MIbassyaker

great pic!

Been really nice here too, and of course I'm buried with other obligations. Labor day weekend coming just in time...

good to see you back at it

congrats and well done! It takes me 4-5 years to catch 1000 bass

Be the perch

Coincidentally, perhaps, I am a professor in my day job (though not of bass)

I've heard it's more likely that frog lures register as bluegills, sucking insects off the surface, than they do actual frogs. I don't know what this claim is based on, though. (it does however fit a personal observation that I see a lot more baitfish buzzing around shallow slop than actual frogs.) As for the general question "what are bass seeing", the answer is probably mostly the same things we would see underwater. They have pretty typical vertebrate visual systems, and good visual capabilities in both low-light and bright condition. They can perceive depth, motion, and color, segregate figure from ground, and can easily learn through reinforcement to distinguish objects and shapes from each other. The harder question is what meaning(s) do they attach to what they see. different physical attributes provide signals that may have inborn or learned meaning (like moving thing=alive; small moving thing = food; large looming shape = danger), but bass probably aren't thinking any particular lure is a particular kind of food most of the time. Although their attention may be temporarily drawn to some attributes over others, for instance if they are feeding heavily on a particular forage species is that very active, they may be drawn to strike baits that share some physical characteristics with that species. But exactly which characteristics matter the most, is something we usually don't know ahead of time and have to figure out. And may change day to day, or even moment to moment.

We could add Mark Zona for Michigan (pretty sure I don't qualify though, lol!)

Interesting to see that Copilot confuses precision and accuracy, just like a real human!

Was able to escape for a little morning sesh. Best of 8 was 18", pulled out of the veg with a Space Monkey: The shallow bite has been productive all summer. I can count on one hand the number of fish I've caught deeper than about 6 feet this year, which is very unusual.

Only if they seem too long for comfort (or confidence). More often, I thin them a little bit by removing a few stalks with a nail clipper. Usually swim jigs.

(don't tell anyone, but I do that sometimes too!)

I have been into fishing since my first time, about age 7, when I hooked...and then lost...a catfish (A pretty good one, dad said.. I just remember the splash of the fish surfacing). But while I was always interested in bass, it wasn't until I moved to Michigan 17 years ago that I really got into them. I grew up fishing a river that did not (as far as we knew) have bass in it. My dad and brothers and I caught channel catfish, bullheads, drum, suckers, goldeyes, and an occasional rock bass, pike, walleye or sauger. But on TV and print media, bass were everywhere, Bill Dance and Al Lindner were catching them on fishing shows, In-fisherman and Field & Stream had articles about them, and the Bass Pro catalog had this dizzying array of bass lures -- plastic worms and other creatures of every color, spinnerbaits of every configuration, plugs in all shapes and sizes. I would pour through it, dreaming one day of owning every Rapala and every color worm. TV and Magazines were essentially where I learned about bass. I would buy bass lures to try and use them occasionally, hopefully. In my home river and sometimes other places if we were vacationing. Instead I caught...often nothing, but sometimes rock bass, bluegill, crappies,pike, walleye, or perch. I finally ended up catching my first smallmouth and largemouth in back-to-back summers. around the age of 15 or 16. One day at the river, something grabbed my nightcrawler and took off, and then....jumped, 3 or 4 times. I was surprised it wasn't larger. When I got it in, I recognized it as a bass (smallmouth, I was pretty sure). The next summer, at a church camping retreat, I, my brother, and some of our friends were caching bluegills off the fishing dock. While they were occupied, i tried using a plastic worm on a "texas rig" that I had seen referenced in countless articles and shows. I cast to some visible weeds, and immediately got a hit....and it was my first largemouth. Shortly after that, fishing took a backseat to other life things -- I worked jobs, went to college, then grad school, moved across the country a few times, got married, etc. I fished here and there occasionally, and sometimes caught bass, sometimes other species but I didn't really come back to fishing as a regular activity until moving to Michigan....turns out, there are bass all over the place here, and pretty easy to access. And I needed a new obsession, an excuse to get out, explore. So, I dug in, learning mostly through trial and error based on things I saw on the internet, memories of things I saw Bill Dance and Al Lindner do on TV in my youth, some transfer of knowledge from prior multi-species experience, and old books and magazines which I started collecting again for fun. And then kayak fishing blew up, and so of course I had to get in on that. And here I am.

I've been using a medium spinning rod with 15lb braid to an 8lb leader that's usually just mono or copoly or something, whatever I happen to have on hand. Palomar knot to 3/0 gammy EWG or Owner twistlock lite. Only times I break off are due to toothy beasts, or when I'm neglecting to check the line regularly for damage.

This is basically my response as well. Most people who bring up moral or ethical criticism of fishing have never considered a systems perspective, and are entirely unprepared for a thoughtful and informed argument along these lines (or along any lines, as they usually don't imagine you've spent you've spent any more time thinking about it than they have) However, I actually almost never hear fishing criticism in person, despite having spent most of my adult life in ivory tower academic settings (including on both coasts), and despite many friends and colleagues who are vegan or vegetarian, or are animal welfare enthusiasts. Instead, it's usually a rando on social media.

Are you up North?

Lovely river and great smallies!

I'm generally with @Tennessee Boy, @king fisher, & @casts_by_fly on this. The immediate conditions of the bass environment, such as light, clarity, wind, current, water temperature, dissolved oxygen, water level, food chain and forage activity, AS WELL AS recent changes in these and fishing pressure are what I care about the most. Moment to moment, these are the things bass experience directly and respond to consistently. The potential effects of other factors that are farther removed and less direct like lunar cycles and barometric pressure, to the extent that they matter, mostly do so by influencing more immediate conditions. Moon phase and barometric pressure are both associated with changes in lighting, for instance. The moon affects tides, but I'm fishing fresh water. There isn't much reason to think bass respond to normal changes in barometric pressure itself, but rather to atmospheric states like cloud cover, wind, rain, etc. that come with it. The key thing is that once I have adjusted my fishing to account for immediate conditions, and how much they recently have changed/are changing, I've already accounted for the major influence of less-direct factors, and whatever additional influence they have above and beyond immediate conditions, it is unlikely to be more than a drop in the bucket.

#3 (1/4oz) or #4 (1/3oz) Aglia in gold and silver, and Black Fury in Yellow and Orange Or honestly, any others that you like, because they all work. I've never noticed any difference in dressed vs. not dressed.

Much easier to keep track if you don't catch that many! I keep mental track of lengths over the last 4 or 5 I've caught, then enter them into a note-taking app in my phone. If a fish is more than about 18 inches, I'll weigh it too and include the wt. The hardest part is forcing myself to stop fishing for 30 seconds and pull the phone out to enter the next few. The reason I keep track at all is because I fish a whole bunch of places that all fish a little differently at different times of the season, and I like to have an objective record of sizes and catch rates for each of them. Helps me make decisions about where to go, and when.

I don't think there is such thing as a bad worm.

Starting to get busy again, so here's a long-armed 2lber that perhaps did not need to have its picture taken, but may be the last thing I catch for a few weeks...

Lily pads, you say? I'm familiar with 'em Spatterdock too:

Any time I'm fishing shallow water, a buzzbait is tied on and usually the first thing I try in the morning in the summer. Great search bait, reveals their activity level, attracts big fish, and even if you just get a blow up, it gives away their location.

UPDATE: Prediction confirmed...