Swamp Girl

I fished with the kid and his dad at my pond this morning. Fishing was slow, but we cobbled a total catch of 21. I caught eight, bringing my 2024 total to 957. Their average size was good. It was already getting hot, so we quit early,

My right eye is healing ahead of schedule, which is why the doc changed her mind and let me fish again, but come Wednesday, I'll be landlocked again as the team will do my second eye. I'll likely sleep a lot on Wednesday, but the bandages will come off Thursday morning and hopefully I'll see clearly from both eyes. Meanwhile, the kid and I are going fishing tomorrow morning. Thanks for wondering, guys!

If nothing else works, hook a nightcrawler in the head. Cast it with no weight, which is hard to do, but that combo provokes hits.

I launched to more wind than I prefer because I wanted to fish a good solunar evening. The bass were willing, but I didn't bring my good stuff to the mound, losing some good ones. I managed seven bass. Six were good-sized and four were about as big as they grow in my pond. These four: I caught one trolling into the wind, one on the edge of some lilypads, one from a laydown, and one trolling with the wind. These two were smaller, but still solid, both caught on a T-Rigged worm: Here's a pretty pic! Thanks, F3, for the app suggestion. I think it works. The bass were bigger than normal. FWIW, I've caught 948 this year.

Me too! I'm leaving in five minutes. Thanks for the good wishes, Triple F!

I'm launching this evening for two hours, but when I do, the wind will be blowing at 11 mph, which is a lot for a light, high-sided canoe. I'm going to plow into the wind and then let it blow me back to my dock. I'm doing this because I loaded @FloridaFishinFool's lunar app on my phone and the app gave this evening a 96% rating. Now, if I can just feel a bite and land a bass when the wind is bullying me.

I don't desire a bigger boat because a bigger boat can't reach many of the places I fish.

I keep count in my head on the water and use my Bass Resource trip reports to tally a year's count. I know there are Bass Resource members who aren't excited by 15" bass, but I am. I love them all. Al, I wouldn't trust myself to estimate a trip's total catch if I weren't counting.

@Pat Brown: CONGRATS, PAT! A new home on a 15-acre pond!!! Living the dream, my friend. Plus, it has HUGE bass! @IcatchDinks, head south pronto! Pat, do you own the entire pond or are there other houses on it? It looks pretty wild in your photos.

Sounds fun!

Four to six-pound test. VERY long casts. Live bait if artificial fail.

They're so easy to avoid. In my experience, they're down miles of logging roads with lots of standing water that only a fool wouldn't walk first in their Mucks, and there will be streams to cross and fallen trees to clear. Then you'll have to portage and there might not be a trail, so you walk it first, marking trees and clearing brush. Al @Lottabass caught 52 five-pounders one summer and that Iowa bass haven is across half a mile of pasture. If you like challenges, then @IcatchDinks shouldn't fish your water. You should fish his and try catching bass between the flotillas of inner tubers. If I fished ICD's river, I'd feel lucky to catch a rock bass. Of course, reaching wilderness lakes is its own challenge.

If there were a Bass Angler of the Year Contest, ^this^ alone would earn you my vote.

You fished mid-day, the water was crowded, you caught too many bass to bother photographing, and Senkos are too easy for you. Please invite ICD to fish your lake with Senkos!

@IcatchDinks: You can only fish the water that's available to you and you're fishing water with tubers. So, you're more likely to have a toddler tugging at you than a bass. I look forward to you fishing with Professor Pat again. @Pat Brown, you are assigned with putting ICD on a five, six, or seven-pounder. Hook ICD up and the Bass Resource Faculty Committee will award you tenure.

@Joedodge: I'm sending you twenty bucks. Please spend it on lottery tickets for me. I see you changed your PB numbers to 5-6 lbs. You're humble. I think you caught a six-pounder and deserve 6-7 lbs.

Yeah, it's a happy tired. I remember late evenings in Ontario, crossing wilderness lakes at the last light, having danced with scores of smallies, too tired to eat, but oh, so happy.

My right eye is healing well, so the eye doc gave me permission to fish again. The fishing will end again this coming Wednesday with the left eye being done.

Yeah, I enjoy good fishing here. It helps that that I fish the same bodies of water again and again. It also helps that I fish from a canoe, which lets me be stealthy. However, you need more than a canoe to consistently catch lots of bass. There was a fellow canoeing angler on my pond this morning and he caught 3 to my 18. So, you have to have a nose for finding bass too. For example, I caught the bass below this morning when I saw some grass move ever so slightly. Some anglers might miss such slight movement: And i'm looking forward to your return!

I had a blast this morning. I fished from 5 a.m. to 9 a.m. I'd rigged four lures: a wakebait, two underspins, two wacky/jig rigs, and a T-Rigged orange craw. All caught at least one bass, but the orange craw caught the most. I found them in grass, pondweed, lily pads, and on the edge of the wetlands. Pondweed was not the best producer. Grass was. I caught lots of 17 to 18-inch bass. And I chatted with another angler in a canoe who finished with three bass. I caught eighteen. The highlight of the morning was hooking a strong bass near the shoreline that ran for the bushes on the shoreline. I thought I'd braked her, but she ended up tangled in a submerged tree. I saw her a couple times before she disappeared. I assume she freed herself, but left my lure in the tree. So, I started clearing away the underwater branches, which was pretty easy to do because the tree was rotten. Finally, I saw the trunk and was able to lift it just enough to see my orange lure hooked on the bottom of it. I grabbed my lure, pulled, and freed it...and...there was a bass attached. This bass! . See the scratch on its side? I'm guessing the tree scratched it. Anyway, I caught lots of fine fish, many in the 16.5" to 18" range. Here they are: My last bass was the biggest: And my first bass was the skinniest: Say bye-bye to my pond! I'm at 959 bass for 2025.

I caught 506 smallmouth once in a two-day stretch. If I had the chance to do this again, I think I'd pass. That many bass in that short a span is hard on a body. Come the third morning, I slept late and I was young then. I can still manage a Bite Morning, but not a Bite Day. I had a 70 and 75-bass morning last year. They both exhausted me. Heck, my 58-bass morning with the slabs exhausted me so much that when I stepped onto the shore, I immediately fell on my butt into the mud. It sucks the sap out of me to fight bass like this:

The Second Half of April: I can catch a few. The First half of May: Fishing picks up. The Second Half of May through the End of June: The Busy Boat Mornings of 40/50/60/70 bass. It's a big bass stretch. July and August: Tough fishing. I work to catch 10-30 bass per outing. September: Easier fishing. 20-40 bass per morning. October: Unpredictable. I can have a 70-bass outing followed by a 10-bass outing. It's a big bass month. How about you?

Thanks for the tip. I just downloaded a lunar app. As far as Cory's question, I don't consider major or minor factors other than wind. It has to be calm enough that I won't spend half my fishing time correcting my canoe's position. Whatever the factors, I can usually coax a few to bite.

I enjoyed the Charlie Brown gif!

I fished my pond this morning. It was foggy when I launched and I got off to a great start, catching two bass with my first two casts, both on a popper. Here's the first one: Sadly, those were my only two surface bass and the whole morning went like that. I'd think I found a way to catch bass consistently after catching a quick one and then that place and method would go cold. However, I did manage to catch 15, giving me 941 for 2025 and some were well-shaped: They all measured between 16.5" and 17" and all were caught on an underspin, wacky worm with a jig, and the popper. Since I couldn't put together a pattern, I tried Pondweed patches, Lilypads, three drop-offs, trolling, the edge of wetlands, a laydown, a rocky flat, a river, etc. This was my last bass: