Swamp Girl

Did I read "lake house"? If I did, then all is right in your world.

Thanks, Spank!

I haven't and I'll rig one today. What depth, please? Most of my bass have been coming off-shore.

I'm in a fishing funk (I know it's all relative, but for me, I'm catching less.), having caught 11, 7, and 4 bass on my last three outings. The quality is still good, with a majority of the fish ranging from 17 to 19 inches, but I'm just not triggering the strikes I typically do. I watched @Glenn's video about September baits and how we need to downsize our baits. I did throw a couple smaller topwaters last night and I could only trigger the bass to bump my baits. I've been using 4" swimbaits on my underspins, both casting and trolling, and whereas I'm quite happy with the size of the bass they catch, I don't understand why I'm not catching what I typically catch. Are my swimbaits too big? Glenn suggests crankbaits, but they foul with weeds so often for me. I'm thinking of using a crankbait that runs 2-3 feet or even trolling a little Rapala floater. What would you suggest for my style of fishing, which is fishing lakes that are 8' at their deepest and weedy and I both cast and troll?

Yikes! I'd be doing yard work too.

Paying attention pays dividends. One reason the kid catches as many bass as me is because he sees the things that many miss. I'll ask, "Did you see that?" when a bass just plucked a bug off the surface. "Yep," he'll always answer, and he's not fibbing, for he'll cast right where the bass just fed.

I used to take great pride in quickly tying a knot, even if the boat was bouncing in waves. Now I really avoid tying knots in my canoe because, like you, I'm so slow. Sigh. Imagine what we could catch if we weren't stalled trying to tie a knot!

Yesterday evening when I fished, my best moment was watching an osprey dive on a bass and rise with the bass in its talons. There were two other boats on the pond and I asked two guys in the motorboat if they'd seen the osprey fishing. They hadn't. C'mon, guys, look up. There's more to fishing than just us catching bass. We can watch flying anglers catch bass too!

Whoa, Al, that sure persuades me to change it up when fishing. Thanks! Say, Al, since you're a codger and I'm a crone, how do you tie knots in the boat? At home, I use my magnifiers. Are your glasses bifocals?

I hear ya, Al, When I'm walking through the woods with my fishing gear and there are roots and rocks and it's dark, I feel my fragility. I think, "You can't fall or you might break a bone and never do this again." I feel as safe with my military-grade pepper spray as I would with a gun. You're supposed to test spray it once a year to make sure it's still pressurized, so I did this in a wetlands on a calm day, one short burst. Then, when I walked through that area about five minutes later, even though there must have been the merest amount in the air, my lips and eyes started to burn. I can't imagine a full, concentrated blast to the face.

I especially liked @Jar11591's response, so I messaged him to tell him that and also told a story that I think is worth repeating: We all do get excited and overestimate. I used to musky fish with a woman who landed a fat 54-incher, which was a HUGE musky, but she got the girth wrong when she first shared her catch, posting an impossible girth, and then, even though she had photographic proof, she was mocked. It hurt her, just as BluegillTightlines was hurt, at the very moment both should have felt nothing but joy. Here's that fish: Then, when she was speaking at a musky expo, a drunk guy in the rear of the audience was claiming that he'd caught her fish. He was in the boat, but he hadn't caught it. Again, what should have been a proud moment was curdled by the attention-grabber.

@Lottabass: Yikes, Al! I hate that this happened to you. I wish the Bass Resource gang had been there. We'd have been snarling and snapping at him, for sure. Did anyone in the area defend you? If not, they're cowards. I can be a coward, but when I was a teacher working with tough kids in tough places, I was fearless because the situations demanded courage. That situation should have demanded courage from those in the area: a 75-year old man being threatened by a big, young thug. FWIW, I did buy a handgun (I already owned a long gun.). I don't carry it when I fish though because a canoe is a WET boat and I don't want to clean it every time I return from fishing. If I have to carry it a waterproof case, that's not much protection. I make do with my super-strong spray, a big can that I hook on my right pocket, so it's right there if I were to need it. If I were to meet a bad guy or bad bear in the woods, they'll experience the greatest pain of their lives.

