MIbassyaker

Welp.

Not here, other than some frosty mornings and one overnight dusting of snow that was gone by noon. Open water everywhere still -- I could be fishing I had any spare time.

Excellent work on the vid. Followed!

Usually just a small tackle bag and four 3500 boxes. The bag has plastics in the main compartment, and some spinnerbaits/buzzbaits in a zippered side pocket. The boxes have terminal tackle, several jigs, and few hard topwaters, frogs, crankbaits, that sort of thing. All fit easily in a crate behind my seat. However, I am fishing mostly small waters for just 3-4 hours at a time, and I do spend a lot of time before each trip selecting what to bring and what to leave at home, based on where I'm going. Occasionally I wish I had brought something different, but I never really feel like I needed to bring more.

2025 was pretty good, but I didn't get enough of it. Looking back, I count only 24 days days this year when I was able to get a line in the water, whether in the kayak, walking the bank, or wading. But with those 24 trips, I fished 11 natural lakes, 6 distinct stretches of 4 rivers, and 3 river bayous. I made more than one trip to only three places, and one lake and one river section were new to me. I had some fun outings, caught some nice green and brown bass, never got skunked, and broke my largemouth PB twice:

A little internet sleuthing pulled this up: https://www.greatlakesbass.com/news/conservation/fisheries-management/burt-mullett-lakes-spring-bass-fishing-closure-proposed/ The whole link is well worth reading. They say this is coming not from the DNR or any scientific source, but from lake association members who are in a panic about gobies raiding nests on their lakes during the spawn when adult smallmouth are removed upon being caught. DNR scentists are saying there's no evidence of reduced spawning success in these lakes, and they oppose the amendment. The link says so far its just one commissioner (out of 7) who wants the change, but the groups pushing it are loud and persistent and could get their way if there isn't more public pushback.

It happened! I had a free day. First bass since Sept. 1! Then, a couple more about that size hanging around the still-standing remnants of spatterdock. ....and one good one, 4.15lb: That's probably a wrap on the year for me.

Nice! I'm always happy to get a 19. One out of every 40 is about my rate for that size here too recently...it just takes me several trips! (and I need to avoid the dink factories)

Same, and echoed.

I had to look up CrazyShad too! Three inches sounds like the right size as well. For some reason, propbaits are constantly underrated.

Any surface activity? If so try a white, chrome, or transluscent walking bait

Good in some ways, meh in others. Two largemouth PBs were good. The first PB in May earned a 2025 Michigan Master Angler patch... ...only to break it again a month later by a couple ounces: 2025 also ties 2019 as my year with the highest overall catch rate per hour of fishing effort, at 2.18 bass per hour. So that's good (for me, anyway) I was also able to chase some river browns a few times, and got some respectable specimens: And the only time I have been skunked in 2025 --on any fishing excursion outside the house-- was 1/2 hour on the river bank back in March. But not so hot is the limited number of times I have been able to fish -- only 23 trips on the year for a total of 77 hours. Sept 1 was the last time I was out. To be fair, I don't fish anywhere near as much as many of you, in any year. But I had hoped for more time with my line in the water by now. I'm probably also going to fall short of catching 200 bass in 2025, which was my goal. I'm at 168 right now -- 200 would be easily doable if I had more free time .....which I don't. So we will see. If I can get 3 or 4 more trips out of the year, and the bass cooperate, I could get there, but I'm not confident it will happen.

Yup, quillback carpsucker Current Michigan state record is almost 10#, caught an hour north of me a few years ago on a rapala. I'm sure pike, musky, & bass eat them if they're the right size. I probably wouldn't.

As far as i have ever been able to tell, solunar tables are essentially a fishing horoscope, with about the same validity.

Always a good time.

I've been keeping a log for 15 years. In reviewing past catches, I've found that the most useful information is actually not so much the lures. or even details about locations and conditions -- it is a brief narrative description I include for each trip about what decisions I made, and why: Where did I go, what presentations did I try, how did I narrow down a pattern, what moves and changes did I make, that sort of thing.

