Swamp Girl

I refuse. My canoe is tippy enough with just me. Bringing a pee gar aboard would be madness, even if these two are already following your advice:

And I'm walking the dog (NOT A SPOOK!) and taking naps. We should be with @WRB-2.0! Speaking of Tom, I wonder how many times in Tom's life he's shared that he's caught 17, 18, and 19-pound lmb and the listener understandably assumed that he was telling a whopper about whoppers given that so few have actually caught bass that big.

I hear ya. That's why we loved the mornings when the smallies preferred fluorescent red F13 Rapalas.

When bass blow up on a spook or frog, but miss it, they're like a musky following your lure. All squeeze the adrenal gland. What else gives the adrenal gland a good squeeze?

Okay, if my one-hour jaunts count, my tips are to lower expectations because the bass are always moving and if one only has an hour to find them, you lose significant minutes looking. I averaged about four bass per hour-long trip, which is below my average, but I was okay with that understanding I was time-handicapped. I was also gear-handicapped, as I'd generally take just two rods as opposed to the usual five or six rods, and no tacklebox, counting that if one rod went down, the other would see me through to the hour's end. It was fun to fish so lightly and walking through the woods with only two rods made me feel like I was one of those lizards that run atop water. Yeah, light-footed. I'd also commit to one spot and pound that, typically a drop-off, where I could fish both shallow and deep from the same spot.

Cool beans!

Cool experiment. You were disciplined, sticking with less effective lures to assay their effectiveness. I'm not surprised soft plastics ruled. Most trips, I launch with five out of six rods or six out of six rods with soft plastics.

My pond is five minutes from my home...plus a little walk through the woods. If the wind has been blowing all day and abates in the final hour, I've fished that hour. Is that a micro-trip? Or a maxi-micro-trip?

Now, I will qualify my assertion that bass are generally indifferent to color with this: In northwestern Ontario, where the water is so clean and clear that we drank straight from the lake, and where we cast Rapala F13s that sit in the water as much on it, color did seem to matter. We fished fluorescent orange most mornings, but some mornings that did seem to prefer blue...or gold...or chartreuse. I preferred when they preferred fluorescent orange because they were easier to see in the fog of four a.m., but if my partner was outfishing me three-to-one with his blue Rapala, I switched lickety-split. They were smallmouth. With lmb, I tie on whatever is close.

Except in the spring when lake trout are shallow and pretty quick to strike, they're hard to catch. They haunt the deep water and deep water is vast. If you somehow manage to haul one up from the deep, you better be prepared to keep it as rising from deep to shallow in a couple minutes will likely kill it, sooner or later. Does your kayak have a rod holder for trolling? I have caught many fish while trolling without a rod holder, so I assure you it isn't easy. There are far more practical fish to target than lake trout like...well...just about every other species.

The past two summers, I fished topwater lures a lot, catching more than a thousand bass on the surface. Here's the pattern I perceived regarding color:

Why limit yourself to a spinning combo for ladies? Six feet strikes me as about a foot too short.

Well, I just had my shield removed and I can't wait to have the other eye done. The doc said my vision will continue to improve for a month, but it's already better than my vision with glasses.

Dang it, Alex. I think the most likely time to fall into the water is right by the shore. I've read a couple other accounts of that happening to Bass Resource members and that's how it happened to me too. In my case, I'd hooked one rod's lure to a tree and as I tried to free it, I hooked another off the other end of the canoe to different tree. Then I tipped too. I think your rod will be found. I suspect the sunglasses floated away, but fingers crossed they're found too. You are one tough man.

Mine too.

@casts_by_fly: That's a cool hold. I'll give it a try. Thanks for all the photos illustrating the hold too. They are! They've really refined my fighting technique. They can pull so hard and so suddenly that they pull free. The other morning, I hooked someone's broken line and twice this year, I found a broken, abandoned rod. So, I try to be as elastic as possible when fighting them, using one hand to hold my rod; I extend the rod to them by stretching my arm when they run. As the drag slips, I try to slip too. Heck, even my boat slips too, as they turn it and pull it. For me, the art in fighting bass is deciding how much I should slip and when I should apply all needed pressure, with weeds in play in most fights. Ha! They are piggies! Well, I slept twelve hours today and I'm about to go to bed...AGAIN! When I talked to the doctors and nurses this morning about what I intended to do today, they kept saying that today would be my 'rest day." They were right. The eye shield will be removed tomorrow morning and I look forward to that 7:30 appointment.

I miss him.

@gim: What's weird is that a few Bass Resource guys have described my bass as "very short," "thin," and "skinny." You put those descriptors together and one would think I'm catching bass you could hide in your hand. Here's one of my dinks, but not even it could be hidden in my hand:

If Andy keeps fishing for green bass, I'm going to focus on brown bass to keep the universe in balance. You can't ask for anything more than that.

You are correct. I've been pond fishing this summer. The fatter bass are in the bogs, but the bogs are a lot more work for me. For example, these are bog bass of varying lengths, but what's weird is that the thinner bass from my pond outfight these chunks:

In case you're wondering about lengths, nearly every bass I post is at least 17 inches. I remember @gim stating that 17" is his cutoff and I thought, what's good for Gim is good for Swampy. The bigger bass that I post from my pond run up to 19". If a bass exceeds 19", I usually share its exact length. Sometimes, I post a smaller bass if it has a funny shape, like this one, which was probably 16.5":

@JonB2: I am amazed at what you catch off the bank. Cool that we both wacky scored today!

That's a big bass from the shore. You should be proud.

I assume you're losing lures because you're boat-less. I lose few lures. I'm learning that cover varies. The grass that lies flat on the top of the water is only good if you cast into it. Pondweed, on the other hand, produces more if you cast about two feet from it. I try to place my lure right along the edge of lily pads, as tight as possible, or in openings. Reeds and wild rice are great in May and again in the fall. Cabbage is consistently productive, but also holds pike and pickerel. However, what works in a Maine pond and bog might not apply to Kentucky.

When it comes to Mr. Howe, Never was heard A discouraging word And his skies are not cloudy All day! Thanks, Kirtley! Say, guys, I really am coming to trust my orange and green crawdad. I don't know the maker, but I expect they're all similar.