everythingthatswims

I had two finals today, so after I finished up with them, I hooked up the boat and took it to the river that borders campus to fish for a couple hours and de compress. I didn't expect much, because you can't expect much from the Mon river in terms of bass. It is one of the three rivers that the Bassmaster Classic was held on in Pittsburgh, and if any of you know how that tournament went, it is a good example of the fishery. In most any body of water, no matter how poor the conditions are for bass or how much stunting occurs, there will always be a select few that break the mold and grow very successfully. Today I found two of them, and I couldn't be happier! Officially my PBs for both species on the Mon, and my 2nd biggest smallmouth ever. Largemouth was 4.23, smallmouth was 3.94! I caught the largemouth flippin' a netbait paca slim 3.5" on 3/8 tungsten, and the smallmouth was on a norman little N in a craw color. Over my left shoulder is Woodburn Hall, the most photographed building at WVU. Figured I should follow the trend!

What if I can support my fishing with my fishing? @A-Jay (still pursuing the degree FYI)

I wouldn't worry about making the change. From my experience I'd say you're way more likely to injure a fish with some form of soft plastic than with trebles. A wacky rig or Carolina rig is far more dangerous to them than a treble, or so it seems!

A little keitech will grab a better than average crappie with some regularity too, I have filled a cooler on more than one occasion with a keitech. Crappie, striper, walleye, you name it!

You won't find a better quality swimbait than a keitech. And if you're talking stuff in the 2.8-3.3" range, other brands with tougher plastic wouldn't have hardly any action if they made a bait that small. Bite the bullet, they catch fish!

Yes sir, the one in my right hand is a meanmouth, and the one in my partner's right hand is also a spot. We had another good spot in our bag that day too, just the one largemouth. Pickwick has some big kentuckies! And I need to become even more comfortable with making changes on the water. If I was fun fishing, I would have probably scrapped everything and started from scratch on day three, it's just hard to take risks like that in a tournament!

