Mainebass1984

Good job guys

Pretty cool experience. I am sure it was an exciting time back in the 60s and 70s with the hopes of a new world record from California waters. Aging bass by scales is difficult and inaccurate. A microscope and stain are needed. Basically your counting annuli like you would on a tree. Ctenoid scales because of there shape are difficult to age. The accepted procedure in the scientific community today for aging bass or other ctenoid scaled fish is by dorsal spine. The second dorsal spine is removed as close to body as can be. After the spine is prepared with a solution to remove all the skin or other bodily remnants it is sliced extremely thin by a specific expensive machine. The samples are then mounted on a slide and stained before being observed under a microscope. Dorsal spine samples show annual growth just like a tree and appear like annuli you would see on a stump after cutting down a tree.

Perhaps I will check out the report. A lot has changed in the scientific community in the last 50 years. As with any study there are a lot of variables. Dorsal spines and otiliths are far more accurate at determining age then scales.

It can be very ,very difficult at times. When my favorite river turns into mud with visibility of less then a couple inches there is only one pattern I can catch fish on. Incoming brooks with clearer water. Fish will position themselves where the water clarity mixes and any eddies that are near by. At times they will stack up there big time.

It was supposed to be my weekend off but that changed unfortunately. Oh well. Looks like I will be fishing in Maine next weekend. After work yesterday I fished from 4 until 11pm. The water temp was 76 degrees. There wasn't a cloud in the sky. The wind was supposed to be calm but t picked up out the north west at 5-15 mph. That sucked. Once I got to my first spot I put a few fish in the boat and the fishing was pretty good numbers wise. I lost a bigger fish that buried me in the weeds. I guess that is a downfall when using 8 lb fluorocarbon. The night fishing was pretty productive. The moon was super bright. After dark the average size of the fish I caught went up a bit and I caught my 5 biggest bass after dark. The biggest was a 3 lb 5 oz on a buzzbait that isn't made anymore. Once I had called it a day I had landed 37 largemouth and 3 slimy pickerel. The size of the bass has gone down a bit at this particular pond in recent weeks but catching sure is fun. I am taking a friend fishing after work today. Hopefully we will get em a bit better. Good luck every one !

5" jig ? What were you using for a trailer ? 20" is a nice one. What did you get it on ?

Yes I have caught FLMB while I was working and living in Florida as a Fisheries Biologist Assistant. I have not caught a double digit largemouth bass anywhere. My credentials... Well since you are "calling me out" I guess I should list my credentials ?? I usually don't like pointing out my "credentials" but since you insist.. I am a fisheries biologist that works with fish everyday and fishes 120 days on the water every single year almost exclusively for bass. I keep detailed regards of every single fish I have caught since 1998. I have worked in a fisheries related position in Maine, Vermont, Florida, Illinois, Alaska, Iowa and Missouri. I am a member of 2 bass clubs currently and have set lake records while winning tournaments, club and opens. It is true I have never caught a DD bass but I have spent most of my time in New England where they are exceedingly rare. My biggest is a 9 lb 1 oz, a pure NLMB whch was aged at 16 years old. This year I have caught 37 bass over 5 lbs all pure NLMB. Sure they aren't DD but they are big fish in New England and far older them most FLMB. Sure you have more experience catching FLMB but the original post is whether or not NLMB and FLMB will strike the same lures.. Yes they will. It is simple. If something is hungry whether it is a bird, a bug, a fish a person it is going to eat. Simple biology. FLMB get big for sure and to do that they must eat. There is no need to over complicate things like we as fisherman do so very often. If a bass is hungry it eats. Fact. Tom lets see some pictures of a few of the hundreds upon hundreds of DD you have caught ? Any recent ones ?

What lures and what type of cover/structure is everyone fishing at night ?

Fished yesterday from 4 until about 1045 pm. I caught 24 bass on jigs and rubber worms up until dark. Nothing good at all, a few around 2 1/4 lbs but most were under 2 lbs. After dark which was about 845-9pm, I caught 13 bass. After dark the fish averaged 2 1/4 lbs. They were destroying my buzzbait. Nothing huge. The biggest of the night was 3 lbs 5 oz.

NLMB and FLMB are the same species. They are both sub-species of Largemouth Bass just different strains.. If bass are hungry its doesn't matter if they are NLMB, FLMB, in Florida, California, or Minnesota, they will eat. If it looks like food they will eat it.

That is very interesting A-Jay. I seem to have my best luck around a full moon. When night fishing I am targeting the thickest nastiest weed beds using spinnerbaits, and buzzbaits. I am usually fish until about midnight. The fish are bigger on average then what I had been catching during the day in the same locations. What kind of cover/structure do you like to target when night fishing and with what lures ?

