N Florida Mike

Can anyone please tell me how to post a video on here? I do fine with pics but can’t figure out how to do videos. Thanks in advance. Mike

Great trip !

Just use a spinning reel and you won’t have to agonize over it...?

The Governor is opening beaches and parks back up on a limited basis. On the beach,you can exercise or fish, swim , surf, at certain hours. But you can’t lay a towel down and sit or sunbathe. ??‍♂️ Seems like you could catch it just as easily standing up as you could sitting down !!

Or not put one on and go...

Must be contagious. Caught some bream today. Doesn’t look like many, but I’m adding them to the collection! I threw back at least 15 though that didn’t measure up.

I always have 6 inch zoom lizards in the box. Watermelon seed is always a good color for me. In my home lake , the fish will occasionally have days where they clobber them when I run them across the tops and around eel grass edges. I get a lot of fish with them right up against the bank also.Great bed fishing bait too.

Welcome Ben!

Try a Zoom lizard! ? Weightless plastics in general do well for me. I also make a mental note of where they are, and if they won’t bite then, I come back at a different time or two until they bite. You’ll usually find the little male to be more aggressive and they are very protective of the nest. It seems to me like they are the most aggressive at the start of the spawn, and get less that way as it continues. When you think you have it figured out though, you will have a long stretch where you are unsuccessful. Keeps us humble.

It doesn’t happen very often with me. I use weightless plastics most of the time, and if the bait stops, I slightly lift, if it’s a fish you will see the line moving or feel the peck. If it is just dead weight, no movement or peck, I don’t Usually set the hook, and it ends up being a clump of weeds. The main exception is once and awhile they fool me down in heavy grass. I have more trouble getting a good hook set at times because bass almost always swim off with a soft plastic bait, and you have to know where the fish is exactly before the hook set . If they catch a piece of grass when they are swimming by, You are deceived about where they are. You are setting the hook on where you THINK they are, but they could be 10 feet or so past where you think. This happens to all of us too: When you KNOW it’s a fish by the peck or movement , make a good hookset, and hook a log , stump , or branch. That does happen to me fairly often. They let go right before the hook set, I reckon.

I WOULD have called the police, just like I did over this event. Of course , in this case , I’ll probably never know for sure exactly what happened. I have more problems with relatives that find a way to steal from me than all this other stuff combined. If they would work as hard at an actual job as they do trying to get what I have, then they’d be well off. ?

It was near one of the ponds I fish in a big park with woods nearby. It was funny in a way because when I saw it I instinctively reached for my pistol- but I wasn’t wearing it ?. It held its ground even with me trying to scare it back into the woods. I finally got a long stick and kept prodding it until it finally turned tail and took off. There were some kids around and I didn’t want them stepping on it. I used to kill em on sight, but couldn’t find a strong enough stick to whop It with. I saw a copperhead also in that county a few years ago, and they aren’t even supposed to be any in this part of Fl.

Almost stepped on this one today. Thankfully, I usually walk with my head down.

I’m just so reliant on soft plastics , mainly because my home lake is so weedy and shallow. And they work so well. From now to November, the weeds make it hard to fish hardbaits anyway. So my focus ( besides plastics ) will be improving spinnerbaits and frog fishing.

I started consistently catching bass with Mann’s Jelly worms in the middle and late 70s to early 80s. Got my PB on one. Then , 80s and 90s it was primarily Culprit worms. ( Still fish with them occasionally.) Around 2000 I started fishing Zoom super flukes, which is still my go-to bait. I have caught more and bigger fish on them by far over any other bait in the last 20 years. Yam. Senkos would be second, although now I mostly use yum dingers, the senkos are too expensive for me to use much. I consistently use a good variety of other soft plastics, and spinnerbaits, but They have mostly been used only with in the last 10 years or so.

That’s right! I caught a 26 inch bass last year , post spawn, that only weighed 7.6. That fish had a 9 pound frame on it, but was skinny as a rail.

Caught this one in a pond behind a target store. 8.6

Caught this one on a piece of bream while catfishing.

My finger literally started tingling when I saw that again.

Agreed !

Maybe it’s the public school systems fault!

I never use a net. With my low slung Jon boat, I can just lean over a little and either lip them ( bigger fish especially ) grab them behind the head, or just lift them in. I rarely use anything with treble hooks either, so that’s not a factor. I don’t like nets- they are hook magnets.

Looked like such a good pond today...? I couldn’t help it! ? But I did not trespass...

Just throw some bread out there. They’ll come. If your allowed to cast net, then...

I Still go to work, still fish, still doing projects around the house. The main differences for me are: No parks open in my home county, which means I can’t hang out there or fish in the ponds there between work stops . No restaurants, and no church ( we are having it on line through zoom) Easter will be strange without a doubt. This thing is all about perspective...I’ll leave it at that.