Pickwick treated me really well this week, I caught lots of big fish and had a blast! My fishing partner and I competed in the BASS College Series Southern Tour event on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. There was a field of 266 boats from schools all across the country, many traveling even farther than we did from WVU. Fluctuating water levels were a big factor this week. On Sunday, the lake rose 3 to 4 feet from heavy rains, and the current was RIPPING! We didn't start practice 'til Monday, so we never saw the lake before it rose. This definitely helped us out in my opinion. Many teams found fish over the weekend and then the water levels changed everything. There were two main approaches taken by anglers at this tournament, largemouth fishing in the lower portions of the lake, or smallmouth fishing at the base of Wilson Dam in an area named "The Horseshoe". The horseshoe is notorious for producing incredible numbers of giant smallmouth, many teams who fished there would only end up with 4 fish, but still have 14-16lbs! I decided to not go near that area of the lake, I don't like fishing community holes and it was the craziest one I have ever seen. 50+ boats there fishing each day. The even crazier part is how 20lb+ bags were caught there each day despite all of the fishing pressure and boat traffic. All of the locals seemed to agree that 99% of the smallmouth in Pickwick are at the dam this time of year, but I found that hard to believe. My partner and I spent a good bit of time fishing rocky current breaks on the main river, and while there weren't many, we found some BIG ones! My friends who live down there didn't believe us when we told them our smallmouth weren't coming from the dam. I think we found 4 smallmouth spots on the main river during practice. Three of them produced fish during the event! The go-to bait for smallmouth this week was 'ol uncle ned. It's incredible how effective that darn thing is. We used a ZMAN 1/6oz weedless shroom head and a TRD. We spent most of our time this week flipping for largemouth. There was an abundance of flooded bushes, and with it being this time of year with 60 degree water temps, there is absolutely no reason for the fish not to be in them, so we worked hard until we found some and figured it out. As the water dropped, the flipping bite got better. Fish would pull out to the deepest piece of cover, and you could almost call your shots. The main way I caught fish was to find a laydown or bush with current pushing on it. This would pile up sticks and debris, creating what we call "trash mats". I was flipping (okay TECHNICALLY I was pitching @Catt) a d-bomb with a 1/2oz tungsten weight on 20lb fluorocarbon, and it was deadly. The key was to drop the bait in the middle of whatever your target was, there were tons of boats around but they were throwing moving baits around the edges and making pitches to the edges of the cover. I'm sure that worked too, but I wanted to target fish that no one else was bothering. Our main dilemma on tournament day was to figure out how much time to devote to smallmouth, and how much time to devote to largemouth. We decided to hit our smallmouth stuff early, then go flip once the sun got up. Day one produced a 4lb smallmouth in the first 10 minutes, it was actually the same fish I had caught in practice, it was on the same current break in about 15FOW. We spent a good bit of time looking for another one but it just didn't happen, so we put down the spinning rods and picked up the big sticks. I caught about 30 fish flipping the bushes on day one, more than I wanted to, but I never got a kicker bite, and had to make up for it via culling by ounces all day. 17lbs 10oz on day one put us in 22nd place, I knew I made the right call by catching so many of them, you just have to bring your a-game on the Tennessee River. I also knew that with our area being so close to the main river, and it being time of year for the bass to do their thing, the area would probably reload overnight. Day two did not start with a big smallmouth, there was a boat sitting where we planned to go, so we started early on largemouth. I put a limit together quickly but it wasn't very heavy. Luckily I caught about a 6lb largemouth at 10am, the kicker bite we had hoped for on day 1. I made a few more upgrades while largemouth fishing, then we headed to our smallmouth spot. My partner caught a big smallmouth as soon as we pulled up on our spot, it was the only bite we got there, but it was the right one! We then went back to largemouth fishing for the remainder of the day, and ended up with all quality fish besides one that was around 2&3/4 that we wanted to get rid of. With 15 minutes of fishing left, we headed to a spot that never produced a big smallmouth, but had the potential, and I cracked a very nice one to trade for that largemouth. Day 2 was definitely our best day decision-wise, we made the right calls at the right times and the bites happened when we needed them to, it was a perfect day! Our 5 fish limit weighed in at 21lbs, 2oz, jumping us from 22nd place all the way to third! Going into the final day, we knew we needed to catch 20lbs in order to win, nothing less. Once again we started on our smallmouth spot. We always caught some spotted bass while smallmouth fishing, but they are Kentucky strain fish, so most of them aren't very big, and they aren't worth targeting in a tournament where 20lbs is a strong possibility. To our surprise, we popped 3 very nice spotted bass in the first 30 minutes, all of them very close to the 3lb mark! Within the next 10 minutes, I caught a 3lb meanmouth, and my partner got a largemouth that was barely over the 15" size limit. At 6:51am we had 5 fish with plenty of time to go upgrade... Well the day didn't go as planned, at all! The water had been dropping every day, and had finally gotten so low that there was no longer any brush in the water to flip to, the fish were swimming around in the sloughs in 2FOW that used to be 5-6FOW, and they were extremely skittish (probably because I had already caught most of them!). There was also a large high school event, and a BFL taking place on the lake. Couple that with it being Pickwick on a Saturday in April, and you have a LOT of boats on the lake. You really couldn't try to go fish a new pattern because there were boats sitting on everything. We hit our smallmouth spots HARD, hoping for one or two big bites, but it just never happened. I did a good bit of flipping too, but everything I caught was tiny. I finally got rid of our small largemouth in the last 15 minutes with a largemouth that was a little bit bigger. We had 14lbs, 9oz on the final day. I figured we would get bumped down several places, but the conditions were tough on everyone. The guys higher up the leaderboard had a tough time, but the guys lower in the standings almost all had a great day, one of them bringing in 21-11! I would bet money that the guys in the top had fish leaving them, and the other guys had fish come to them, no idea what the circumstances were but it was easy to see that the fishing had drastically changed compared to the first two days. We finished in 2nd place, brought home some hardware, new rods, some money, and some good publicity for the team and our sponsors. I am extremely blessed to get to do this, and it really is the coolest thing in the world to me. Thanks to everyone on BR for the support and just paying attention, there aren't a lot of people who understand what any of this stuff is, so I gotta talk to you guys about it!

Had a solid day yesterday and put together a limit for 17-10 which had us sitting in 22nd place. Had a KILLER day today and brought in 21-2 which jumped us into 3rd place and well within striking distance of the lead. Gonna have to bring our A-game tomorrow to bring this thing home, we are gonna stick to our guns and hold to the belief that we are fishing where they are coming to and we will have new ones to fish for each day. College fishing is way too cool!

