britches, I can equal your California catch with a mere three of the biggest Maine bass I can catch and some duct tape. I'd write more, but my village is wondering where its idiot is.