Swamp Girl

Me too, the forage in the waterways are well known and because of this Lure Manufacturers have designed baits to mimic nature. Match the hatch isn’t just a saying it’s factual and is well known and understood by fisherman. If this were true, then lures that look the most like forage fish would always catch the most bass. Also, lures that look like nothing in nature that bass eat, like my Shimano Flashboost pink popper, would catch no bass. However, that little lure has caught hundreds of bass for me.

I just bought some Owner Weight Twist Light hooks. I'm hoping their lighter weight will give me better hook sets. Their drawback is that they don't have blades for extra attraction.

@Motoboss: 10/10 Thanks for that video! Anyone up for a little soul?

Yes, it does. Clearly the fish are relating to the structure. F3, archeologists have tasted honey stored in Egyptian tombs and found it edible. Did you too taste the food on those pot fragments? Seriously, it's super cool that you find such things.

Thanks for the support, guys. I am a consistent bass catcher, but most anglers I encounter in Maine aren't consistently catching bass. I paddle a LOT looking for bass and am fishing nearly constantly as I'm trolling when I'm looking. Sadly, I lose more than half the bass that strike when I'm trolling because I'm using 5/0 hooks and the trolling speed alone doesn't set the hook. By the time I drop my paddle and grab my rod, there's nearly always slack and that's when the bass free themselves. IF I COULD, I would use a lure with treble hooks, but there are too many weeds for treble hooks. Any suggestions for a lure that can do what an underspin can do, I.e. plow through weeds, but with slender, smaller hooks? I have had some luck trolling T-rigged baits with smaller, thinner hooks, but the underspin triggers more bites. Part of the problem is that I use a VMC heavyduty underspin, but when I tried other underspins, the bass would batter them. Even though I lose a LOT of bass while trolling, trolling tells me where they are. It's my fish finder. One other question. I have narrowed my fishing down to my pond and my pal's pond, largely because I turn 69 this week and it's ever harder to carry my canoe to other ponds. I have canoes waiting at my pond and my pal's pond. My pond grows short, fat fish, like this: They occasionally reach 18", but not often. They are powerful because of their builds. My pal's pond, on the other hand, produces longer, skinnier bass, like this: It can also produce even longer AND thicker bass, like this: However, fish as thick as the one above are rare at my pal's pond and shorter bass just as thick are common at my pond. I fish both ponds because I enjoy them all. Which one would you favor?

That makes sense to me, Al.

Let us know what you discover, Bazoo. I'm curious too: It's a good question.

Pat, I enjoy the ease of catching May and June bass, but I also enjoy the challenge of catching August bass. A woman in a kayak on the pond I fished this morning asked if I'd take her fishing. I told her I would and I said, "You will catch fish." "I will?" "You will." The advantage of a canoe as a guiding craft is that she'll be in the bow and I can literally aim her at bass, as you steer from the rear.

Thanks, my friend. I'm still waffling on the best way to take pics. It is nice to see exactly how long the bass are, but bump boards sure aren't pretty and you can't see where I caught the bass. Remember the three anglers in a motorboat who were struggling to catch bass? They were two men and a young girl. Well, the kid caught her biggest bass ever at the 8' flat that I told them to fish. What some anglers don't understand is that the bass likely won't be there tomorrow. I expect they'll fish it tomorrow, but the bass will likely have moved. Bass fishing is like playing "Where's Waldo?" You have to find them again and again to be successful and that's the fun of it. It's aquatic hide and seek.

Al, I tried the Zoom Ol' Monster a couple times recently and didn't get the merest nibble. I'm glad your bass were biting it!

You're welcome, Alex. You know how you sometimes hook and lose a fish that keeps you wondering. I had one of those this morning while trolling. It bent my rod so far back that I worried it would break. No bass I landed today did anything close to that. I had it hooked for perhaps 1.5 seconds.

August is tough. As I was leaving, I paddled up to a motorboat with three anglers. They'd caught two bass total, so I told them where and how to catch them. They motored off to the flat as I left.