Is anyone taking advantage of the super moon and going night fishing ? I will be. The bite should be good !

Northeast region only. The "rules" are posted in previous months threads. Okay guys lets see some fish !

I am in. I will be fishing a bunch this weekend. Some beautiful fishing the next week or so. Lets see some fish !

I fished an afternoon tournament yesterday from 4-8 pm. The fishing was great. We went to our first spot and immediately started catching fish. After 30 minutes or so we had our limit but nothing big. We were fishing around weeds beds and the adjacent flats out from the weed beds casting jigs, worms, and frogs. We stayed in the same cove all evening. My partner caught one over 4 lbs. I caught 3 over 3 lbs. My partner finished off our limit with our 5th decent fish. There were some culling issues and the scale he had wasn't accurate at all but we weighed in 16.66 lbs for 5 fish and finished in 1st place. First tournament win of the year for me. Heck yeah.

I fish a lot of lakes that are very busy on the weekend. There is always a bunch of people loading and unloading. It was around noon and we were just getting to the lake. Most people were loading there boats, done fishing for the day. There was a very old couple loading there small boat. It took them nearly 20 minutes to load there boat. We were two trailers back in line waiting. After the older couple had just pulled out of the launch the guy in the next truck and trailer yells out of his window. " I will show them how its done. " He backs down his trailer first try, like a pro. His buddy drives his huge ranger with a 250 mph engine and dual power poles onto the trailer. The guy in the boat yells " Okay. Pull it up." The guy in the truck is pulling the boat into the parking lot as the entire boat slides off the trailer, with a guy still in it, right onto the pavement. It made a terrible scraping crunching sound. My friend and I couldn't stop laughing. They heard us laughing. We couldn't stop. Hopefully those guys learned there lesson.

I usually will approach the area I want to fish from downstream and cast my lure upstream working my lure with the current back to the boat. I am usually fishing with the current or at a very slight angle to the current.

Frog bite has been heating up. Night fishing has been very productive lately as well. Buzzbait.

Last week an outdoor journalist contacted me about writing an article on night fishing. Yesterday afternoon I met him at the launch at 4 pm and fished until a bit after midnight. The weather was not ideal. A massive cold front had moved through the day accompanied by heavy rain. The lake level had risen over a foot the past 3 days due to the rain. The water temperature had dropped from 82 to 74 degrees. The wind was blowing out of the north west 5-10 mph with gusts up to 20 mph. We had already made plans and were going to fish regardless.. The fishing during the day time was pretty good. We consistently catching fish. By nightfall we had caught over 30 fish but none over 3 lbs. We had caught a couple 2-12's and a few more over 2.5 lbs. It was pretty cold after dark. The fishing after dark was not as fast numbers wise but the fish we were catching were better sized fish. after dark I caught a 3-10, 3-4 and a 3-0 on a buzz bait. The action died off around midnight when it got really really cold. After another hour we called it a night. I caught 34 fish by the time we left and I would assume we caught well over 50 bass. The article will be in this sundays Burlington free press.

Fishing has slowed down a bit for me numbers wise. Still catching a few big fish every now and then. I have been having great luck right before dark and night fishing as well. The day time bite has been tough form 11-2. Catching them on jigs, rubber worms, buzzbaits, and frogs. In my opinion the fishing is still good. It is only going to get better as we get closer to fall.

I like river fishing and do a lot of it here in Maine and Vermont. I have very good luck fishing out of the current behind trees, rock piles, jetties or in eddies created by another river or brook coming in.