Lake trout are tough to catch...except in the spring, when you can find them shallow and hungry for a week or two. Fishing from a kayak makes them even harder to catch. There are exceptions, of course. One summer, my dad and I found them in 20' of water tight to a particular shoreline. One morning on another lake, a howling wind had them feeding off an island where I was camped. On yet another lake in June, I found them shallow in a bay. I've caught them deep using a couple different tactics, but only a few.

I fished a wacky worm last night, slow fished a popper, and will be using a T-rigged worm tomorrow morning, so I am tapping the brakes here and there. When I was trolling, I also varied my paddling speed, which did catch one bass.

The YouTube anglers do it all the time: "It's a five-pounder! It's a five-pounder!" Then, on the scale, "It's four pounds, two ounces." I do it too, just the other night. I hooked a bass at a big bass spot. It was dusk. It jumped, gills flared, which puffs a bass. "It's a five-pounder!" I yelled. It wasn't. Anyway, you're a shore angler, @BluegillsTightlines. That ups your level of difficulty. We're not all playing on the same field. For example, @PhishLI's ponds are being emptied by the Bucket Brigade who keep everything they catch and there are literal gangbangers skulking on the shores. I, on the other hand, am fishing less fished water with less pounded bass, making my catching easier. Plus, I have a boat. Plus, I have easy access to the two ponds I primarily fish. If @IcatchDinks had my advantages, he'd have to change his screen name to IcatchChunks. I urge you to keep posting pics of your bass here and to quit that other forum. If that bully wasn't banned and if others didn't rise to defend you, he's not the only problem. That forum is poisoned.

I fished my pond for two hours this evening. I only caught four, but three were fine fish. My 2025 total is 1,064 bass. I don't know why the bass aren't hitting more. They are tricky! Other local anglers are struggling too.

I mostly take a break from fishing. I do like to support the southern Bass Resourcers who keep fishing and I sure enjoy seeing their fish. If the basement weren't so cold, I might reorganize my gear, but I stay upstairs and enjoy the warmth...and my friends...and reading.

Nope. Just a thousand. Yeah, I get that, but I am wondering about missing fish because I'm so zippy. If I can add another trick to my bag, I'd like that.

Great tip. Thanks, Pat! Me too. I do a lot of grateful gawking. The last time I fished (with the kid), I set my rod down again and again just to watch and talk. One thing I love is when ospreys hit the brakes. They rear their heads back and up, flutter their wings, and hover to study the water. If you've never seen this, you're too focused on fishing or you don't have ospreys.

I'm a run and gun angler. I like to cover water and I'm looking to find the most active bass. I also like to increase my odds of finding bass by fishing nearly constantly, that is by trolling when changing locations, but a few times recently, while I fiddled with a lure or retied, I still had a lure in the water while the wind nudged me along and when I was doing fixing a problem, I picked up that outfit that had remained in the water and found it was loaded with a bass. Now, I'm torn. A slow retrieve means I cover less water, but I'm learning a slow retrieve can mean I appeal to bass that passed on my fast retrieve. I won't choose one or the other. Going forward, I'll choose both, slowing my retrieve here or there and I'll try to reproduce the slow, herky-jerky retrieve that that the winds and waves pushing my boat produced. Do you guys make a slow retrieve a regular part of your fishing trips?

Yes. Use your gut, but generally, stop way more than that. Again, listen to your hunches.

I can't believe I missed Brian's terrific post. It has me wondering about my two primary ponds. I generally know where to find fish. What I don't know is why the fish are where they are.

Ha! Here's another from the same bog, caught earlier this year: I think the bogs are all-you-eat buffets. This is from a different bog: I wish my pond grew such bass, but gosh, it's five minutes away and my canoe is sitting in the water right now.

That's a bog bass. They're built differently than the pond bass. Here's another bog bass: I just wish I weren't too old to fish the bog every week. There are four of them that I've fished and they're all hard work to reach. I have two canoes at my pond and one at my pal's pond and to reach those canoes, it's simply a walk through the woods. So, for those of you who are still young, fish the hard to reach water while you still can. @bp_fowler does this. A couple times a year, I muster the strength to fish a bog, but soon they'll be beyond me.

Me too. I scoot hither and yon in the fall.