Buzzbaiter

It jumped off.

AI can’t invent new strategies. It takes what other people have already written and said, and spits out some arrangement of that information. I prefer the flexibility of being able to think for myself, even if my way isn’t always the most efficient option. If you copy someone else’s pattern, the best you can do is as good or slightly worse than them.

Summer has been so busy that I haven’t been able to fish for smallmouth more than 5 times since May. I finally got a chance to go creek fishing, and caught 10 smallmouth and a redbreast. They were all fun-sized, as creek smallmouth tend to be. I’m just happy to be out.

Yesterday was a case of first cast curse. I casted out and saw a few 1-2lbers cruising the shallows; I was so focused on those fish that I didn’t notice the ~4lber at the end of my line. I’d have sworn it was sunfish pecking my line until I felt weight and set the hook. The picture doesn’t do justice to the length of this fish. I was worried I had gut hooked him, but he came out straight. After that, it was short strikes and follows. Overall, a good day.

Lil blue cat. Fried up nicely. The meat was a touch softer than I’d like, but still very good.

For impromptu dropshotting, I tie my bullet weights on with a clinch knot, fat side down. Works just fine.

It’s easy to quit a tackle addiction. I’ve quit 3 times this month!

As a Chesapeake Bay fisherman, it’s getting to be the time of year where I check if there’s still fish left to catch

This could be said about 90% of wildlife management issues. People get hyperfocused on menial issues and forget to consider habitat

I was scrolling through Digitaka to re-up on baits. Prices there were surprisingly low, and don’t seem to have increased much from the tariffs. Ordinarily, I’d be happy to buy but I’ve heard that some online retailers have been adding extra fees at checkout to keep price tags down. Has anyone experienced this when buying foreign fishing tackle online? I’ve always had good experiences with Digitaka, but I want to be sure things haven’t changed given current economic happenings. I’d hate to get charged additional fees without knowing

I’ve been out for a while, so I haven’t had a chance to go fishing. I figured I’d head over to the eastern shore to kick things off for the year. My first fish of 2025 was a redbreast sunfish. I caught this guy (and many others) farther upstream in the creek I was fishing. My main goal was shad, so I moved downstream a bit. I got jumpscared by a big pickerel that blasted my crappie tube in <1ft of water, so I switched gears and threw around a stickbait for a bit. Didn’t get anything doing that, but a couple of tiny pickerel showed themselves when I tied on a rooster tail. They were followed by more redbreasts. While fishing the spinner, I got a hard tap and looked to see a school of three large river herring chase my lure out from a hole. I was losing hope on the shad, but seeing those fish refocused me. I moved downstream a bit and saw a bunch of smaller herring rushing up the stream, totally uninterested in swiping at anything. In hindsight, these were probably blueback and/or alewives. I casted around for a little while until I hooked into a hickory shad. He was much bigger than the smaller herring I had seen, and fought hard on 2lb test. This was my first time catching a hickory. I caught another at the same spot. I was interrupted by my first bass of the year. Two more tiny bass inhaled my spinner; it was fun the first time, but got old quick. After that, I caught a white perch. I didn’t know they went this far into freshwater. I ran out of time, so I had to go. It was a great trip to start a new season. I hope to catch an American shad before the run ends. After that, I’m focused on smallmouth.

Younger children/babies seem like they come out of the womb knowing how to operate phones and tablets. Kind of impressive, and kind of scary all the same. But working out a TV remote is higher level thinking

I used to struggle to get bass on the dropshot rig, until I realized the fish didn’t like when I shook the rod too much. Once I started catching fish with the technique, I gave it up pretty quickly. It’s like fishing cutbait except you occasionally have to remind the bass that the bait is still alive.

I’ve done it here and there before ffs minnowing became a thing. I didn’t find it to be more effective than just working craw imitations on the same jigheads. I might try it again this year now that there are specialized baits for it

What’s your methodology for the Giant Dog X? I’m trying to focus on bigger smallmouth this year, and I’m pretty comfortable with walking baits. I figured I should try stick what I know and refine it to catch larger fish.

