Pat Brown

Buzzbait, lipless crankbait, spinnerbait, Jerkbait, frog, buzz toad, jig, swim bait, glide bait, soft plastics (rigged for the depth and cover and bass you're fishing for ?) I've had lights out days with all of these pond fishing!

Unpopular opinion (maybe?) 20 lb Berkley Big Game. It is plenty sensitive and I have stopped losing fish/breaking off on hooksets. YMMV.

Wife had to do PR at the Elon University homecoming football game. Jake and I love football but football while moms working sounded kinda less fun than foregoing the opportunity until she is able to join us.....instead ???.....we found a niiiice little 2 acre HOA style pond with lots of grass and a fountain in the middle smack dab in the middle of student housing on campus and we decided to hit it. It was one of the best days of my life! I caught over 10 LMB all on a Accent Jacob Wheeler buzzbait in black with a Missile Baits Chunky D in bruiser flash on the back. I missed more fish than I caught but I sure did catch some nice ones. Last one of the day EXPLODED right next to the bank and my trailer was long dead but she still hammered it. Guess ya don't need a trailer.?????? Jake got a PB warmouth and a PB longear out of the trip. Buzzbait has skyrocketed to my #1 confidence topwater presentation in the past month. I just wanna go back to that pond and walk that bank forever!!! ????????

Be the first to be there and the last to leave and you won't miss it when it happens ??? This applies to all seasons!

I think there's always fish doing different things at different times at every part of the year and you have populations that relate to different types of forage on every body of water. Unique personalities and habits and all of this translates to a lake full of bass doing lots of different things at the same time and it can be rather confusing but understanding the role that certain biological factors tend to have on both the forage and the bass is better than another Jerkbait or bag of soft plastics.

Enchiladas and agua de horchata and DD bass makes me wanna visit pretty bad!

Siebert, Bizzbaits have all been killer this fall. Been very impressed with my Picasso and Nichols Buzzbaits and I'm eager to try their spinnerbaits.

Carolina rig is more about using the leader length and current to your advantage and a heavy weight will surely keep it where it needs to be. Just a way of presenting soft plastics in current that works well! You just drag it around and let the secondary action get the bites mostly.

Free rig. Drop shot. C rig.

Fall flickers in and out of phase til it's permanent and it's different all over the US (surely later for y'all up north!) I continue to have 'summer days' where ALL they want is a t rigged beaver with unpegged weight flopped in front of them and dragged. But occasionally fall flickers mightily and I catch a few on swim jigs/spinnerbaits/buzzbait/squarebill/lipless. Eventually the summer days cease and the fall days start flickering in a wintery fashion. I'm always one foot in the last season, one foot in the next and two firmly planted in this current moment (yeah I got 4 feet ?) @ol'crickety I think fall is about to come knocking at your door hard and fast when it does!

Sounds like it's time to work some obnoxious reaction baits into your regimen! Ever try the tiny chatterbaits/Buzzbaits/lipless crankbaits/suspending jerkbaits? You could try a weightless caffeine shad and twitch it around violently in their faces also. I betcha those impartial investigators might get to swiping and biting if you kinda make em react!

Since Jr. went back to school after summer vacation, I've had to do the requisite 'push hard at work' that comes with that relief since I watch him during the summers while running a small business from home....fishing has been less frequent. But still managed to get out for some killer trips. No Giants (missed more than a couple and that's just how it goes!) but lots of really nice 1-3 lb bass caught on buzzbaits, jigs, beavers and spinnerbaits. An extreme heatwave just came to a conclusion that had fish pulling back off the bank somewhat but some rain last week gave way to some 80° high 57° low days (today is one!) and fish seem to be pushing up shallow again in the ever present ebb and flow of bass seasonal migration. I think this accounts for the 'difficulty' consistently locating bass during August and September. September is finally feeling like October and perhaps it will stick this time. Had some fun doing a little night fishing last weekend. Jake has been finding lots of big juicy black and red crawdads at the pond! Hoping I can make use of the right bites this weekend ?? Tight lines and looking forward to the fall beast parade!

This could be a load of bologna, but I've always heard that the really sharp teeth means they're feeding primarily on shad and the smooth lips means they're in the rocks eating crawdads primarily. Totally no basis in reality or science for this...just hearsay. Makes sense sort of I guess?

If they can see good, I'll skip the trailer hook and if they're missing it I usually feel more compelled to change my retrieve/weight/trailer action/profile/skirt color or something. Super muddy water or darkness, trailer hook seems wise. They're just not very accurate in the dark....or at least they're not as committed. Another time I might use a trailer hook is if they want me to burn it hard.

