Buzzbaiter

If they want the bass gone from that pond, then do what you gotta do. I think nuisance species are fair game as bait and table fair. If the pond were managed specifically as a recreational bass fishery and killing “bait-sized” bass went against eh management plan, then that would be a different story. As far as being sporting, that’s up to you. I’d prefer to catch a big fish on a bass imitation, but I wouldn’t turn down the opportunity to catch such a fish by livelining a small bass (granted that it’s legal, obviously). It’d make for an interesting story if nothing else. Bass are just another fish—widely introduced and not threatened.

2. I fish with feet on the ground or in the water. Even when I do wade, I just go in swim shorts, not waders. I have rods to cover the broad spectrum of rigs and baits that I throw, but not enough to get technique specific with each rod. I do carry a lot of different tackle, though I tend to reach for the same confidence baits day in and day out.

Largemouth: buzzbait, black Smallmouth: walking bait, preferably a Heddon Boyo or Puppy Spook

There’s really great fishing to be had in Florida, with fisheries you can’t find elsewhere in the country. That being said, there’s not much human habitat there. Too many people, too much construction, and too much heat, among other things. It’s a shame, since Florida is so beautiful. Once I graduate, I’m packing my bags and heading back north. I can’t stand to be away from the brown bass long-term 😁

I wish they made underspins that were priced like the jighead+swivel+blade assembly that they really are. I’m not paying $5 for a single piece of terminal tackle. It’s a jighead with stuff on it; the price tag ought to reflect that. It’s past my bedtime, rant over.

Give it a few years, and you might have a change of heart. They can outcompete largemouth in highland reservoirs, given some time. If you fish for smallmouth or other riverine species of bass, it’s not just a matter of competition, but total replacement. They hybridize with other fish and screw with genetics. Best case, you’re fishing for mutts. Worst case, the original species of bass within the system is extirpated entirely. Not too much of an issue with largemouth, but they have been repeatedly shown to degrade the size and quantity of largemouth fisheries.

I can catch everything but a shad. Still trying to catch my first American shad before the spawn winds down. Hopefully the rockfish is a sign of good things to come when the season opens this week. ETA: Can someone give me an ID on the first fish? I think it’s a shorthead redhorse, although I’m bad at identifying rough fish. It was caught on the Susquehanna.

Florida: Bank access and people. Bank fishing might be easy in south Florida, but in north Florida, it is a struggle to find water with bank access. Public ponds are few and far between, and most of the natural lakes have privatized shorelines with a boat ramp or two. Even on public shorelines, unless the banks are mowed or burned, it’s usually still difficult to find fishable ground. The ground gets soggier the closer you get to the water, and bushwhacking through the subtropical forest is more trouble than it’s worth. But far beyond that is the fact that Florida is way overcrowded. You can’t fish a beach past 8AM, and any river with springs nearby is bound to be clogged with pleasure boaters. Then there’s the crowd that pulls up to a spot blaring “country” music, hooting and hollering, littering, and generally being a nuisance. I’ll never understand it. On an unrelated note, limestone is the bane of my existence. Those little nooks and crannies eat hooks and heads like nothing else. I don’t bother fishing the Chipola with open hooks. Maryland: I don’t have much bad to say about Maryland. The fishing is good, and the access is good enough. Still, people can be an issue in central MD. On a summer day, you can’t fish the Patapsco without running into a whole fiesta of park-goers, complete with swimmers and obnoxiously loud music. Same goes for any lowland park; the Bay draws a lot of people.

Struggled to catch bass yesterday, so I decided to smell the roses and play with some sunfish.

@AlabamaSpothunter I was just passing through on a road trip, so unfortunately that’ll be the last time I end up in Alabama for a while. It’s a beautiful state though, so I’ll definitely be back sometime; I have unfinished business to take care of . I’m in TN right now. My next goal is a Kentucky spot, assuming there are any genetically pure spots left.

