pondhopper

Awesome bronzbacks! Wow! Good job on the night pics too.

Watch for wind blown corners on ponds as well.

She really slammed a #3 Mepps

They hit a Mepps, and a Mepps is nothing but blades.

The jig is a relativly new bait for me, and it is rapidly becoming a favoite. An angler just might be wise to throw one under any conditions.

On cold ponds, I have had pretty good action on small marabu jigs suspended under a float. (Or "float and fly" I think some call it.) Seems to work best fished slow.

Ponds are fickel. My best pond is also my worst pond. When it's hot, it's hot; when it's not. it's not. They're in there, man, they're in there!

Wow! Bet ya can't do that again!

As the water starts to warm around here - central Indiana - the first thing they want are jigs.

Humm... just the other day I was wondering the same thing ...

Nice job!. My first fish was ... wow!

I am looking to aquire a set of "Austrailian casting plugs". Does anybody know where to look?

Finicky pond? Yeah, I know the feeling :-/.

I have noticed that if the bait lands right where I wanted it, then there will be a backlash to deal with. Lousy casts are normally trouble free.

What you must do is find an aerial or topographic map of your area or, easier but less accurate, just go to a website such as www.mapquest.com and zoom-in on your area. Google Earth: the pond hunter's best friend.

That thing could take a Canada goose ... and I wish it would.

Yes, from a bridge wing wall down in FLA. As me and my pal were setting up on the wall, another angler was leaving and telling us the story of how a huge fish, "probably a tarpon", according to him, had just taken his new rod and reel right off the wing wall. Ten minutes later my first cast got me a brand new zebco 404 rig complete with 100yds of 10ld stren and an eight inch salt cat with the hook already set.

My favorite small pond is a trash magnet due to the prevailing winds and the location of a strip mall. A couple of times a year I take a big heffty bag along and spiff the place up a bit. Floating reffuse makes a poor bass battling backdrop.

Fatboy: It depends on lighting and water conditions, but often you can see where the shelf is and ends.

"Wind form the East, fish bite the least; wind from the West, fish bite the best."

If it's a retention pond, then odds are it has a "safety shelf" designed into it. These are features where the bottom slopes slowly away from the banks for ten to thirty feet creating shallow water for safety purposes. This Saftey shelf may well be the only inorganic structure the pond has, and in untreated ponds this shelf becomes covered with weeds. Past the safety shelf, the bottom drops away dramaticly to gain storage volume, and some modern ponds have surprisingly deep centers. (I inspect parts of new subdivisions so I see these ponds being built often.) If you can get your bait out and over the safety shelf vegitation, I think you'll find fish at some depth on the steep slope. Problem is, if you're on the bank like me, it may not be easy to get him out of there once hooked.

When I approach a new pond I have never fished, First I dicide the bast way to "sneak up" on it so I won't spook any fish. Then, I fish a senko, step by step and cast by cast all the way around the pond's perimiter, taking advantage of whatever oppotunites come along. I cover the water ahead of me, sometimes going deep towards the center, sometings casting the the shore ahead, sometimes none of the above. If nothing else, you will at least come away with a good knowlege of the pond that will be very useful the second time you fish it. The most important thing I have learned by doing this, is NEVER write a pond off just because you have fished it once, and never even got a bite. I hope ya knock them out!

I still got this picture saved from when some one took this picture A proffessor at Montana State University had a photo similar to this one along side a photo of the fossilized remains of a similar event posted on the wall of his office. The caption read: "The same mistake fifty thousand years later." ;D

One of my very favorite "lakes" is 30' wide and 85' long. 61/2 pounds is the lages largemouth I have taken from it, and the bluegill are monsters!

Humm, I have often wondered if other angles draw such lines, or if was just me. 4lbs here, but I've never met a fish i didn't like.