Swamp Girl

Whoa, Alex! And, WOW! Alex, I love how you get sooooo excited. The fish deserve our joy.

I'm guessing, given the dispositions and power of spots and smallies, that a meanmouth smallie/spot hybrid wouldn't be this equation: A smallie + a spot = a meanmouth Rather, it would be this equation: A smallie x a spot = a MEANMOUTH!

Check out this meanmouth:

I think you're right. Okay, I won't worry anymore.

It didn't work. Sigh. I was sure that was going to solve it. Any other ideas?

It's weird. And embarrassing. It looks like I'm trying to fill a thread with white static.

I have spent years at a particular paddling and fishing website and there are posters whose ONLY threads include links to their YouTube videos. These posters don't appear in other people's threads to encourage them or congratulate them. They only use that website as place for their free-of-cost commercials. It's annoying as Heck and they add zero value to that community. So, I standing-applaud bassresource.com's position. P. S. - Does anyone know why my posts have lots of white space below the text?

Alex, if you ever get a 300-pound spot boatside, don't, in your supreme joy and terror, get tangled up in your line and have it drag you into the deep. Don't be Alex Ahab!

Alex, you are right about the fun of catching fish with new lures. I was so proud of my first froggin' bass. The best I ever did was seven bass on a frog, but that was right before they quit hitting my frog, so I'm super excited about next summer and surpassing that number. I once went to a musky lake north of Lake of the Woods with 21 guys. Many were young, large, and muscular, and even they were beaten down by heaving those billy clubs with hooks. If I were to do it again, I'd fish with heavy bass gear and smaller lures. I once did that froggin' for muskies and you see the V coming for your frog. I had 21 hits and only caught two, but what a day that was! When whalers used to harpoon a whale and the whale would pull their boat, they called it a Nantucket Sleigh Ride. Well, in my solo canoe, I've been on a few Ontario sleigh rides when musky fishing and that's probably the greatest thrill I've ever had fishing. A tarpon or mako jumping might surpass that, but not by much. Mr. 86, since I fish in a 15' canoe that's not loaded with gear and is therefore light and easily windblown, even a 15 mph wind means I spend more time with a paddle in my hand than a fishing rod. P. S. - You guys are funny in this thread!

Beautiful fish, Phish! Alex, I had musky fever for about three years, but casting big lures is so hard on a body. I was smallmouth focused for about 30 years. As a kid, I loved bluegills. I've done some walleye fishing too, but nowadays, it's bass, bass, and BASS. Smallie or largies doesn't matter, much like largies or spots doesn't matter to you. I have yet to fish a chatterbait. Or a roboworm. Or a swimbait. Sigh.

Alex, next time, go Mako shark fishing at the same lake and see what you catch.

I'm fraidy cat of heights now too. I painted my two-story garage this summer EXCEPT for the tippy-top, i.e. the eaves and I hired a young man for that. Speaking of wee Maine fishing trips, I'm going fishing tomorrow or Saturday. There aren't enough bass pics being posted, so someone has to represent bassresource.com's fishers.

I wasn't fishing at the time, but I was paddling the Mississippi source-to-sea with a rod and reel aboard. It was November and I got pinched between a big river tow and the shore. The tow's waves hit the shore, ricocheted, and collided with the incoming waves, creating wet Heck. I was struggling to stay afloat when a wave loomed over me, about to break. I gripped my paddle because I would be dead without it. The wave fell on me, broke through my spray skirt, and snapped my kayak's hull. I was only about 40 yards from shore, but my boat was heavy with water, so it took me about ten minutes to reach land. I was exhausted, cold, and shaken. I built a campfire with whatever I could find right there. Unfortunately, I burned some poison ivy and inhaled it. Ever had an itch you can't reach? The next day, the cold rain began. It took me two days to reach Vicksburg and the emergency room physician said I had the worse case of poison ivy he'd ever seen. Luckily, I met a fisherman from Iowa named Jim who actually had the fiberglass and resin to repair my boat. What a guy!

You're the best, Bob.

