MGF

I'm confused. If their metabolism is slowed and they're eating less doesn't it follow that they are burning fewer calories by moving less and/or slower?

Maybe I should break out the musky tackle because I haven't been able to catch a bass since my last post. The river warmed up to about 52 and I got skunked Saturday. Sunday and today I hit a little public pond and I didn't get a bite. All the water seems a little stained all of a sudden...I guess from all the leaves in the water? I guess I really don't understand what's going on.

I could make most weekday evenings work.

We'll have the canoe on the river chasing SMB

Isn't everybody? The belt is there to hold things like knives or pouches. The suspenders are there to hold the pants up. The arrangement is especially kind to the back since the belt can do it's job without being tight. Don't let fashion snobs tell you how to dress for the outdoors.

Good weather the rest of the week so I'll get in whatever fishing I can. I took yesterday off and wandered 3 different rivers just poking around from shore. Access was limited but I found a couple SMB. This weekend I'll get out with my son one day and my wife the next day...not enough boat for three.

I'm in north west Indiana and we have lots of lakes that are largely covered in pads or some other matted weeds. A frog or punching seems like a good approach. My "southern" fishing experience is limited to a couple of north Arkansas reservoirs and there isn't anything to punch. LOL

I do most of my fishing on the fairly small Tippecanoe river (Indiana)...shallow and rocky. I have a 14 ft flat bottom boat with a 9.9 hp. My wife and I could sure use more room but for much of the year the river is too for me to get the boat on and off the trailer so we fish out of a 15.5 ft canoe. On occasion I do fish one of the larger lakes and that flat bottom boat is terrible on water that isn't really flat. But when I ask the wife where she wants to fish she ALWYS chooses the river. Someday I'll buy a boat that's a little bigger but still suitable for the skinny rivers that we love to fish.

I'm fishing as long as I can cope with the weather.

I absolutely LOVE to eat LMB and SMB. Any time I brought fish home as a kid my mother would comment that all she wanted to eat was LMB. Now days I don't keep very many just because local waters seem way over pressured to me and populations just aren't all that impressive. We have a slot limit on the river so a couple times/year my wife and I keep a meal or two worth of little ones. I don't keep many pan fish anymore either. The local pan fish like crappies are so pressured you can't hardly find a decent sized one. The DNR talks like 9 or 10 inches is a decent crappie. Sorry that's a dink. Last year my daughter and her family took us all to a lake cabin for a week for my 60th birthday. I took the grandkids out for crappie and we made a couple of good meals for the family out of those nine and ten inch crappies. I didn't tell the kids the fish were dinks so they had fun anyway. I'm all for selective harvest but that's not what I see. The DNR manages our resources to sell licenses NOT to sustain good fishing and hunting. If they can get you to buy access to lousy fishing they're happy enough.

Water in the low 50's...I spent last Sat and Sun on the river working my back side off for almost nothing. I about casted my arm off last night on the bank of a smaller river. It's like the fish are gone. Well maybe they are gone but I don't know where they would be.

Maybe a hard jerk bait or even a sluggo?

I saw a picture of President Bush holding his spinning rod upside down. I can't even count the number of times I've seen it depicted that way in movies...like the famous, and fairly often seen, bow strung backwards.

Some of my best fishing has been from Oct. into Dec. when we had nice weather. Don't really have any good places to hunt so this year I'm not going to bother. One of my goals is to learn to catch fish in cold open water. I've caught LMB and all sorts of other fish through the ice but haven't done well in cold open water. It's time to learn how.

My wife has tried to teach me to notice the beauty around us especially when things are hard.

My most productive retrieve with a floating Rapala in the river is to "do nothing" or dead stick it. It might get a very light twitch once in a while as I mend the line in the current but that's about it.

This time of year is always a challenge for me. The weather is a big part of that. The weekend is only two days and blown out weekends takes away a big chunk of the season's fishing. This year has been extra tough because of the low water. I can't hardly navigate the closest river (even in the canoe). I spent last night driving around looking at ramps on a more distant river to see where I could get into the water. Of three ramps I found one where I might be able to launch without getting the truck stuck in the sand. LOL and winter is coming on fast.