I don't think in terms of 5-fish limits but I can estimate what they would have been for each trip I made this year, based on what I caught. If I exclude shorebound and wading trips under 2 hours, the average of my "bags" across all other trips is 7lb, rounding to the nearest pound. If I include just those trips where I would have had a 5-fish limit (about half), the average is 12lb. My biggest bag so far this year would have been 17lb.

During the hard water season, I am almost constantly buried with work in my day job and mostly wouldn't have time to fish even if I could. When do I have some spare time, and feel like devoting it to fishing-related concerns, I do some gear maintenance and organization, inventory my tackle, some lure modifications.... and I make a detailed plan of my upcoming soft-water season-- a schedule of where I want to go, and when. I review my fishing log from the previous year, and think about what I did well, and what I didn't do well. I decide on any new places I might want to check out, and research potential access points, look up any available maps and surveys. And I always do some reading -- I've collected a modest library of books on bass fishing, and haven't come close to reading them all. And of those I have read, several are worth revisiting periodically.

There have been a number of book recommendation threads on BR, and this one linked above is probably my favorite list -- MFBAB has quite a library! I always recommend people check out the In-Fisherman Largemouth and Smallmouth handbooks. They have been in print since the 90s and easy to find cheaply used. Some of the gear and lure recommendations are outdated now, but they are very solid on fundamentals of the nature of the fish, location, and presentation (The so-called F+L+P equation). A lot of the information -- especially related to newer lures -- was later updated in the 3-volume "critical concepts" bass series in the 2000s, so you could look for those as well. Knowing Bass (2002) mentioned above is the definitive scientific source, focusing on their physiology and sensory abilities, as well as experimental findings from the Berkley Labs. Very hard to find an affordable copy, though. Might be able to find it in a library. Another good one is Lunker (1975) by Bob Underwood, which is based on 1700 hours of underwater scuba observations of bass behavior.

Not what quite what you're asking for, but two (completely different) novels I enjoyed. Neither is really about fishing exactly, but both have fishing as a central part of the story: Double Whammy by Carl Hiaasen -- a very funny murder mystery/detective story and conspiracy caper involving a pro bass fishing tournament circuit. Crazy characters and wild twists. The Fisherman by John Langan -- extremely creepy horror story about a widower who takes up fishing after his wife's death, and discovers a mysterious creek with a dark history and a curse. Very weird and haunting.

I dug this up once -- look at that pic of young Tom!

I bring 5 rods in the kayak. The rods I use for topwate can always double as something else, regardless of power or spinning/casting. Up to 3 of them may begin the morning as topwater. This will be (1) a frog (2) a buzzbait or whopper plopper, and (3) a hard trebled topwater, like a popper/walker/propbait/crawler. Power for each chosen depending on lure weight. Most places I fish, I don't need to rig all three. Occasionally I do. Often, I will need to switch them to something else. IN the event topwater isn't happening, each rod can do something else I'm likely to need. The frog rod can pitch jigs and t-rigs, or maybe a heavy spinnerbait. THe Buzzbait rod can do most of the other moving baits: spinnerbait, bladed jig, swimjig, keel-weighted swimbait, or even something like a 2.5 squarebill. The Popper/walker rod can do jerkbaits, as well as lighter jigs and plastics, a senko, fluke, or something on the bottom, like a tube or lighter t-rig.

A pleasant day on the The River today, but not a very productive one. On a stretch that is typically better for size than for numbers, I didn't get much of either, with just seven smallies in 6 hours between 10" and 12". No pics because I kept waiting for at least one keeper-sized bass that never bit. So here are some sandhill cranes instead:

Late summer lake fishing can be rough, especially from shore, and especially pressured water in a population center. But things should start getting better in a few weeks.