Ming

Today's fishing trip really gave me mixed feelings. First I caught a two-pounder, then I lost 5 baits in one hour. A little bit about myself, I am a relatively new angler and haven't had much experience fishing around different laydowns. It was a sunny day today. A bit windy. I went out fishing at 6 pm and the temperature was 58 degrees. After the cold front three days ago (it actually snowed on Saturday here in CT), fishes are finally moving up shallow. I was at a new spot on the bank where there are a few laydowns, and I was actually standing on a laydown casting towards two other parallel laydowns that are in front of me. The first two casts of a flipping jig produced two fishes, one of which is a two-pounder largie. It got me really excited. Little did I know, the rest of the trip was an absolute nightmare. I snagged the flipping jig on some branches on the third cast, followed by two other snagged jigs and a Texas rigged worm. Two of them were snagged because I set the hook on some wood, and two others were snagged because the hook was caught by branches while I was retrieving. All this happened in like twenty minutes and I was really demoralized. In the end, I snagged a spinner bait and concluded the trip. After coming back home, I have been reflecting. Maybe it was too greedy of me to keep throwing baits into the center of the nasty laydown structure. Maybe it is the way I retrieve that is prone to snagging. How do you guys work your baits around laydowns? What kind of baits do you use? I will appreciate any suggestions! ?

Thats an interesting story! Were you fishing at the exact same spot? Wow, that’s impressive! What’s your favorite bait for a shallow laydown? That’s good to know! Although in our state (CT) it’s mainly largemouth. How do you get two on a single bait? Was it like a hard bait with multiple treble hooks? Haha I thought about the same thing. I’m going back to the same spot later this week. Let’s find out. Hope they still there?

Guys I’m located in CT. As a new angler, what happened today totally blew my mind! I started fishing a month ago. Quickly i got quite obsessed with it, and I have been fishing almost daily since I started. In the first 7 trips, I got nothing but gained lots of experiences by learning from mistakes. And since last week, I have been catching fish every other trips. (Every time I fish for around 1.5 hours.) My usual fishing spot is a flat bottom shallow water (5 feet) near a point. Today I had only 20 min to fish before sunset. So I went to check out a new spot where there is a laydown. I used a 4 feet deep square bill (bluegill) on a medium heavy power rod ( I think it works better with a medium power rod but I snapped that one :-/). When I started I had no idea how it was gonna work out. And guess what, after the first cast I have been catching a fish almost every cast! It really blew my mind because my most productive day before was 1 fish per hour. The fishes went really aggressive for my squarebill. On my third cast. I got the line hung on a branch, and as I went to untangle the line, a bass swallowed the square bill. I didn’t even set the hook or anything, and just pulled the fish out of water after I sorted my line out. After casting around 7 times and pulled out 4 fishes, my square bill got hung up so I concluded my short trip today. I am still very excited about what happened today, and kept wondering what if I could have stayed longer than 20 minutes. I have also been wondering if I just got super lucky today to find a location with lots of fish. Or it is within expectations for such a location (laydown) and timing (right before sunset, water temperature 50 degree). Do you guys had similar experiences? If so please share ?