I launched this morning having caught 980 bass in 2025. My goal was to catch at least 20, an easy feat in June or early October, but a challenge in August. Not only did I catch 23 bass, but many were 17 to 18 inches. I started with a 16-incher on a popper in the dark and finished with three open water bass on a Whopper Plopper. Every single bass was caught off-shore. I tried shoreline fishing and weed and point fishing, but the bass were deep. Other than the popper and Plopper bass, all were caught on an underspin with a shad-colored Keitech or a green Mayor. There was one fine bass I didn't photograph because it was tricky to unhook and I didn't want to keep it out of the water any longer. When I released it, it looked stunned for a sec and then went deep. My first bass was 16 inches and so were several following bass. I was beginning to worry that I might not catch bigger bass, but I reached an 8' deep flat adjacent to a weedy shallow area and I caught four bigger bass in short order, two seventeens and two eighteens: Here was another nice one, albeit shorter, caught while trolling to a point. It's an example of the bass that weren't 17 to 18 inches: I returned to the 8' flat, wondering if they were still there. They were! Two on back-to-back casts: Then they moved, so I switched to a big Whopper Plopper to give me more casting distance. Even though it was sunny and later in the morning, I thought that wolf-packing bass might be willing to hit a lure they'd otherwise ignore and I went with a surface lure because the bass caught on the underspin were hitting it on the fall. Good guess! I caught three in three casts. Here are the two best: In the end, I caught six 17-inchers and four 18-inchers out of 23 bass. Then I paddled to my pal's camp and enjoyed banana bread and OJ. I won't surpass 2,000 bass like I did last year, but I think I can still catch 1,500 bass in 2025. My numbers will increase through September and October can be the stuff that dreams are made of.

It's deep and has a belly, but not that long, so I'm thinking seven to eight pounds. Length with big bass adds weight fast. Look at the chart below and you'll see that north of 20", every additional inch is about a pound: https://tpwd.texas.gov/fishboat/fish/recreational/catchrelease/bass_length_weight.phtml

So true. When I bait fished with minnows, leeches, and nightcrawlers, if I put a healthy wiggler on my hook, it didn't last long. As others said, movement and making a ruckus matter.

You get to the point with a laser pointer.

This kid reminds me of those kids who get courtside seats to an NBA finals game: So, you think bass can't differentiate between a shad and a plastic shad imitation? I've cast to a lot of bass chasing bass in open water with shad imitations and caught nearly none of them. The exception is a school of white bass chasing shad. They'll hit anything. I think I could toss a roll of nickels into the water-churning school and none of the nickels would reach the bottom, but they abandon caution due to competition.

@bartnc37: That's a well-shaped smallie.

You have an analytical mind like Professor Pat.

A bit back, Professor @Pat Brown opined that bass aren't seeing what we think they're seeing, that they don't look at a frog lure and think it's a frog or look at a jerkbait and think it's a minnow. Pat didn't hypothesize what they are seeing (How could he?), but his idea has stuck with me. What do you think? Do you agree with the esteemed professor and if so, why then do they hit our lures? Or have you empirical evidence to suggest that when a bass hits a Booyah Pad Crasher Swamp Frog, it really thought it was a frog?

Me too! I had some of the best fishing of my life last fall. Fingers crossed I can find the big girls again.

You made me laugh, Al! I, on the other hand, could only catch 11, bringing my 2025 total to 980. We had a cold front hit yesterday evening and I launched for the first time in a while with fleece atop my wicking shirt. I did wear shorts, but only because my legs stay warm. I fished my pond and really worked for the bass I did catch. All were caught on an underspin with a shad-colored Keitech or a dark red, T-rigged crawfish. I triggered hits here and there: shoreline, laydown, weeds, open water. No pattern and nothing real big, but they sure were thick, from 15 to 17 inches. See below. Fat 15s: Fat 16s: My fat 17 was especially thick, so I photographed it twice: It fought like a six-pounder, spinning and pulling my canoe. I saw a big snapper, osprey, and some little, quick shorebird that looked like it belonged on the ocean, which isn't far away. Fun morning!

Fishing again tomorrow morning. Going to be cool and windy.

It looked and felt like fall here too. The reeds are no longer green and my hands were cold at the evening's end.

Al, I LOVE that pond! Great fishing, Al. You too, Baron! I returned to the water, but could only catch nine, including a five-poundish pickerel. The weather was shifty. The wind started at 8 mph from the south, but then swung from the north. I was fishing a 12" worm and a big creature bait, but didn't get a whiff on either. A white spinner bait with a black crawfish trailer also didn't trigger a single hit. All the action came on my underspin with Keitechs or Mayors in red, green, and shad. A popper also failed to produce. Here are some 17-inchers: Here's an 18-incher: Here's a smallie: 966 for the year. Th-th-th-that's all, folks!