Fried Lemons

Without FFS, the single best thing you can do is throw big baits. I basically doubled the number of >5lb fish I'd ever caught in my first year picking up big swimbaits. As of now, they account for about 70% of my big fish. The only conventional tactic I've found that comes close is a jig. For northern strains I've found 7-10" to be the optimal size range. Going bigger has diminishing returns, going smaller loses the drawing power of a big bait. Expensive glide baits are the current fad but soft baits get bigger bites on average and are much more affordable. Every boater I've seen sits in deep water and throws up to the bank... they are right on top of big fish. You should do the opposite, sit tight to the bank and fish uphill. I was conditioned to fish this way because I spent 90% of my fishing on the bank. Big fish tend to sit deep and strike a bait as it moves into the shallows where it has fewer avenues of escape.

Bunch of random fish from the past month Didn’t get a length, around 32”. Just under 10lbs. Pb pickerel caught in the pouring rain, 27”. Blue and flathead cats, 34&39” respectively.

St36 are fine but the size 2s tend to bend out especially if you are using braid.

Size 2, size 1 look cartoonishly large to my eye on that size of bait. I don’t really think about shank length as much as the wire gauge. I prefer thin wire because it penetrates better and is lighter. A lot of times the fish isn’t fully committing and slamming into the bait, it’s more like a light suction bite. Light wire hooks get sucked toward the fish, heavier gauge doesn’t move and you miss the bite. My favorite at the moment are the st45, thin and strong.

More of a sob story than a report here. I missed the biggest bite I’ve had in probably two years . The conditions and setup were perfect. I was fishing a prominent main lake point with a row of trees sticking out over the drop off into 30’. A storm was just about to roll in. I was casting a 9.25” Nate’s trout parallel to the drop over the tips of the trees when I felt the telltale THUMP. I swung and had her on for maybe a second before the hook pulled. Teeth marks running from nose to tail, meaning the fish was big enough to suck it in with one gulp. The only time I’ve seen something similar was two years ago when I caught my pb… and this was an even bigger bait. I did catch a few that day but they really didn’t take away that sting.

Monster, congrats!

Green Leaf makes a really good looking silicone shad. You will have to wait though as he is doing pre-orders.

Bill Murphy's book is a good start for learning how to fish structured lakes. However, strategies can be wildly different depending on your region. Unless you happen to live in the same area as the author, no book or internet advice is going to be able to tell you about your specific waters. One thing I'll tell you is trophy fishing is a game of odds. Start by looking through your DNR survey data and any records you can find about past catches. Find the lakes that have the best potential around you, then narrow it down to one lake and really focus that lake for a season. What most trophy hunters have in common is that they fish at most a handful of lakes that they know intimately.

Absolute grinder of a bank session. It rained most of the day but fish were chewing. I had shots at fish in the 5-6lb range but couldn’t get them to stick.

You are basically asking for the story of my pb. People who visit the Got’em section know that I like to fish big swimbaits. When I was first getting into it back in 2019 I grabbed my first 8” Huddleston, because it’s the most famous swimbait of all time and often gets recommended to beginners asking what bait they should buy. That bait never produced for me, and truthfully I still don’t have a ton of confidence when I throw it. Many veteran swimbaiters struggle with it because unlike a glide bait you get virtually no visual feedback from the fish. You just have to trust that it does its thing and a fish will eventually eat it. On that particular day I only threw it because I lost the Deps 250 I was primarily throwing. I brought it in high over a tree and out of nowhere a giant came from behind and slurped it up in one gulp. Two main takeaways from that catch: It’s hard to comprehend that some of the baits we think are big actually pose no challenge to a big fish… until you see an 8” bait vanish in an instant. Rules are made to be broken. At the time, conventional wisdom was that soft baits were for slow rolling on the bottom or maybe bumping through cover. Nobody was talking about fishing soft baits high in the water column. Now it’s starting to catch on.

Always a surprise when I run into a smallie while chucking a big bait for largemouth.

Could also be a timing thing. You mentioned the one nicer fish you caught was in the morning. Have you hit it in low light conditions like on a dark windy day before a big storm?

I’ve gone as far as 80 for a day trip but more typical is 30-40 miles. Of course with how awful traffic can be around here depending on the direction that 30 mile drive might take as long as the 80 mile drive.

Went bank beating and found a long and lean one on the pink rising son. I’ve caught at least 20 fish on this thing and it still just keeps on going. My backups are immaculate and collect dust.

Thought I was about to have a great day, got a quality fish within the first 10 minutes. That turned out to be the only fish I would see in 6 hours.