N Florida Mike

I was at the church pond before the sun came up. Decided to use the rage tail cut-r. Had a huge blow up app 8 feet from the bank 5 minutes after starting. I just cane - poled the fish in. Had 2 -3 long follows, had 1 clobber it and let go, and probably the biggest fish bit all but 1 inch off the bait. Caught another one that picked it up off the bottom...

I have sat all my life, even when I had a bass boat. Now that I have a jon boat , bass hunter , kayak , and canoe I still sit. Only stand up to stretch occasionally in the Jboat or bass hunter. The older I get, the more I fish out of the hunter- more stable and has seats I can lean back on to support my lower back. I stand while bank bass fishing, but sit for bream/catfishing off the dock.

No , but if you find out , let me know!?

They said it was once an amazing fishery. Many of the older greats of bass fishing have fished there. Maybe it’s still good in some of the lakes.

We have Bienville plantation around 70 miles away. I went there once with a member. I think the area he had paid to fish was 800 a year, and that was the cheapest they had. It was a really interesting place to fish. It was extremely easy to get turned around in there. Islands, channels that connected one body of water to another. My friend ( who had fished it a lot ) got turned around consistently all day. It was absolutely the murkiest water Ive ever fished. I think we caught 3 fishing hard all day. And they werent over a pound. The only boat we passed had almost a limit of nice specks at least. At the end of the day my friend said he didnt think he was going to renew. I couldn’t say I blamed him.

My dad was born in 1918 in the Appalachian mtns. He was the man of the house after his dad left. He had to support his mom and 2 siblings being the oldest. He somehow did that without working in the mines or moonshining during the depression. Like the song says “ when wall street fell , they were so dang poor they couldn’t even tell. ” He learned how to work hard, raise crops and fish. He taught me how to fish , garden , work hard and how to be a man . All my memories of him are great. I learned to fish better than him, but my middle son is better than me, especially at saltwater fishing.

Bulkheads are usually a good place to look. If there’s limited structure, sometimes they will be up close to a small patch of weeds near shore. ( Not algae ) I sometimes see beds just out in the open with no apparent reason for them to be there. A lot of golf course ponds are too murky to see much though.

I prefer T- rigs over ALL other techniques.

^^^ This !!!

We can have backyard fires but no trash burning - go figure. A man was burning trash in a nieghboring county a few years ago and caught the woods afire. I think it burned up 12 houses before they finally got it under control. They eventually got my trash picked up. It’s strange how they missed me when they got my nieghbors and came back 8 hours later and got it. I never could get through to tell them after holding app 30 minutes.

We have a “ No burn “law in effect. One nieghbor turns in anyone that tries it. He’s the same one that shot another nieghbors dog 6 times because it bit him and it slightly drew blood. He ran inside, got his 22 rifle and opened fire. Shot the dog 6 times, and somehow the dog lived . He didnt get arrested, and the nieghbors insurance paid him 65000 dollars for a scratch. Good times around here...?

So my trash didnt get picked up ( again) today. As I write this I have been waiting for someone to pick up for 20 minutes now so I can officially let them know. They say to wait until the next business day but if I do that it wont get picked up until next week. I had just about gotten it caught up again from the last time it was missed. I have 3 generations living at my house so we have a lot of garbage. GREAT ! A spam call just came in and when I cut it off now I am cut off from the city #?. I am tempted to dump my garbage in a city dumpster somewhere!

Isnt that an oxy-moron ? ? ? I knew that. Just trying to figure out why I never see dead bass.

Does anyone know what happens to bass when they die ? I mean Do they float or sink ? Because I never see any dead bass on my lake. Makes me think that they must sink...

Ive used a 6.6 for most of my T rigs for years and have nothing but good things to say about it. I use a 7.0 for bigger T. rigs

I use them mostly in late fall to early spring, mainly because I can , due to the weeds dying off in the colder months. My home lake gets too weedy to use them the rest of the year...

Eagles are about the only bird I dont see around where I live. We have ospreys, owls, herons, mallards, geese, cormorants, hawks, and many others. Had a hawk swoop down and grab my booyah frog once., but thank God he didnt hook himself...

I have a 10 foot bass hunter. It has no keel/rudder. The first time I went out pretty much all I did was nearly go around in circles. Very difficult to control. I thought maybe if I put some weight toward the other end it would handle better. I moved the seat as far as I could toward the middle and still be able to comfortably reach the TM handle. I also ran the battery as far foward as possible. It handles great now. No rudder needed. Problem solved.?

I would like to catch a smallmouth someday. Until then, I will happily catch largemouth. I doubt smallmouth will ever take over my passion for LMB, because it’s a very small likelihood that I will ever live up north. LMB fishing was made popular in the deep south and spread all over because LMB are all over, and get bigger as a whole. I think LMB are just as beautiful as SMB. The LM fight is good enough for me also. They fight better than any other freshwater fish in my area anyway imo. And why would anyone like fishing for something just because its harder to catch supposedly? I reckon for the same reason that Florida strain LM are sometimes very hard to catch but the pleasure of catching them much outweighs the difficulties of being successful in pursuing them. saltwater fishing diverts a lot of people away for that reason and others. But there is a mystique about LMB fishing that cant be fully explained , that keeps us pursuing them. I suspect it is the same up there for those who love SMB.

Hey @bigbill. Good to have you back.

We had a family “friend” that we knew all his life . He became a lawyer. I hired him to do my mom’s trust. I paid him in advance only because he and his parents were so close to our family. Time went by, and he did nothing. After several months I said something about when was he going to do it ? Nothing but excuses from him. I tried several more times , and only excuses. I finally got fed up after about a YEAR, and fired him. Then he said how hurt and offended he was that I did that .Never gave me my money back either. My wife wanted me to file a bar complaint against him, and looking back I should have, but I didnt want to offend his parents and my mom, who begged me not to. I cant imagine how bad he treats his regular clients if he treats his friends like this... I hired a guy I didnt know at a friends recommendation and it only took a week or two. And it was cheaper .

I never catch anything on a chatterbait , so I don’t have to figure it out!! ?

This may explain a lot about the mystery Ive had on my small home lake. We had a good population of large bass until 2011 , when we had a fish kill that killed most, if not all the bass over 2 pounds. I didnt catch any bass over 2 pounds until the second year after the kill. Every year after until 2018 I caught fish a pound or so heavier. In 2018 I caught an 8.1 . But the next year a 7.6, then last year only a 4 lb 10 oz , and this year a 4. lb 12 oz . I havent been able to figure out where all the big fish Ive been releasing have gone. I have put in a lot of man hours , but catching less real big fish. Im thinking they are dying of old age before I catch them again ... and of course , I dont catch them all in that weight class anyway .?. And certainly some year classes produce more fish than others. Knowing they have a 10 year or so life span only seems to solve the mystery , especially since the lake is small and shallow. It is also very productive as a numbers lake- always has been. Lots of forage, bluegill base, but lots of competition. What do you think?

Congrats on 25 years . Thanks for all the hard work Glenn. The St Johns river gets my vote.

Saw him at one of my local ponds..