Fairtax4me

Yeah I should have gone there today instead. Anna reminded me she's a ruthless old... Hag. Making that trip soon though, might not be next weekend but it will be soon.

Nice toad! Mind if I ask which lake? Doin some wacky weightless as well tomorrow. Gonna give Lake Anna a go and try to find some big girls on beds.

Thanks for the great comments guys! Still feeling the buzz off this one! Just incredible to me that this fish has been under my nose for three years and I've never seen or caught her. I make a very thorough visual check of this pond every year at spawn looking for these female bass, and I've had a lure on literally every inch of this pond and never seen or caught anything over 2.5lbs. And I've run everything from buzz baits and whopper ploppers, to crank baits, jerkbaits, jigs, worms and just about every other kind of soft plastic bait in there, including the same zoom lizard at spawn time last year! I finally got luck enough to toss the right lure right in front of her face when she was hungry! And my book should be out in about 20 or 30 years!

Nice hawg man! Lol at the frog meme!

"Man what a perfect cast!", I thought after I watched my zoom lizard fly around a bush and land straight down the middle of a culvert drain pipe. Steady rain the last two days has had a mixture of clean and muddy water flowing down the creeks and into the ponds, and the bass and bluegill are stacked up just on the edges of the current flow waiting for any morsel to drift by. Lots of bass 6-10" long populate this pond with the occasional 18"er that's usually skinny and not surviving well. I've fished this pond for three years and I have a pretty good idea of what's in it, so boy was I in for a shock as I watched my lizard flow out of the drain with the current and disappear into the murky water, then felt that normal little "thunk" and watch my line start moving out towards deeper water... I set the hook. But this hook set didn't follow with a fish coming towards me as usual. Instead the rod loaded up, and I listened to 12lb flouro SCREAM as the drag started peeling off my curado 70! Then I saw the belly flash and the enormous head and mouth come up and roll just under the surface. She took off again pulling drag but quickly gave up. I let out a few choice words in the process, followed by "you've got to be kidding me!" I drag her onto the bank in complete shock and amazement, and immediately pick her up and runto the car, and my tackle box in the trunk, 50 feet away! I just had the rod and a bag of lizards in my pocket. This is a giant, and I needed my scale!? What?!? She weighed in at 6.74 lbs and stretched just a hair over 23". My new PB weight LMB! I weighed her three times because I really couldn't believe it. She's full of eggs and getting fed up for the spawn. Solid and healthy in a pond I never imagined could support a bass larger than 3lbs. I weighed and measured her, snapped a couple pics and got her back in the water for that beautiful release. I was still pretty much in disbelief when I took the pic, and was getting rained on having a hard time getting a good shot and angle to show just how big she was. Her length makes her a citation fish in VA. She's my 4th citation this year. Following up the 23" bass I caught on Sunday. I feel the bass gods are treating me well this year, and this will not be my last, nor my biggest giant bass of the year!

23" at 5.2lbs The picture doesn't do it justice, this fishes mouth was enormous! Got this one on a shaky head. Seemed like most Bass were on beds up shallow and I can't be sure but this one came out of about 7 fow. No real signs that it was a bed fish, but it wasn't fat and fed like some of the smaller fish I caught out on timber in deeper water. It didn't have the shape of a big spawned-out female. Kinda thinking this was a BIG male bass and was guarding a bed that I couldn't see. I cast into a spot between two trees and when the lure hit the bottom it thumped and line started moving. Set the hook and it had carried it off under a branch. After a VERY tense 5 seconds of feeling flouro strain across tree trunk the fish shot straight for the surface and went 3 feet in the air. Back in the water, then it ran around and drug the line across another tree and jumped and tail walked into the net. All of this happened with 10 feet of line out. Good thing it was 17lb P-Line. Really impressed with the VMC hook! Hooked it well in the fat part of the lip and didn't bend at all. Caught a handful of other 2-3 pound fish through the weekend, and also landed a nice 4lb honey dragging a lizard through her bed. Water was murky and the wind had it choppy so beds were hard to spot, but when we found cleaner and calmer water back in some of the coves we could pick a few bass off beds if they were willing to hit the lure.

Awesome job man! Big congrats to you and your buddy on a HUGE tourney finish! Keep wreckin 'em!

Adding to the "fish it all the way" idea: After you've reeled the lure all the way back to you, Make sure to give your lure a pause before lifting it out of the water. You only have to watch a couple of 5lbers swim away to get the full impression of why you should pause. Sometimes that pause is just enough to get a following fish to commit and inhale the lure. Even if you don't SEE a fish following, that fish may be just out of sight and ready to attack.

Congrats on the new PB! At least the rattle snake tells you it's there! We deal with copperheads around here and they don't give any warning, they just reach out and smack you... with their teeth! Wacky rigged lizard sounds like something I'll have to try!

Awesome stuff man! Congrats to your buddy on that giant smallie! Save a couple of those 5lbers for the tournament.

Double digit hawg! Congrats man! Beautiful bass!

I don't what the bass wanted yesterday. Big gizzard Shad dead and floating all over the lake. 67° chocolate milk water. Tried everything I had that made noise, couldn't buy a bite. I was working on being skunked. My buddy had a few on traps, and one on a jig out of a brush pile, but nothing big. Finally I decided noisy and flashy wasn't working, I said screw it go big or go home. Started throwing 8" megabass swimbait and very quickly had a 3lb bass follow it right to the boat, but it wasn't going to commit. An hour or so later have a solid 4-5lb do the exact same. Inches behind the bait just following it. Changed up to an s waver and in 5 casts got my only fish of the day. 5lbs on the dot.