I've been finding that with a trailer hook on my buzzbait I get a LOT less bites. When I downsize my trailer/skirt/profile instead of adding a trailer hook, I find that I get a lot more bites and thus opportunities to hook them but it is easier to pull it away. I'm finding that night fishing is about the only time I'll ever put a trailer hook on a buzzbait. On a spinnerbait I've never even considered it.

When I'm fishing in more open water I'm more apt to play the fish a bit. Especially if I'm using a treble hook bait and lighter line. But in general I'm fishing heavier cover and bigger baits on heavier line and I like to get them in as quickly as possible. For me, the thrill is in successfully tricking a smart and giant bass and getting that precious bite, setting the hook into them and holding and releasing the fish. If I wanted to fight a fish I would toss bluegill out on a circle hook and wait for a 30 lb channel to eat it.

I ran out of stick baits in my bank fishing carry all and threaded a pumpkin trick worm (regular pumpkin not green pumpkin) and dipped it in chartreuse and I wore that worm out in about 5 minutes catching 5 fish on 5 casts and the last one was a 4 lber! I think I was using 12 lb red label and a 1/8 oz lead bullet sinker unpegged. I fish trick worms t rigged a lot more after that day.

I don't disagree that understanding the forage that bass relate to on you body of water is probably more important than understanding bass and how they relate to seasons. I feel like if you cling to the notion that seasons are defined by the temperatures happening around us, you will find yourself fishing loooong abandoned patterns all year long and chasing ghost fish a lot. Seasons happen regardless of weather. That is caused by sunlight and how much of it or little of it is hitting earth every day and I think that signals seasonal shifts more than any other thing for animals. Spring can be really short and it can be really long. It's not one clearly defined thing every year....just as an example. As far as fall migration and how all of this relates to bass behavior, to me it's like bass are either out chasing or they're reproducing (kinda like @Woody B is saying) and in the fall, I think fish move shallow and engage in a variety of activities until the photo period tells them other wise. This migration still happens even if the water is still 90° in September.

I think photo period is all that matters here. I carefully monitored the spawning activity at a pond fishing nearly every day in the early morning. This pond has many large bass. What I have noticed is, here in NC at least (on my lakes and my ponds) bass start spawning about 2-3 weeks after the winter solstice. The water temperature coincidentally DOES usually go up 2-3° along with increasing photo period. I have seen bass on bed in 50° water here in NC, many many times. I believe it is the giant bass that utilize this window of opportunity where bluegill and salamanders and even a lot of things like otters and beavers and birds are fairly dormant. The fish spawn all summer long and well into the fall. Utilizing drops and rock and sustained shade lines in the hotter months. Bloody tails abound in the weekly catch right now. Fresh blood. The ONLY time they seem to feed and not spawn is when that water finally hits 48° and stays there for 2-3 months. Then they move deep and follow shad for the most part.

Don't sleep on the 1/8 oz boogerman in a baitfish color (maybe some chartreuse for smallmouth). They CRUSH that lil guy and it catches giants. Haven't needed a trailer hook with the really small one.

Free rig, c rig, drop shot.

Except that mega hawg on the ole ratt L trap in Toledo gold right???? ??? Or do you mean lipped specifically?

I'm still trying to figure out how to fish a dropshot. Never caught a fish on one but not for any lack of trying in supposedly optimal conditions. I'd even say 'finesse' is my weakness. I am bad at the downsized everything and fish it really slow approach. I guess a jig or a t rig is about as close as I get to doing it and that's more power fishing how I tend to do it. Anyway. Walking hard treble hook topwaters also are something I can't seem to consistently get good results with. I get nipped at and exploded but rarely ever choked or chomped. Switch to a frog and it's game on. I don't get it. I don't do well on days when there's zero wind or current and maybe that's exactly where the finesse bag of tricks would work....I guess I gotta work on finesse!

I fished a buzz bait with a trailer hook recently while night fishing and it was pretty awesome. Seems to be a good idea when they're short striking!

I think it depends on the conditions for me. Bait fish busting everywhere and it's windy and there's clouds in the sky. I'll probably leave everything on and just roll through an area. Not really caring too much if I make noise, but if it's slick calm and has been hot for days and there's no wind, I'm turning everything off and working my way in slow and methodical and quiet. I agree it's all about reading the moment. My largest bass was caught after noisily unsnagging my son's bait from an overhanging tree, complete with banging the boat into shoreline wood cover and talking loudly, trolling motor noise and having the graph on. She seemed unphased by our very unstealthy presence?