The fish or the dam? The SM were small...maybe 14". I didn't measure or weigh them. The LM was a nicer fish so I measured him at a fat 18". The dam has a drop of 3 or 4 feet (I think). I suspect that it's been broken up because it isn't a vertical drop. That 3 or 4 foot drop is over 10 ft or so.

I would say yes. Just yesterday my wife and I got a few SMB and one nice LMB at the bottom of a low head dam...off to the side in the eddy and slack water adjacent to the dam.

My wife and I enjoy fishing local rivers far more than the local lakes. I'm sure there are largemouth in the river we fish the most but in 24 years of fishing the river I've never caught a LM. Yesterday we visited a little river (more of a creek) that I just started fishing and I was pleasantly shocked when I caught a fat 18" LM. So I almost exclusively target SM because I almost exclusively fish my local river and just don't find many LM. Last year I put the Lowrance in the boat for exactly one lake trip with the grandkids where we primarily chased crappie. The weather is threatening to bring this season to an end pretty soon (for me) and I haven't used it yet this year. The river is just too shallow, especially this year. All that aside I have lived my entire 61 years within spitting distance of Lake Michigan and I have never fished it. I just never had a boat that was big enough to seriously consider it. I've done a ton of diving out there but no fishing. I could never make up my mind. As it turned out it was never an issue.

There's really only one small pond that I fish...a little less than an acre. I've caught numbers and a few nice ones. I usually fish soft plastics. Two reasons. First the water is small and sometimes very clear so I try to be quiet (finesse). Second because I can almost afford to lose a few baits. I have also had some success on a "swimmed" jig.

I haven't really been able to fish in the last month...bad weather, family obligations and super low water in the river. As long as the weather stays warm enough for me to fish (50ish F during the day) the "transition is usually pretty subtle in the small river where I do most of my fishing. The brown bass may have changed position some but they haven't moved far. I may be using slightly different baits but I'm not 100% certain that the fish care or if I just use certain tactics in the fall because I think I should. LOL What's killing me this years is the ridiculously low water. From what I read they've increased the flow down river of the reservoirs to help some mussels so nobody else has any water. I guess more rain would still have fixed it. I think I could still catch fish but it takes so long to get down river and so much time is spent just traversing unproductive water that it's kept me off the river. I have lakes I could fish but I haven't fished any of them at all this year. I'm afraid that I might just be lost on one of them.

Might try below the dams at lake Shaffer and Lake Freeman in Monticello, Indiana. Check out the DNR "where to fish" interactive map on their web site for other public access ideas. Sorry I couldn't be more help but I'm a ways from there so I don't fish anything very close to Lafayette.

I think it's a little bit east of you but a couple weeks ago I took a ride to Knox and fished the Yellow river. That's Stark county. There's a park there with a boat ramp right where the river goes under Rt 35. I stood right at the ramp and caught 5 smallmouth bass and a bunch of rock bass in a short time. One bass was about 15" and the rest were pretty small. Still, not bad for taking a few casts off the boat ramp just to check out a new spot. Again, If I was stuck on the bank I'd be looking at the rivers.

Some of us are pretty driven to catch fish. Sometimes I have to take a lesson from my wife. She's a pretty good angler but she's better at enjoying the outing when we don't catch anything. Sometimes she just stops fishing and takes in the scenery. Sunday when the wind was blowing my around the lake and I was fighting like a mad man just to keep the weeds from fouling the trolling motor and get in one decent cast I heard her in the background saying stuff like "Wow the sky sure is beautiful"...and "Look at the color of that tree". There is another side to this. Sometimes when the fishing is great she just doesn't fish very hard. Of course, being the lifetime student of angling that I am, I generally catch the most and the biggest. Many times I've told her that I can't understand putting down the rod when things are really cooking. So the last few trips she has been fishing harder...and she's been catching more fish than me too. LOL Throughout my working life I've been fortunate to be able to do work that enjoy. Still, I could enjoy fishing a lot more. LOL