Spring time, you need something moving and making noise. Rattle traps, spinner baits, underspins, squarebills on the edges of vegetation. Swim baits rigged seedless to run through patchy areas. Lighter colors (white, chartreuse, yellow) that will reflect light well in the murky water. If the bite is tough, then slow down your approach and try dark or natural colored ribbon tail worms and creature baits flipped into or near cover. Bass stay in grass and pads in those shallow lakes. They're not always easy to catch, but that's where they are. If there are deeper areas with stumps/brush piles work around those cover areas. Should be pretty close to or in spawn right now, soft plastics worked on beds will get you some solid fish. The bigger girls will be wary, but be patient. Later in the summer when it's hot and those pads and grass are super thick, you'll be doing nothing but pitching and punching. Buy some braid and heavy punching gear and start working on techniques for that.

Hell of a day right there! Even better to spend it making memories with family! Keep getting your daughter out on the water and she'll break that PB over and over.

^ Would have been my next suggestion. The poles aren't always the best, and take up a fair amount of room, but they will pull up just about anything. Slide it down the line until it hits the lure and spin it around 4-5 times so the hooks are stuck in the screw part and just lift away.

Need to get a lure knocker! I dunno how many crankbaits were lost until my fishing buddy found this one: https://www.tacklewarehouse.com/catpage-PTLR.html?from=basres worth every penny Ill throw a crankbait or lipless into anything now. Brush, trees, rocks, anything. And yes it has rescued a few from that mystery tarp cloth they use under rip-rap and around bridge pilings.

Nice hawg! Mind if I ask where "local" is? (General area?)

Because Legend has it there's a 38"er in there. It's what I heard!!

Last year my big focus there was largemouth, and I occasionally got a smallie working smaller lures. This year I want to devote most of my time there to smallmouth fishing and see how that goes. I plan to fish more small swimbaits and creature baits that I can toss out into areas with current/work around rocks. Also some squarebills and spinner baits depending on water quality. The deeper areas I'll be using more jig heads, crankbaits, and bigger paddle tail worms or swim baits, again depending on water quality. Usually the deep section of monacan is pretty dirty. 3-5 ft vis and murky brown. The shallower river section is usually clear or slightly stained unless we've had a large rain storm.

Good advice on colors and alternative stick baits! I'll try to put some of that to use in the next few weeks. Only thing I don't like about Yamasenkos is they tear up too easily. If I'm careful with them I can usually get 3-4 fish on one but then they're trashed. But I cut the chewed up parts off and use the rest on a ned rig or weightless on ponds.

I have a love/hate relationship with spro. I've had two of their frogs break hooks trying to pull fish up out of grass (using 15lb floro at the time) But others Ive had for years and used the hell out of them. Had one stuck solid on a tree and broke 40lb braid and it wouldn't let go. Had a brand new spro crankbait (dont remember the model) lose the bill running into a tree. But also have a spro lipless that catches everything and anything. I burn it through grass, I throw it in brush piles, I hop it on bottom 20+ feet deep. I've bounced it off bridge pilings, had it stuck multiple times and bounced 3oz sinkers off it to get it loose, and it looks like hell but it wont give in.

Sandy was... her usual on Sunday. Found a few fish, then they all disappeared. Actually that's a little better than usual, shes just a skunky smelling desert most times. The fish we did find seemed willing to chase down and inhale an underspin. But then some wind picked up and patchy clouds rolled in over us, the bite shut off and they wouldn't bite even a ned rig or senko. I missed a solid 3lber first fish of the day. Shook loose at the boat. Hooked up on a 2lber after that, then landed the biggest of the day, 5.2 lbs, about 20.5". Got another 2lber shortly after. Floated around another hour or so before getting another 2lber on the same underspin, then got a dink on a medium diving crankbait running along a grass line. Had a couple more misses on the underspin, crappie maybe. Quick multiple bites then they would tug hard and spit it. Not enough fish for 10 hours on the water, but it did snow saturday. Water temp was just under 60F, mud murky maybe 3ft vis. up in the creek area where we were fishing. 5-6ft vis and much more clean out main lake. Saw some patches of bait suspended at various depths in 25FOW, but not much in the way of bass.

Favorite "new" artist: Kip Moore Favorite all time: George Strait I wasn't around for the really old stuff, but I'll listen to Hank Jr. and Waylon and Willie all day over most of those modern "country".

our tax tax dollars hard at work

Man I wish I could leave the water after 8 hours and feel like I'm not leaving something on the table. In summer I usually fish sun-up to sun-down. Usually take a small break somewhere out of the heat mid afternoon. If the fish aren't biting I move to a different lake or a pond if there's something close by. Ive had some minor back issues for the last few years. Nothing I've ever thought I needed to see a professional over, but it is something that has become more of a concern in the last year or so. I'm a mechanic by trade, so my back tends to get used a lot without getting a decent warm up or actual work out. Actually moving and staying active has been the biggest help for the lower back pain I usually have. Last week at work I did something (don't remember exactly what) and noticed some minor pain, but the next two days it was worse, but only when I moved a certain way. So after a few days of doing almost nothing I feel fine again, but I know that if this becomes repetitive, it will be a bigger problem in the future. Didnt expect to find a thread here about back health, but I do think if I can trust anyone's advice it should be from fellow anglers. Good info here, thanks to everyone who has posted!