Pat Brown

I use a 150$ Garmin unit to get a feel for what's going on but my knowledge of the lake and it's contours is about all it's been useful for. Bait in an area can be good and bad. Impossible to unquestionably tell if a fish is a bass or not. Mostly it's just helpful because you can find key fish holding areas that would take a lot of time to identify with a heavy bait and you'd lose baits which is expensive. I've always caught big fish on main lake structure that everyone hammers. It's definitely more about timing and presentation than having electronics. I actually have a form of big fish superstition. I tend to believe that the really big fish get conditioned to the clicking that the transducer makes and I turn it off when I'm going to an area where I know I might catch a big one and I turn my trolling motor off. ????? Yeah. Stealth is more important than electronics.

I went from braid only to Fluorocarbon only to braid to Fluorocarbon leader back to fluorocarbon only to big game. I haven't broken off or lost a fish since switching my heavy flipping to 20 lb big game. Seems plenty sensitive.

The fact that @WRB was in there doing the thing with jigs makes it that much cooler IMO. I'm just happy my name is a combination of the most talked about big bass hunters: Pat (Cullen) (Butch) Brown. I'll take it as a wink and a nudge from the universe to keep hunting the big ones. ?

Love my menace grubs and rage craws. Pretty hard to keep from throwing them on the backs of my jigs from about April through about November. Caught some big beautiful fish with em. Thanks.

I don't know about y'all but I can't seem to help people. I'll tell people exact spots and baits and retrieves and I'll still catch the fish. It's almost like you can give people the keys and the manual but if they don't drive a lot, they won't win the race.

I'll change speed or depth long before I change color. The only time I worry about color is in very clear water or very muddy water. The rest of the time its very low on the totem pole. If I'm not getting bit on a bait I assume it's the action of the bait that isn't appealing, not the color. Bass eat lots of different things that are lots of different colors and I think what causes them to hit a lure is the speed of the lure and the depth it's presented.

@you there is a pond I fish where I always have a white swim jig tied on. They feed on golden shiners, white Nile tilapia, threadfin shad, black crappie, sunfish, baby bass, baby catfish, baby carp, frogs, baby ducks..... basically lots of flashy white things. White seems to get bit 5 to 1 over other jig colors regardless of time of year or conditions. I have done very well on the bigger lakes when bass are ambushing / corraling/ busting shad by targeting them with white swim jigs. They'll try to snatch the rod out of your hands and choke the jig way down their throats.

I think I'd just bring the jig and spinnerbait and a buzzbait. Bottom, middle, top. Fish em hard wherever the water is wet.

That second one in the dark is a dandy. Gorgeous dark green and big bucket mouth! Looks epic!

He would love to. It's been hard for him to get a bigger one than he got last year on Halloween (trick or treating got rained out. We fished the front end of the front that hit right before sunset. ???) 7 lb 7 oz. Main lake point on a Siebert jig with a menace grub. I said cast there and work it down the drop real slow. The smile tells me he was okay with missing out on the costumes and candy maybe just one year!

I think people forget to throw black reaction baits and they don't get fished very often. Great for pressured fisheries where sexy shad and bream and orange get tossed non stop.

Yeah my home lake is fully turned over. No thermocline. There was brown stringy stuff floating EVERYWHERE yesterday. We still caught 10 + all on jigs and lizards with one at the end on the buzzbait. If my lake didn't close at 7 pm I could have caught fish on the shallow point we located them on at the end til the sun went down. Biggest fish was caught by my wife on a @Siebert Outdoors swim jig. My son sadly broke off on almost certainly his new PB but we found where a school of very large bass likes to feed at sunset and we may have another shot at her or one of her sisters soon.

There's bank access and some really great spots on Jordan Lake.

I really like black worms on shaky heads a lot. Seems like something will always hit that.

Catching fish and enjoying a day on the water sounds like a big win to me. The giants come and go, but the time out there in nature is the best part.

I caught a tree branch that had two red eye shads that had been barely used hung in it and I have both of them in my bank fishing tackle box ready for the cold weather ????