YES!! I'll even paddle for Bob to give him a shot at 50 or 60. Heck, if he installs a solar-powered fish feeder at my BOB-Pond (TM), I'll take him to my honey hole, the secret one in the woods, and give him a shot at 70 fish with four and five-pounders quite possible.

Wait your turn. I have a pond to build with a floating dock with a fish feeding hole and Bob's just the guy. FYI, Bob, I will take you fishing every evening. How do 40-bass evenings sound? And I fry some mean taters and sausage for the mornings.

We all want to borrow Bob. I think there should be a Bob lottery. "I won! I won! I won the lottery!" I'd be shouting. "How much did you win? A mil? Two mil?" "Oh, I won so much more than that." "Five mil? Fifty mil?" "No, silly. I won Bob for six months."

Bob, I live in an area where a lot of rich New Yorkers and Bostonians have purchased seaside mansions. On paper, they own their properties, but not like you and I own our properties. I just put two arborvitaes in the ground, am about to plant a third, and then have to build a ring of granite cobbles around them. I live in granite country, so granite is affordable here. Heck, we build our curbs out of granite! I priced a three-step granite stoop yesterday at $810. What a deal! My current garden dwarfs the garden in the pics I shared. It's about five times its size, but no pics until it's done. My last garden was also huge. Thanks for the photo of Molly! I would love to feed her too. How big do your bluegills get? Do you catch and eat them or are they pets? How big do your bass get? Pics, PLEASE!

Dang it, Alex. I hate to read you frustrated. And chilly. And $38.99+tax-less. I'm going again in a few days. I wonder if Maine lakes will have flipped and I'll be wearing a white stripe down my back like Pepe Le Pew.

Bob, you don't just live in Heaven; YOU BUILT HEAVEN! It's so cool to see the depth of fellow fishers. I'm a hard worker too and they say that game knows game in sports, well, hard work knows hard work. You're creative too. I love your fish viewing hole and I love your otter stories. I also love that you feed your fish. Since you shared a winter shot, I'll share one of one of my winter gardens. The raised beds are limestone. The pathways are rose quartz. It has a secret garden in one corner and a tea garden in another, which you can't see. I used architectural elements from Victorian houses, and I laid three patios and two paver sidewalks. My current garden under construction is much bigger and the garden between the one in the photo and the current one was featured in Maine Woman magazine. I do 99% of the work myself. The only work I can't do are the big boulders and I have to hire a man and a machine to lift those. I just built five raised beds from Hemlock for my current garden and like the garden in the photo, it also a secret section, which is a Japanese garden. Jeremy, I've designed my Maine garden to ease me through the winter. I built two mounded beds in front of my house. One is planted with red twig dogwoods, with branches that grow redder the colder it grows. The other is planted with yellow twig dogwoods, which turn gold in the cold. My driveway is lined with Paperbark maples, which at their most beautiful in the winter with their cinnamon and salmon-colored exfoliating bark and I've also planted over a hundred evergreens. Eric, I like what you wrote! P.S. - Included a summer shot of the same garden too! I think it's funny how men and women react differently to my gardens. Women say, "It's so beautiful!" Men are quiet at first as they scan the garden and then they say, "This. was. a. lot. of. work."

I love, love, LOVE your floating dock. I also love that the otter loves it too. Maine isn't all beautiful bogs and ponds. I scouted a smallmouth pond this morning and the road to it bristled with junk cars, abandoned trailers, and signs threatening death and mutilation by guns and dogs. It's the sort of road that inspired Mainer Steven King. Think about your beautiful pond. Now think about the exact opposite of that and that's what I saw. It's a pond I'll never fish.

Heck, yeah. That bass looks like it just ate a school of shad.

I like that guy, Mr. Chef. I'm always grateful for kind people; It doesn't matter if they were kind to me or not. The world needs more mensches!* *In case you don't know, a mensch is a Yiddish word for a solid person.

I have a completely different take on life: I think some things can't be explained; others can. ^FYI, I'm be goofy here.^

Upon reflection, I'm going to not go with a particular fish, but every fish that was deep and heavy and unzipped before I got a glance. When I never see them, I always wonder if that one was the Great White Whale, whether it was a pike or smallie or musky or walleye or bigmouth.