Fished around Birmingham, AL today. Started at the Blackburn Fork Little Warrior River. It was slow and the fish were spooky, but I did manage an Alabama x warrior bass hybrid. He ate an SB77.7. My goals were to catch an Alabama bass and a warrior bass, which were both new species for me. Since hybrids don’t count, I still had work to do. I drove over to Turkey Creek and managed several warrior bass, all small. These guys were hard to pattern. They didn’t care too much for normal craws and worms. I finally got them to bite by sticking half of a finesse worm on a dropshot hook, and letting it drift. They came out of the riffles and smashed that worm about the same as a brook trout attacking a spinner. There were some football-sized warrior bass in there, but they were too smart for me. The big ones were more blue than green, which I found interesting. I drove further north, and took a stop at the Little River in hopes of catching an Alabama. It wasn’t meant to be. I only found green sunfish, which is amazing considering how pristine the water was. Since I didn’t manage to picture any fish from the Little River, please accept this rhododendron (I think) instead.

Today was a slow one. I stopped at the Chipola on a road trip and managed a single shoal bass. This fish is a contender for hardest fighting 1lber I’ve ever caught. Thought it was a gulf strain rockfish at first, lol. Neither photo does this fish justice; the blue color on the tail is hard to capture on camera. Tomorrow, I’m gonna try for Choctaw bass.

I’ve always eaten light when I wake up early to fish. If I’m busy walking around or wading, I don’t notice being hungry and will happily take the caloric deficit. Usually, breakfast is coffee and one of the following: - oatmeal - granola bar - Cheerios (of the honey-nut variety) - leftover pizza (if available) - more coffee I prefer to eat when I get home. If it’s a long trip, I’ll pack some jerky or a pb/nutella sandwich for a mid-expedition pick-me-up.

I’m comfortable with a weighted Texas rig, and throw it when I have to. That being said, I much prefer open hooks and jigheads whenever I can get away with them. Maybe it’s a confidence thing, but I feel like a plastic on a jighead looks more natural, is easier to work, and transmits more vibration (that is, I can feel what’s on the end of my line better).

What others do right? Fish more often, and catch fish. What do I do right? Managing my finances (i.e. exercising temperance while browsing Tackle Warehouse)

I did pretty well targeting snook in Tampa Bay during the fall. Things slowed down in the winter, which I wasn’t fussed about given that snook are a warm water species. But now that the water has heated up, I’ve been blanking. I went out in late March to an estuary where I was catching snook in fall, but didn’t get anything. I went out again this weekend (April 13), this time on some points towards the mouth of Tampa Bay. I waded mangroves, grass flats, and backwater creeks, but only got one strike, which might’ve been a ladyfish or trout (it came off before I could tell). I tried various swimbaits and flukes. All the reports I’ve heard say that the snook are everywhere and easy to catch, but that’s been the opposite of my experience. Granted, two trips in the spring is a limited sample size, but it’s a long drive for me to get out to snook water. I don’t have the time to try a bunch of spots and fine tune through experience. Is there anything I’m doing wrong? Are snook just really fickle?

Catching smallmouth is pretty easy (and not the same as targeting big ones). Anything short and stubby will do the job for numbers. I like neds, grubs, and tournament tubes, but smallmouth will eat all sorts of stuff. Pick a confidence bait and stick with it. When targeting new species, it’s more important to get a feel for how the fish behave and where they live. Good luck!

“Sewage” and “brook trout” don’t go together in the same sentence. I’d bet you were misidentifying creek chubs, lol

I’ve been using the Bass X for a short while, only a few months. It’s a pretty good reel. It casts well, brakes well, and does the job. It does decently with light lures. My one minor grievance with it is that I generally like to have little to no tension on the spool; if you back the tension all the way out on the Bass X, it can interfere with the drag, which I tend to keep locked down. The interference isn’t enough to stop the function of either the tension or the drag, but it does create a bit of noise, so I usually have to tighten my tension down a hair (to a degree which most fishermen would probably prefer their spool tension to be at) or lighten my drag slightly. Other than that, I like it a lot. I prefer it over my Abu Black Max, which it replaced. My opinion is that the Daiwa Bass X is a good reel for the money. Having said that, I’m more of a spinning rod/finesse person, and I’ve only had the reel for a short while. My experience with the Bass X is far from exhaustive, so take it with a serving of salt.

A couple of fish from this week.

