Blue Raider Bob

Dang AJ! It's 98 Degrees outside where I am. Have to start my truck and wait for the AC to muscle up before I can survive the ride home! Glad you had the lake to yourself, and the fish were eating!

You will Katie. Anyone that can carry their canoe through ink black woods before daylight will be fishing way into their 80's. You may not get to the water as fast as you used to, but you will get there just the same!

Speechless!

Maybe start using my criteria....if you hook it, and see it, you claim it! The Tennessee judges rule......NO SKUNK in Alex's boat! No prop, nut, or pin either! The fact that you had a spare prop tells me this was not your first rodeo!

Katie, I fished thirty years before I ever caught a bass as big as Jake's. I want to go fishing with Katie McKy, Pat Brown, AND JAKE!

What about "Snagless Sally"? Bait puppy made me buy two so if you need one, let me know.

Saw this today as I took a break from working and reading BR. Cracked me up and I hope it lightens your load for a moment!

But you've had a Ted Williams Gamefisher. Our lives will be forever welded by this stronger than blood bond! Not to mention the fact that we have both sunk using the aforementioned motor! For those confused by this strange passage....let me briefly explain. Way, way, many years ago, while running trot lines in the middle of the night, on a Mississippi River oxbow in eastern Arkansas, water was coming over the bow as we motored down river. All of a sudden lots of water was coming over the bow, and we nosedived! The three of us waterlogged riverboys pulled and swam the submerged johnboat to the riverbank, took off the motor, picked up the boat and turned over like a canoe, re-loaded, and after an eternity, the engine started and we went back to camp. We used the very leaky boat as a livewell and when we sank, we watched a nights worth of Chanel Cats swim away! Not to mention the floating Busch beers in the river. Turns out, the SAME THING happened to Katie! A couple thousand miles away no less, but sunk in the same way with the trusted Ted Williams Gamefisher from Sears and Roebuck! She will have to tell that story. Life is too weird and it sure is a small world!

This true. I've watched it numerous times on my pond. You can follow their path wherever they go. They are also curious and brazen. I was half dozing on my dock one day in the fading light, when one comes leaping up on my dock at my feet! He quickly made tracks as I did a "Fred Sanford" and held onto my heart. That is no way to be aroused from slumber!

Ya' know Norcal....when she is aged and slow like I am, she will still have these powerful memories to relive again and again. These special moments are momentous for you , but it is she that will use them the longest. So proud to get to watch and live through your journeys! Only when my eyes close forever will I finally say goodbye to my dad, though he's been gone since '93.

I've mentioned this many times. Just can't see how they catch them because a bass is rocket fast. With that said, every winter a otter, or otters make their way down a wet weather creek by my place and stop to clean out the pond of my biggest bass. They also take several of my biggest BG. I have videos of them playing all over the pond and bank. Wish I knew how to post them. As you see in my picture, they also make themselves at home on my dock.

That was my thinking. I have a Hybrid in my pond I see daily. It appears to be BG and Redear. Wish I could post a picture but water clarity is not good. It has the vertical bands of a BG but it is green with a large gill flap with a white boundary. The boundary has no red spot at all but it has the Shellcracker look. He certainly has an appetite.

What is really over-the-top cool is the narrow streamlet that your canoe glides into to dock at the boardwalk. Might need a post and handrail at some point as we age. I know my butt would bust a some point! 🤣

Does that look like some kind of Hybrid to you? Looks like somebody got into that Bluegill bed that was not all Bluegill.

Not too many things more startling than a beaver slab when you are not expecting it! Especially, as T-Billy says, at night! An otter is a 3/4 acre pond is even worse!

Katie, is there a place for a fish feeder? That would be so awesome to have at the end of the boardwalk. fish become conditioned quickly and you could have multi species calling your place home. Nothing like feeding time. I'll trade you a fish feeder for a canoe full of lily pads.

This topic has been discussed and evaluated as long as people have fished......at least as long as BR has been here for us to share. Do fish bite/feed better in the morning, or the evening? Here is what I have observed as a small pond owner daily observing a small pond ecosystem. I supplement my fish with a commercial fish food, and use a timer to throw feed three times a day. The feeder operates for two seconds at a time and scatters a hand full of feed 3/16 " wide. Here are my feeding times this time of year. 9:00 AM 2:00 PM and 7:00 PM. Most of us would consider 9:00 AM to be late morning, and it is, but a tree line keeps the dock shaded at this time of day. The reason I feed so late in the morning is earlier feeding brought little activity. I adjust feeding times throughout the year according to seasons. 9:00 AM Shade Feed hits the water and sits. Slowly, over the course of several minutes, the BG begin to nudge, then take feed. There is never a panic feeding and frenzy. 2:00 PM Full Sun Feed hits the water and gets quick interest, but no sense of urgency from the BG's. 7:00 PM Shade Feed hits the water and is immediately crashed by multiple fish, which continues for five minutes before the fish go into a feeding pattern that is not predicated by intense competition. After fifteen minutes, all feed has been used. During this time, there is often a green rocket smashing into this maelstrom, especially when there are larger bass in the pond. The clear indication on my small sample size is a definite preference for evening. I view many BR friends having terrific success with the morning bite and would like to know personal observations. Thanks

That's got to be the prettiest place on earth. Glad you get to be there!

I really hope that if reincarnation is real.....I come back as Captain Phil!

I was about to give up on the Whopper Plopper but then I caught five one day and seven the next. Now I have the confidence to keep throwing.

Bait Pup just convinced me to buy some Snagless Sally's. Too late to re-consider, already hit send! Looking forward to the pictures that are sure to come from new little pup going fishing with Katie and drenching the two of you! We know you demand stealth Katie, but.......puppy gets to go sometimes, and stealth stays behind! I've watched this fail GIF so many times my body aches. Three very bad oversights, one, loosing control of high dribble, two, wet concrete, three, he's in sandals! Ouch!

I didn't have a camera with me but they were a blast on the Whopper Plopper. I caught five Thursday with one three pounder and six Sunday with one just shy of three. This pond is so shallow and weed choked, that top water is the only way to fish. I can see the bottom in the middle from the bank, that said, it harbors fish. One of the smaller bass had a tail fin sticking out of it's throat and still hit the plopper. The two biggest now live in my pond. Top water can be terrifying. Once I was daydreaming and about to lift the plopper from the water when one stuck at bankside! That was a jolt! I cross a field that is covered with White Tails. There was a bachelor group of eight plus two moms and fawn nearby. Funny how the Bucks scatter and the Does hang around.

Woody was shaving at 8? No way!

Katie, if I caught a dozen bass on a spinnerbait, I wouldn't junk it......I'd frame it!

Please send me the Pickerel Rush Picture! I can't wait to show my daughter. The ones I planted this springs are beginning to bloom. Yours are putting on quite a show. Mine....well not the effect of yours but beats an empty flower pot. Don't laugh, Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither was Katie's Bog!