I am down at Pickwick Lake this week for a college tournament, today was our first practice day. A big cold front moved in and the winds were pretty extreme, so we didn't expect much, but my partner and I had a phenomenal day! We caught a decent number of fish and a handful of them were big (maybe not for here, but for us WV boys). Best 5 were in the ballpark of 21lbs! My partner caught his PB smallmouth today at 5.08lbs, it was an absolute freak of a fish and the biggest I have ever seen. We are facing some challenging conditions and will probably have to do a good bit of adjusting to stay on fish, but that is the name of the game!

I just fish the sunny side of wherever I am and if the wind is pushing on it, that helps too! Works on big lakes as well!

Because wherever it is probably has a few tanks and you know it

Deep creek is supposed to be good, can't keep them til april 15 but if you go throw a jerkbait you will catch all sorts of fish and probably a couple walleye from what I can tell

Soft- Dirty water = Black/blue Clean water = Green Pumpkin Hard - Clean water = Match your baitfish, doesn't have to be exact at all just something close Dirty Water = Chartreuse Stained or dirty water in spring with water temps below 55/56 I will opt for a craw color over chartreuse

Got on the lake at 3pm today after school was out of the way. 42 degree water temps and it snowed all day, but I found a couple! 4.8" Keitech on a 1/2oz head for the bigger ones, and a jerkbait for the smaller ones. I think I am dealing with a ton of fish, but their behavior is extremely confusing. Today I had 3 bites in 3 casts on the 4.8, casting up into 12/14' bringing it down into 20'. I lost the first one, then caught my biggest two fish on the following casts. Then 2 bites in 2 casts on a Spro McStick on a main lake hump that comes up to 6', I landed both of them, they are the smaller smallmouths pictured. Then 2 bites back to back long lining the damiki abyss 90 on the same spot that the swimbait bite happened, I caught the 12" spot, and on my next cast had a fish run off with the bait on a slack line but I never connected. They fire up really hard for a couple minutes, then it's like they aren't even there!

I have been working on my video gaming skills on a small electric only lake near school. Crappies are out roaming by themselves or in groups of 2/3, you have to be able to position the boat straight over top of them when you spot one, and then read the mood of the fish once you get your bait down in front of it! Super cool stuff, and I'm positive that this will help me out in the future with bass fishing.

Most species will definitely be the way to go. a 3" upgrade does a lot less damage than a 13" fish!

That place has the slabs! Next few years are gonna be crazy for bass there too!

Yeah a spro really isn't a cheap bait but I bought one to try, I am not a fan at all of the action and effort required to move it through the water. If a toothy were to take it I would not be bothered! However, my buddy was throwing a BD 95 jerkbait and I was impressed, it caught several bass and that size appeared to be in between a 110 jr and a regular 110. The jr is too small for my liking but that bait definitely caught my attention.

Before I started tournament fishing, I threw big swimbaits a fair amount. It was a blast and can be very effective at times. As others have stated it can (under the right circumstances, as with any bait) give you a much better shot at a high caliber fish. My favorite part about swimbait fishing was seeing how bass hunted them, it is unlike any of the normal baits we are used to. Now that I tournament fish a considerable amount, it makes sense for me to spend time using baits I will use during a tournament so I become proficient with them. I may throw a big swimbait during a tournament one day if the conditions are right, I have used a glide bait during practice to look for fish and it works well. As @WRB said "what is the fish of a lifetime worth"

I have a feeling you will be upgrading all of those. Definitely the drum, definitely the bass, and if you run across one of those mondo trout you usually find I'd say that would be all three! Eager to follow this, sounds super interesting! A lot of bass guys will struggle with it.

Headed over to the ski resort in Maryland to see what was up... 39 degree water but surprisingly they were chewin'! Don't bash my jerkbait, lots of toothies around so I had to be economical.

They'll be sweating it out in 110 degree temps this summer while we whack on em in comfortable weather and water temps that aren't 90 plus!

Had an awesome afternoon trip with my buddy today after I got out of class! I finally have my boat back at school with me, so I'm able to branch out a lot more than just the kayak. Water was 46 where I caught the largemouth on the wart, the smallies were in 43/44. I have never done that well fishing a swimbait on a heavy jighead out deep but a lot of people do, well today I finally figured it out. The smallies were eating a 4.8" Keitech on a 1/2oz head, SUPER fun bite! I messed up by not using a rod with enough backbone to drive the big hook into their heads and I missed 3 good fish but it happened in a flurry so I didn't stop and switch rods like I should have!

Oh I don't mean that lake specifically I'm just jealous of your latitude!!

Too bad they have oodles of them down there