mddrew88

My favorite lure to fish with would have to be various sizes of Rebel Pop-R. There's nothing like topwater bass fishing, its the best. Having said that, I would feel real silly if I didn't at least give a texas rigged plastic or a crank a chance in the water. Not the most exciting way to catch bass but they're definitely more productive in my opinion for catching good numbers of fish.

Well I got "skunked" again this morning. Same situation. I've come to the conclusion that the pond is overpopulated with bluegill and that's what I'm seeing darting everywhere. I'm starting to wonder if I should add more bass to bring their numbers down. I doubt a healthy bass population could thrive with that many bluegill sucking up all the oxygen. You'd think they'd just eat em' all up. I couldn't get the pics off of my phone but I'll try again soon. No luck with the buzzbait, or anything for that matter. I did however catch a bluegill from when I set up a rig with a nightcrawler last night. I found it this morning dead in the shallows, must have fought its way into the weeds and suffocated. As far as monsters are concerned. I caught a huge 30# softshell turtle the other day on a topwater lure. It snagged him in the leg by accident and boy did he take my canoe for a ride! I was convinced I had a dub digit bass. I dragged him on shore but he wouldn't let me come close. That mouth and long neck were biting everything in sight, I had to break off my favorite pop-r. Another incident I saw was a huge bluegill head floating in the water. You could tell something with powerful jaws and teeth tore him up. I'm still scratching my head on that one.

We have a small population of crappie, not many though. Mainly we have LMB and bluegill with the occasional crappie. Well right behind the shad are tons of bass eating them up. I have noticed that all I catch are very young (or maybe just small) LMB. I wouldn't doubt it someone was fishing them all out. The owner caught someone out there the other day that had no business on property. Having said that, it's hard to imagine the bass population being that low. I see them pounding the banks every single morning, they just aren't interested in what I'm throwing out because they have much easier targets to home in on. Night fishing lately hasn't produced much with plastics or topwater. I'll give the buzz bait a try. Oh by the way, I may have been conservative of the size of the pond. It's more like 2-3 acres, and it's a natural pond over 100+ years old. I'll take a few pictures tomorrow morning for reference. I'll also get some video of the baitfish going wild. Maybe they're small bass and we're overstocked?

I just watched it straight through, great video.

A heavy rain with pressure system will likely halt feeding, but as others have said I've caught many fish in a light rain.

So today I had absolutely no luck at my local fishing hole, an acre pond on private land. This came as a shock to me as I always C&R at minimum one or two each time I go out. I must have thrown everything under the sun at the shallows: topwater first in the early am, then tried shallow crank, deep crank, dark/light plastic worms, a spinnerbait and a few types of frogs (frogs are almost my bailout bait here, but no luck today.) I notice baitfish have absolutely taken control of the pond. I couldn't find a single patch of water without spooking them. You could see bass just inhaling them left and right, so much so that they have no room in their bellies for my so-so looking baits. Every single cast of my pop-r and the landing zone would look like you hit it with a 14 gauge, shad fleeing everywhere. Every single *bloop* of my pop-r and same situation. I doubt the bass could even see my lure with the surrounding water peppered the way it was with shad. It's starting to make sense why I always catch half # to 1# fish, when I know obviously there has to be more than a few trophy sized living handsomely. So how do you fish when the bass are living like kings already? Should we be thinking about introducing another predatory species to bring down their populations, or is there a trick? - a confused fisherman

It's hard to say for sure, but there's a lot of convincing evidence like the new photos his family found of some pretty monster LMB with Perry holding them. http://www.fieldandstream.com/blogs/field-notes/2013/06/has-long-lost-photo-george-perry-and-his-world-record-bass-surfaced

I was spoiled rotten by my pond earlier in the year. We couldn't pull fish out fast enough. I'm talking 15-20 fish by myself in about a 2 hour span. The LMB were even stealing our worms on bobs meant for the perch. I'd throw one out and set it down to go for my topwater rig and three times in a row I'd have to turn around and throw everything down to run to the other pole. You know it's a good day when you start getting irritated at having to run around chasing different fish on different rod setups. Now that things have slowed down a bit, I'm happy with about 2 fish of any type in a 4 hour window.

I don't know the first thing about fishing them. I've heard of sourdough bread rolled into balls on a hook. Sounds pretty boring to me.

That's what I'm hoping for. I've never caught a carp out of it before, just bluegill, bass and crappie. The water is always stained so I'm starting to wonder what's on the bottom. Definitely no catfish in this pond so maybe carp. I thought carp didn't eat other fish though.

I threw out a popper right in front of its path and it passed it right up several times. This was about ~6:30 am, so I'm guessing a LMB. If I snag it I'll post it up. This is a natural pond and from what I know nobody has fished it properly in over 10 years. Hoping for some monsters.

Hey guys. I've been noticing some strange activity by my fish in our acre pond, strange to me anyways. I was paddling out near the bank vegetation and kept seeing long trails that would pursue baitfish. Normally I see bass come up fast and pop the surface, but whatever these were would sit about an inch or two under the topwater and prowl. They were definitely too fast to be snapping turtles. I've never seen bass make trails behind them, they almost looked like sharks prowling the surface except no fin sticking up. They'd just cruise around for about a minute then go under. Whatever it was wasn't shy at all of our boat. We couldn't make it out because of the stained water. Think it's possible I have a few gars in the water? I can't imagine what else would be that long and create such a trail.