Hitting the big lake first thing in the morning @LrgmouthShad Hoping the water is nice and cool and the bass are nice and shallow. Might have to hit it in Monday since Jr. is out of school!

@RRocket that's my favorite way to night fish! Perfect. You'll definitely find bigger fish on the bottom at night. Are you familiar with the old night basser wisdom: Some nights they want the jig. Some nights they want 'the worm' (which I have learned basically just means a soft plastic/free rig/t rig/c rig/drop shot. If you can't buy a bite on the free rig after 20 minutes or the bite on that shuts down, switch to a jig and craw. I don't know why but there are nights I can't buy a bite on a worm and then start crushing with a jig and vice versa. Keep it at the back of your mind when fishing bottom contact at night.

@padlin summer is the right time for that! Caught plenty this summer that looked 6 in the lake and were 4 in the boat. Bellies matter.

There's almost always a lul usually from around sunset til moonrise for most people. True night fisherman go out at 11pm and stay til 6 am. The biggest feeding windows seem to be around sunset and sunrise but there's a special time from around 2 am to 5 am where some really big fish seem to feed at most lakes I've fished. You'd be surprised. Fish smaller profiles and less action at night plenty and catch giants doing it. I fish the season/conditions and body of water the exact same at night as I would in the daytime and mostly ignore the darkness. It they normally wouldn't go for a free rigged big flappy thing, I'd skip it this time of year at night. It's my experience that Bass usually bite the same stuff they bite in the daytime, just a little bit more aggressively at night. And it helps to move a little slower sometimes so they have some time to find it. But they find it. Try a buzz toad over those gnarly weeds. A lot of time when the lil fish stop biting (quiet in the kiddie pool) you gotta figure they're afraid of being potentially eaten/it may be a signal the big girls are around.

They're back on bed here in NC tonight. Biting the buzzbait, hollow frog and jig real good tonight. I'm sure they would have hit a worm but never got to throwing it. Caught two on the jig but even though I didn't connect on the buzzbait or frog with any of the fish that hit it, the topwaters told me right where to put my jig to catch a couple. Some nights they choke topwater and won't touch a jig. Some nights they want to eat off the bottom and won't touch on top. Some nights they'll start out eating on top and pause for an hour and then resume on the bottom etc. You just gotta rotate baits and areas til you figure out what they want. They'll let you know. Main reason I find it's good to rotate areas is you'll catch one off an area and if you let it cool off for a second you can come back 10 minutes later and catch another but sometimes you can make fish tight lipped if you over work them and they get wise.

That fish has an awesome looking eyeball. Her lip thickness is wild. The more you look at her, the more stuff jumps out as 'big'. Still. Can't tell from pictures! Moreover, can't tell from length or looking at it either.

This is my first trip @Woody B We researched places we wanted to check out pretty extensively and this fishery looks incredible. It's on top of a flooded city complete with remaining submerged architecture! Max depth of 50 ft in some places. I'm just beyond excited to hit it. If I caught an 8 lb smallmouth I'd probably fall out of the boat and drown from shock. ????

It is actually my experience that the football shape is more common up north where you see less stunted bass and bass that are less hammered by people because of the long period of rest they get under ice every year. It is not uncommon this time of year regardless of where you are in the US to catch bass that are a little deflated looking because in most cases, they have just gotten done spawning for the past 4 months and are in recovery mode. @ol'cricketyis from Maine and fishes bogs and every bass she catches looks like a linebacker from the 86 Bears.

They see well at all times of day. They have to worry less about heron and otter and pike easily killing them at night and they can more easily ambush prey in the dark. A basses eye sight is it's strongest feeding mechanism and bass can see 4 times further than we can. If the water clarity is 4 ft. They can see a lure 16 feet away. Not to mention they have lateral lines they use to find prey that's vibrating. At night I like to use bulkier baits in general and I like to fish topwater, but yes, fish as you would during the daytime! Bass don't abandon favorable bait holding structure when the sun goes down!