In the days of old, trout used to be America’s freshwater gamefish. This was back in the 19th century, when there was a lot more wilderness, and native trout were much larger and more accessible. James Henshall predicted that bass fishing would become the new standard for a popular fishery, considering how much the land was changing. Turns out he was right. The mid-Atlantic east coast is littered with great native gamefish. Pickerel, redbreast, perch, fallfish, and brook trout, to name a few. Originally, you wouldn’t find bass in places on the east slope of the Appalachians. Putting modern biases aside, bass really aren’t very superior to these original gamefish, except that they grow larger, fight harder, and can live in degraded waters (catfish and carp have these qualities over bass, and they aren’t considered as “sporting” as bass). The argument about bass being more apt to chase is questionable too, since I imagine many, maybe most, who targeted bass would have done so with live bait. If you look outside the US, bass-like predators aren’t the most popular gamefish in most places. It wasn’t until tournaments became popular that the fishery became the commercial, cultural entity that it is today. The popularity of the black bass as America’s most popular gamefish probably has to do with increasingly degraded water and coincidence. Once bass became well established outside of their native range, I think the ability for a bass fishery to sustain tournament pressure is what cemented bass fishing as a popular fishery.

I’m sure locality plays a role in availability and demand. Here in Florida, I don’t see too many tubes at tackle stores, which is a shame considering how effective they are on redfish and black bass around here. Most fishermen probably associate tubes with highland rivers and reservoirs, so they might be inclined to ignore the pack of tubes on the bottom shelf in favor of regional staple baits.

Being a bank fisherman/wader, I don’t have FFS. Even if I could get it, I don’t know that I would. Whenever I’ve fished ultra clear water, I was always amazed to see how apathetic most bass are. I feel like FFS would make me less confident, and therefore a worse fisherman lol

During the recent one (2021, I think?), the bass fishing wasn’t affected much at all. The carp were insane though. I saw them cruising all along the shallows popping the cicadas. Outside of koi ponds, I don’t know that I’ve seen so many carp in one place. The banks were lined with them. I even managed to snag one on accident. The bass didn’t seem to care nearly as much. If I were you, I wouldn’t waste my time trying to match the hatch.

When it comes to bass fishing, winter has not been kind to me. The new year marked the start of a skunkfest that I wasn’t able to shake until today. When I woke up, I didn’t feel like going out. The forecast in Blountstown (which is in the same general area as the spot I fished) was 28/46, which is a sharp drop from the last few days. Still, I dragged myself out of bed and made the three hour drive to the Chipola River. I started by hopping a Jackall TN50. It took getting hung up three times for me to realize that there were a lot of snags in the river, and that it wasn’t worth tossing a $15 treble hook bait. Since I’m bank fishing, whatever gets stuck down there stays there. I switched to a tube (Dry Creek Tournament Tube, Old Ugly) and fished it about the same way, only slower. I was focusing on areas that had current and seams, but weren’t too fast. After walking the riverbank for a while, I dropped my tube into a seam and let it drift. When I went to pick it up, I thought I got it hung up—at least until I felt a head shake. I cranked down and the fight started. Despite being in cold water, this fish was strong. It went on a few short runs (more like short bursts of speed), and made wide shakes. When I pulled the fish close, I saw it had its characteristic vertical markings and a distinctive tail spot. It was a shoal bass! It was a solid one, too. It felt every bit of 2lbs, maybe 3. Unfortunately, the hook set in the gills, which left the fish bleeding. I took the above picture and released it quickly. It swam off strong enough, but I don’t know if it survived. It sucks, but it can’t be helped. After catching my first shoal bass, I kept working the river downstream. I switched presentations to see if they wanted anything else, but the fish had no interest jerkbaits, grubs, or worms. I switched back to a tube (this time in a bluegill flash pattern) and continued drifting the river bottom around current. This produced another bass, a largemouth. The largemouth wasn’t big, but it was a confidence boost to see that the shoal bass wasn’t a fluke, and that I was on some sort of pattern. Unfortunately, the fishing was slow, and the snags abundant. I continued fishing for some more time until I had broken off all my jigheads. I switched to a Texas rigged worm, but didn’t find any more fish. Regardless, I enjoyed today and look forward to coming back to the Chipola. I can’t wait for the water to warm up enough to start wading. This would give me access to more of the river, and put me within casting distance of a lot more fish. Additionally, I’d like to see how shoal bass fight in warmer water. That fish put up a lot of resistance for cold water. I imagine a shoal bass caught in 70* water would go ballistic. I’m sure I’ll find out this spring 😁.