Only recently got to looking beyond instant coffee. I’m still dialing my tastes. I like drip filter coffee, especially coffee cut with chicory. I’m not diametrically opposed to milk and sugar; I like black coffee, but there’s also something nice about milky coffee that’s lightly sweetened. I enjoy espresso-based drinks (flat whites, lattes, macchiatos, etc.), but can’t bring myself to buy an espresso machine to make that stuff myself. I have an aeropress and coffee grinder on my Christmas list. I’ll be playing around with different beans

I would call it an intelligent mechanism for money laundering. Uhhhh…my head hurts. If I had to categorize them, I’d consider dance and worm wiggling to be sports (not art) on the basis that both activities require physical skill and lack an element of creation. Then again, bass are sunfish, acorns are fruits, and bananas are berries. Tape one to a wall, and that berry becomes art. Dichotomous distinctions are for people with too much time on their hands; I think this cold front is getting to us.

I don’t look for peer-reviewed articles to influence my fishing decisions for the day. On the other hand, the word “art” implies some sort of creation, which doesn’t exist in fishing. I’d call fishing a pseudoscience.

I always keep a document with all my fishing goals for the year. I usually write it at the start of the New Year, so I haven’t thought about it too much yet. My goals this year will be modest. First, I got a really nice UL rod (Daiwa Trout X NT), which I’ve paired with a Daiwa Revros and 2lb P-Line. It’s not the most expensive setup in the world, but it’s my first actual quality UL setup. I’ve used it to catch a single stocked rainbow so far, and it fishes beautifully. I’d like to use it on some Potomac smallmouth and see how light of a rod I can get away with. On the opposite side of that coin, I’d like to catch a 4+ pound smallmouth. I caught a couple of decent ones last year, but my scale died on me. I’d like to spend more time targeting big fish. Frankly, I didn’t spend as much time fishing for smallmouth this year as I’d like to have done. I’m going to Ireland in the spring, so I’m excited to target Atlantic salmon, sea-run brown trout, normal brown trout, pike, redfin perch, and European sea bass. None of that stuff has anything to do with bass, but they are fishing goals. Beyond that, I can’t think of any other goals I’d like to accomplish. I still want to catch a Kentucky bass and an Alabama bass, but I doubt I’ll find the time to fish the southeast. I’m just happy to be fishing another year.

Tubes catch reds. There’s probably a lot of jerkbait and topwater crossover. Of course, swimbaits will work wherever you go. Ultimately, you’ll have to experiment with it and see what pans out; some techniques will work better than expected, while others will fall short. When using freshwater baits for saltwater, be aware that rust can become an issue.

I didn’t spend as much time bass fishing, but had a successful year otherwise. New species caught in 2024 are as follows: shoal bass, bowfin, longear sunfish, warrior bass, shorthead redhorse, white catfish, channel catfish, Atlantic croaker, and southern kingfish. That brings me up to a total of 47 species on my lifelist. I also caught a new PB smallmouth. I didn’t get a measurement, but I think it was between 3 and 4 pounds. Not huge, but a step in the right direction going from numbers to size. It was a fun year

That speck looks more like a weakfish. Seems like a fun time

Going down that list: Disagree; wrong; “never” is a hard word but I do agree; disagree; maybe; wrong. I’m typically against this placing hard rules in animal behavior. I’m all for general guidelines, but “never” and “always” don’t exist for wild animals, at least when it comes to behavior.

I fell off. My fishing interests change, and I find myself more focused on other species than bass nowadays. I also have less time to fish, which doesn’t help. But again, interests change. If you give me a season or two, I might just catch the bassin bug again.

I’ve never tried night fishing, but conventional snook-fishing-wisdom says that snook are especially active after dark. Granted the moon phase is right, you shouldn’t have much trouble pulling into a few. Let us know how it goes!