everythingthatswims

If the fish is hooked so that it can spit your hook, tight drag and horsing it is just going to pull the hook out, usually with a T-Rig you can keep them buttoned during the fight. Well you won't do it again after losing the big girl, I hope you can get a second shot at her!

If you are anywhere close to Central VA, I'll come catch ALL of your white perch

I can't say that I'm a believer in the field mouse...bass see a white belly regardless of whether it's a frog or mouse on top. Nice fish though!

I estimate my PB @ close to 9lbs, 24" and full of eggs when I caught her once in late march. She lives right down the street in my neighbor's pond and I have landed her 3 times in total, my little brother caught her one time too (c&r is a wonderful thing). As many hours as I spend at that pond each year targeting bass, seeing how few times that fish takes a bait is a real eye opener. And there is a 22" in there that I have only caught once, so I know first hand that big bass are REALLY SMART! (I know the 24" is the same fish because of a cut pectoral fin)

When bass are so afraid of me that they leave the beds when I'm sight fishing, I'll be happy.

You will also need a telephone pole and some 200lb fluoro to throw a swimbait that size. You could probably melt down all of your old plastics and make a shark hudd

You beat me to it

For those days when you're out of mossy oak coffee beans

I chummed with cream corn one time and it worked well. Nice thing about corn for bait is that commons and grass carp will both eat it, I highly recommend chumming with something, because especially with grass carp, when they are feeding naturally they won't eat corn much, but once they see it everywhere, they start feeding on it and become comfortable taking the stuff with hooks in it. Just use #6 or #8 hooks, light leaders, and sliding weights or no weight at all.

One of them NEEDS to be a 5/16oz baby boo jig with a zoom ultravibe speed craw for a trailer. As far as color goes, black&blue in low visibility, natural colors in good visibility. As far as normal sized jigs go, I haven't tried many brands but I like terminators the most. Any craw will make a good trailer, just come close to matching the skirt color.

Well if you fish clear water, you're probably missing out on a lot. You might not see the fish, but there are a lot of targets to cast to that you absolutely will not spot without a pair of polarized glasses. I feel like I miss out on too much when I don't have them on.

Get some ultravibe speed craws and texas rig them weightless..."Finesse Buzz Bait".

I have been forcing myself to spend a little time without polarized glasses on for the past 2 or 3 fishing trips so I can get rid of my "coon eyes" before I go back to school haha

Spawn was LAAAAAAAATE. Normally I see fish in ponds spawning mid-late april, this year I think it was mid may before they spawned here, and I even saw one pond have a spawn in june!

Was it a snook?

KVD 1.5 and 1.0 just flat catch fish, and 9 times out of 10 that's what I'm throwing. I have caught some fish on the rebel wee-r when the water is cold and muddy though.

Since you were pitching/flipping, you probably got him to the boat quickly enough that it didn't shake him up too bad so he recovered quickly. Had you pulled on him for 2 minutes on a spinning rod with 6lb test, he probably wouldn't have bit again.

You have to look at their pectoral fins, if they are rounded off it's a stocked fish, sometimes it's hard to tell because the fins heal over time after stocking but they never will look as good as the pectoral fins on wild trout.

Go duck hunt there when it's cold

Small saltwater fish are no harder to catch than bluegill and crappies, but go try to figure out some of the bigger fish in the bay if saltwater isn't challenging enough for you.

Big, black and blue, flippin and pitchin.

Are you sure that they aren't carp jumping? That doesn't sound like a behavior of bass unless you are referring to bass schooling and chasing baitfish as "jumping".

I would want it to come from a lake that I fish regularly where a big fish is uncommon, because a 9 or 10 pound fish in Okeechobee wouldn't be the same as a 9 or 10 pound fish from a VA body of water that may only have one fish that size caught in a year. (I'm not saying I wouldn't want to go somewhere to catch big bass, it just wouldn't be as rewarding IMO).

It's doing some crazy stuff to the tides! I'm in Myrtle Beach right now and there is water all over the place at high tide. fishing is still good though.