Fried Lemons

I’ve done very well with it on a swing head as well. Caught several in the 4-5.7 range. It does seem to get good quality bites. The downside is the claws come off really easily. What I’ve done once I have a couple beat up ones with single claws is tear off some of the singles and glue them on to the remaining ones.

102 degrees out, carp bite was on fire. Got my biggest ever at 34” and bottomed out my 22lb scale.

Nothing big but these fish were a blast. Got 8 dragging an ol’ monster on rock piles in 10’. They fight so hard this time of year that it’s kinda hard to tell their size. Had two that dug down into the rocks and broke me off.

Got completely soaked but it was worth it. Fished in the brief window when a storm blew through and found two good bites burn-pausing around wood. Spent probably more time than advisable bombing off points hoping for a striper but no luck with that. Bite died when the rain ended and sun came out. Excuse the blurry photo, everything was wet.

2 of 8 I got off the rocks in a short afternoon session. 4.2 and 4.5 on a worm and a wobble head, respectively.

I was out too and it was brutal. One of the few benefits of the paddle board is that I can dangle my legs in the water on a hot day. It can also help to get a cooling towel, something you wear on your neck that cools you through evaporation.

Hit the home lake today in hopes that they were on the summer pattern. Started off pitching a jig at shallow wood but only picked off some small ones doing that. I moved to some offshore rock piles in 10’ and right away picked up this thick 5.04lb fish on a Carolina rigged ol’ monster. Turns out that was what they really wanted today. I caught 6 more on consecutive casts with the worm. After that cooled off I picked off a few more on some other spots. All on rock in 10-15’. 11 in total. It was very hot out.

There’s a lake 20 minutes from my house that I rarely fish due to the fact that it’s the most pressured water in the state. It has big fish but due to the pressure they are hard to catch. I call this lake the cursed lake because I’ve never caught a bass over 5lbs here despite catching a handful in the 21-22” range that should have hit the mark. On this particular day I decided to go, figuring that it being mid week and pouring rain would keep the hordes at bay. I could not have been more wrong. As soon as I got on the water I could see five shiny, decked out bass boats. As I tried to get away from them I kept running into more boats around every corner. I counted fifteen in my corner of this not very big lake. At this point I was seriously considering aborting the mission but decided to stick it out long enough to at least check out this one little spot I had in mind. Luckily it seemed the boats managed to overlook this spot and I was able to capitalize on a nice fish. I thought this one was for sure the one to break the curse but to my dismay, despite her large head and 22” frame, she came in at just 4.62lbs. Pretty soon after, the sun came out and I decided to quit while I was ahead. On the way out I could see three boats sitting on the spot I had caught this fish on.

Jig, long ribbon tail worm, wobble head, 6.75” rising son. I love dragging deep in the summer. More situationally, a frog/punch bait, but I have to drive to specifically seek out this bite.

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.

My current most expensive bait is the fish everything fe12 which cost me 150 for a blank. This bait as far as I know is the lightest 12” glide on the market coming in at only 6.7oz, pretty remarkable considering most glides in that class weigh from 9-11oz. Makes it easy to fish all day while still having massive draw power. I’ve owned more expensive baits in the past which I can say 100% were not worth it.