EarthboundBob

Thank you everyone for the suggestions. Looking forward to giving some of these a shot!

Newer fisherman here. Today I hit a local pond that gets hardly any pressure. It was dusk, light wind, and bait fish were fleeing bass. I was tossing a 2.5- or 3-inch floating minnow (about the same profile as the bait) right into the action and trying all different sorts of retrieves, but I got only a strike or two and no fish. What lures yield results for you in conditions like this?

2022 was my first full year as an angler, and so a year of many firsts for me: Caught my first stocked brook trout, wild native brook trout, creek chub, white sucker, pumpkinseed, warmouth, rock bass, and yellow bullhead Put my brother on his first trout Lost what would have been my first wild brown Took my four-year-old son fishing for the first of many times Watched my son cast, hook, and land his first fish, which wound up being the best bass of the day Caught a fish in a state further south than Connecticut (North Carolina) Caught, cleaned, cooked, and ate a catch for the first time Bought a kayak (the first vessel I've ever owned) and got a lot of use out of it, fishing various bodies of water for the first time I got a lot of joy from my first year of fishing. Sometimes I can't believe I lived so much of my life without it. I intend to make up for lost time!

I've got a long way to go until retirement, so I can't say for sure. But since I fish from the bank or my kayak and I don't plan on getting a motorized boat, I'd like to retire somewhere with easy access to smaller, uncrowded water. I'd also love to be able to scratch the fishing itch year-round, which would mean moving south or trying to score a summer home. Time will tell!

I started fishing last year. After snapping my first rod in a confrontation with a rabid raccoon, I went to the store and bought another. Couldn't understand why the hook keeper was on the wrong side. It took me weeks to figure out I'd put a spinning reel on a casting rod. Somehow, though, I still managed to catch some fish with that setup!