This past weekend I did some fishing with a good long time friend I hadn't seen in awhile. The plan was to fish as much as possible. We met Thursday evening to try a bit of night fishing. I usually don't have very good success when there is no moon. There was no moon Thursday night but we were going to try it any way. We started fishing around 830 and fished until 1130. It wasn't very windy but it was pitch black. My friend Aaron was fishing a frog and I chose to fish my usual night time arsenal, spinnerbait, chatterbait, and a buzzbait. The fishing wasn't exactly easy but we managed catch 8 bass before calling it a night. Biggest bass of the night was a 2 lb 15 oz. On Friday we got out on the water at 8 am. It was a pretty nice day temps were in the lower 80s with not a whole lot of wind. The water temperature was 80 degrees. The fishing was pretty slow for most of the day. Picking up a fish here and there. We hadn't caught much by 1 pm. While I ate my lunch I was deciding where to fish next and how to adjust my approach for the remainder of the day. After much though I decided that I would fish a deeper weed bed, my favorite sunken trees and a new spot I found that I like to call frog heaven or obvious reasons. It was time to motor. Once we arrived at the deeper weed bed I told my friend to cast out. He did and quickly caught a 2.5 lber. A few casts later I hook into a lunker on the very edge of the weeds. It instantly goes air born and I tell my friend to get the net. It is a big fish and head shaking. It ripped of some drag as I hoped it would come off. As the fish gets to the boat my friend quickly nets it. It is a very well built 6 lb 3 oz that I caught on a rubber worm. After such a slow morning it was nice to get that lunker in the boat. Over the next 30 min or so we caught several more nice bass but nothing of any size. It was time again to move to another spot, my favorite sunken trees. There is a series of sunken and submerged trees in this pond which I very much like to fish. We pull up to the first tree and it looks as good as ever. I tell my friend Aaron that I hadn't caught any fisf off of it this year. He asks me why we are fishing it. It was a simple answer : because I have caught giant bass here in the past. Aaron is fishing his beloved senko and I have chosen to fish a jig. The tree is a bit deeper in 12 feet of water. On my second or third cast I can feel the jig going through some very thick tree branches and I feel a tick. I set the hook on what feels like a good fish. It gets wrapped around the tree but I manage to get it free. It was a good fish weighing in at 5 lbs 0 oz. We continue to fish that tree and fish the rest of my favorite trees. We caught some fish on the other trees but nothing 3 lbs or bigger. It was tie to make a move. It was getting a bit later. It was about 6 pm or so and time to go to frog heaven. "Frog heaven" is an area where there is a very subtle unobvious channel with tons of thick lily pas as well as some mifoil around. I take my first cast with the frog and before I have the chance to even move it once a fish inhales it. My friend wasn't even able to cast and I had already had a fish on and in the boat a 4-11. After unhooking and weighing that fish I take another cast near where I had just caught that fish. The frog lands splat on the water and a fish makes a wake over to my frog and explodes on it before I could even twitch it. This fish weigh in at 4-10. My friend then catches a 3-4. We were catching fish nearly every cast at this spot, all on a frog. I ended up catching a 3-9 and a 3-0 before leaving the spot. My friend also caught another 3 lber before we left. We caught a lot of fish there before leaving once it was too dark to see. I ended up catching 14 largemouth and 4 smallmouth for the day. My friend Aaron caught 6 largemouth and 2 smallmouth. The next day we decided to fish an unpressured lake. It was a 500 ft walk down a goat path to get to the lake. It was a pain getting my boat and all my gear down to the lake. I couldn't have done it by myself. It was a bit windy 5-10 mph out of the west and 80 degrees. I had never fished this lake before so I had no spots already in mind. I could see some tree out on 15 ft of water though. We went over and fished them with no luck. There really wasn't anything else to fish on this pond except for weed. We caught some fish but nothing really good. I did manage to find a rock pile where I caught a 3 lb 3 oz on a rubber worm. We had been out there for 5 hours and my friend wasn't having much luck. He wanted to go somewhere else. after deciding on another pond for the veing bite we were motoring over to the launch. We had to go right by the deep trees. I told him we had to fish them before we left. The first two trees sucked. We caught nothing off of them. We pull up to the 3rd tree and I let my friend take a coupe casts with his beloved senko on the tree before I cast my jig onto it. I pull the jig up and over the submerged base of the tree and before it hits bottom my line jumps.I set the hook hard into a nice fish, weighed in at 5 lbs 0 oz. At that pond from 8 am til about 1 pm I caught 10 bass and my friend caught 2. After that fish we still decide to go to another pond. After stopping and getting a pizza we are at the next pond and unloaded within an hour after leaving the past pond. The wind is still blowing but we fished a few places out of the wind. The fishing was much faster then the last pond. We were catching a lot of 2-2 3/4 lb fish. It was fin fishing. My friend caught a 3-6 and I caught a 3-11 both fish from the same off shore flat. We fished until dark 30 but didn't get any lunkers We finished the evening with 19 bass in the boat in about 6 hours of fishing. It was a very fun and productive weekend of fishing. Hopefully everyone else had just as much luck.

Its got to be the jig for me. I most likely would have a rage craw trailer on for this time of year. Jigs win tournaments all across the country every month of the year. It consistently produces bigger then average fish.

I heard they were catching the smallies deep in 20-40 feet of water lately. Fish are in there summer patterns now.

Meeting a friend of mine from college to do some fishing this weekend. We will be night fishing tonight and then 2 12-14 hour days on fri and sat. Sunday morning to finish of the fishing weekend. Hopefully will catch a fish or two. Would really like to get into some big big bass.