AlabamaSpothunter

Hang in there Bob, there's always a silver lining, sometimes it just takes a while to figure out what it may be.

Congrats on an awesome day Pat.....really love seeing Jake catch a toad! As I've said before, the apple doesn't fall from the big fish tree 😁 @Blue Raider Bob Love seeing you post Bob, tell us a bit more how you upload your pics. The easist I've found, is to upload the image to your PC....then go to postimages.org and upload there, get the "share" link which is the second one down on the list of shareable links. When you upload it to your computer or to that site, you'll have an option to edit the photo, you can hit the rotate image that will correct the orientation. It's very easy, but difficult to explain lol.

I was determined to learn from my mistakes and amazing amount of frustration during March of 23 (documented in this thread lol). Failure is the best motivator, and by my records, this March was the 2nd best month I've had in 20 months being back on the water. Yesterday was great, had 5-22lbs. Today not so great, watched an easy 7-8lb fish on bed with a paired male, but only the male would fire. I left them alone after a few minutes but with much disappointment. She dwarfed the male, and the male was close to 3. 6.8 6.4 Then from Fri afternoon 6 even (one of the few fish I wish I had a length from, very long) First Fry Balls I've seen, but I'm sure I've missed some earlier ones....now realize only a handful of those countless individuals make it to be a 12" fish, then the odds of that 12" fish reaching 17.5" is equally as daunting. We as humans have it quite easy.

Perfectly fine, now what kind of bait lives in the lake? Find that bait, you'll 100% find the fish.

Got any electronics? Fishing from a boat, or bank? Sub 55d water temps, pre-prespawn fish.......find the bait. 2D and sidescan sonar are your best friends in the winter especially. Don't get discouraged, worst-case scenario you have to wait a few weeks until the water temps hit 55d+. I've always heard sub 50d water temps up north makes difficult fishing, but I've never fished up north.

If people fish in the spring, they're catching fish on the bed. With immediate catch and release, I see very little difference b/t blind vs sight fishing spawners ethically speaking. That's assuming you don't bump a bait into a fish for hours trying to get her to go. I've found it easier to catch spawners in the blind than sight fishing them.......sight bed fishing is quite misunderstood; the vast majority of fish require quite a bit of work to catch them. Once they get spooked which almost always happens, the job becomes quite difficult. That said, sight fishing them is one of the most exciting ways I've caught them. Very addictive, and it's fun to run the bank with polarized glasses and see so much life on the banks.

I see @Aaron_H is back to his old ways, just posting slaunch donkies on the reg 😎

Absolutely what Katie said, those Carp, and all the species within that genus are super hardy fish. Goldfish are like little terminators lol.

Dying to get the new 110 RS. I would have already killed them with this bait in shallow flats schooling on bait prespawn. I have to take a 110 and jerk it upwards, but amazingly it works awesome in 1-3fow without fouling the hooks. Still though the RS is going to be the deal whenever it comes out.

Daygum monster @Fried Lemons, huge congrats on such a special fish!

Send me the GPS coordinates, I'll get to the bottom of this for you in no time 🤣

Looks like it but given her size 3 years ago that would be one really old, and more surprisingly healthy-looking fish. She'd be over 10yrs and that's a really long time to live in the south. Than again how many lottery fish could be swimming in a 35acre pond? Either way it's a magnificent fish, both of them! I'd guess the orange pants fish is around 11lbs.

Peak pre-spawn hog at that....congrats on the fantastic fish!

Great job @FishTax! Nothing better than passing on the passion to the next generation.

Overhand cast, bait catches tree behind, I continue with a full bomb cast and proceed to watch the reel backlash to kingdom come. That's happened a number of times

To me that indicates that you had long followers that weren't committing until they had their "eat or leave" moment upon your straight retrieve. I have many a fish hit the jerkbait near the boat the moment I decided the cast was over and lifted the rod and started to reel quickly. FFS sonar has taught us the upward lifting of the bait toward the surface triggers a feed response because the fish know the bait will be trapped by the surface. Many times you can get those fish to commit without the straight retrieve by changing something in the cadence. Or you could have got those fish to eat the bait sooner with a straight retrieve the whole cast which I do fairly often. To me the half the fun of a jerkbait is getting that incredible slack line hit on a jerk/pause retrieve. Your theory is just as valid as mine, the Bass aren't gonna say 😁

He actually admits to doing it on facebook, that was the thing that convinced me. "The short version of what happened was that there were several of us in a giant pond bed fishing. We were all about 75-100yards apart from each other at the time. I finished trying to catch a fish, I couldn’t catch it because it was real skittish and I couldn’t see it that well, I trolled up to the bed to see if it was still thereand it wasn’t. I then hit my trolling motor to go to another fish in the pond. I was right by the bed when I did this and I thought it might churn up the water and make it harder for the next guy to catch it."

Don't wanna post up the Andrew Upshaw video as it might get removed, but it's easy to find on youtube. Then you can see Bryan New's hot take on his Facebook page. Long story short Bryan New according to 4 witnesses intentionally blew out a bedding fish area so others in the area didn't have a shot at the 6lb fish after he left without catching it. Upshaw was in the same creek along with another angler and their co anglers. Upshaw reported the event to Hank the derby director, and some are calling him a snitch. My take is good for Upshaw and it's actually in the BASS rules that if an angler sees a fellow angler commit an infraction, they're obligated to report it.

Boyd is arguably the most unlikeable pro in the history of Bass fishing. Badge of honor for Watson.

One thing I've noticed in terms of biases is that the harder a 5+ fights, the more likely I'm to overestimate it's weight. The adrenaline factor is very much real.

@ol'crickety could give you some great options, and she fished in a similar part of the country.

My best friend owns an IT business, I accidentally deleted some files I didn't want to and called him up because I wanted a file recovery program that didn't cost me a bunch of money, all the free ones ultimately wanted payment. He sent me a program that worked awesome, but now I can't delete files from memory cards on my laptop.....ahhhhhh. Now he's got to fix that. Wish I could help, but between me deleting files on accident, and having an entire card go corrupt, it's a real pita sometimes dealing with gopros.

If they aren't up on the bank be it main lake or the back of creeks, then I'd expect for them to be staged up at the closest secondary and even main lake points leading to the locations you know they'll spawn at. If you found them good in the winter, and you know where they'll be spawning.....it's just a matter of drawing a line between the two points and concentrating on the fishy looking spots b/t the two. I think we as anglers get way too locked into water temps, or another of the main spawn trigger events like moon cycle, instead of just using our eyeballs, and fish catches (the color of the fish, condition of the tail, and often times pinkish looking areas that indicate stress) to put the puzzle together. I wasted the first 6 weeks of the spawn last year, and a big reason for that was I wasn't up on the banks looking for bucks, beds, and eventually pairs. Once they make their push up shallow, I don't think they back that far out until they go true post spawn mode.

If only Pete Rose was the golden boy during his scandal. They had this dude read a prepared media statement in a media room in front of no media 🤣

Not a danger noodle I surmise? I'll pour one out for your lost casting net 😢