Pat Brown

I’d say the world is a fun house unfortunately. 😢

I have a lot of thoughts but in this rare instance, I think simplification might benefit my message. Social media is a mirror. Yes a mirror can hurt - especially when you don’t like what you’re seeing. But mirrors aren’t evil - they just reflect what’s already there. Are mirrors dangerous? Hardly. But sometimes what we see is overwhelming and unsettling - what we do with that feeling is what counts. Social media is a choice just like sugar or occasionally looking in the mirror and what we do with the information is also a choice. I think it’s just shining a light on exactly how unsavory the world has become.

I haven’t tried a single new bait for 2026 so I can’t honestly say! But I always recommend people fish worms. Boy do worms work for bass fish.

Well done, sir! Absolute monster Muskie there! Mepps are pretty much the coolest.

Flipping from being someone who’s struggling to catch bass into someone who finds it easy to catch bass would be fun.

Dark mode - very nice @Glenn ! Looking forward to enjoying all the upgrades- thanks!

thats awesome - totally get it like a suspend strip but inverted - just wasn’t aware they existed - I’ll have to give them a try for 7 bucks! I’ll get many uses out of them between cranks and jerkbaits and glide baits etc. i have mostly just used baits that are intended to float and then weight them down to control depth and found that useful but I have plenty of sinking glide baits that would be much more useful if they suspended etc.

That’s cool @Rockhopper - wasn’t aware of float board.

A number of brands already offer natural bellies with bright tops. If you look around there usually is one or two of those for every brand.

I have caught a lot of fish on glide baits at small ponds - not my first choice at a spot that gets choked out with weeds - but they can work in deeper spots or over grass that isn’t topped out and they can work fished very fast around shallow cover and structure for sure. They catch dinks more than they catch big fish and they also tend to get lost and it’s like an Alabama rig - 30$ down the toilet. try a magnum fluke rigged weightless or a magnum speed worm rigged weightless to see how fish respond to bigger profiles without breaking the bank and then go from there. Usually - bigger baits seem to work best for me when the water is super stained. Another fun thing that might be worth trying that will result in way less baits being lost would be a large wake bait. They make jointed ones that float just under the surface now and I figure something that doesn’t sink on the pause would be much better in a small pond choked with grass that tends to be shallow. Glide baits tend to be limited in that you can’t stop them for very long or really at all in some cases- without losing them. Makes fishing them effectively kinda difficult from the bank in my experience. Another option to try would be a full sized Zara Spook - the originals definitely glide on the surface and it’s a nice big profile that could give you a hint as to whether big baits will work without as many headaches - and a spook is always a useful lure to have in your arsenal anyway. I think basically if you’re sight fishing clean banks or using forward facing sonar bigger baits can be the good - but if you’re covering water with uncertain depth and cover from the bank - i only throw them when it feels right. To me “right” is any event that makes the water super dirty and simultaneously warmer etc - things that tend to activate fish a lot and make them super aggressive - usually they’ll bite a big profile better for me. When it’s calm or clear water and cold etc - I do much better going subtler and smaller. My biggest bass on a glide bait was an 8 lb 9 oz bass caught at a spillway in the fall on a super windy day with murky water and giant gizzards were literally visible along every bank and huge schools of small ones were loaded in big drains and guts. I was burning it across the surface and she nearly ripped the rod out of my hands. Caught a lot of 4-6 lbers at small ponds on glide baits around beds in the spring but they sour to that profile SO fast it’s amazing.

Yeah this thread literally got me thinking about throwing a c rig 21 years later. Also fun to see bass fishing discussion before the fluorocarbon “revolution” 😂

Jig / buzzbait / trap / frog / worm / jerkbait / spinnerbait - tied on pretty much 365 days a year for me.

Awesome advice @jermination2.0 - how heavy of a jig head do you typically like for that 6-8 foot range?

Dude that 18” fish is a mini tank! So healthy! The genetics in that spot are great - the 25” fish probably teeners.

That’s interesting @jermination2.0 - I completely agree that the majority of fish wait for much more substantial changes in weather patterns but I think that the bigger females that are residential creek fish are chomping at the bit and feed on things that slide back and forth in and out of the creeks more - so they behave a little differently than the pelagic fish that follow food. There are creeks on my lakes that never stop firing - weather seems to move these fish around a LOT more than the deeper fish - HOWEVER- on my lakes the deep schools get WAY more pressure this time of year than creek fish by a thousand miles. This is FFS season here in NC so I do okay studying fish and bait and bird behavior and learning how to tango with the lonely un fettered cold water creek fish. They will definitely burn you though - biting and around one day and gone the next - usually somewhere close but confusing! Also worth noting - the shallower the average depth of your lake and the more grass - I believe the more weather affects the bait day to day. Deeper spots with no grass I won’t see a single living thing up shallow til April some years but if there’s grass - there will be shiners on the banks days after ice thaws.

that’s a cool idea - I was having bang up success with this as temps fell into the 60s and 50s in the early fall - makes sense that the bite comes back in the Prespawn! I’ll have to give it a try this week. Thanks for the tip!

It definitely helps to have a video of the retrieve and the cadence and all that produced the bite! It also records the time of day and sky conditions and the amount of ripple on the water and lots of other things we easily forget.

I think I’m gonna be fishing a trap a lot this week for sure - always seems to be deadly when it’s a cloudy warm spell in January! Cloudy water - seems like even better usually .

I’ve been seeing gizzards like that one near the surface in 2 feet of muddy water! They almost look like carp sometimes when they’re huge like that. I wonder if the vegetation and large bluff banks are keeping my smaller lake a little more protected from the wind that drops surface temps. It was in the mid 40s after the big cold snap a couple weeks back but it’s been steady climbing and a lot of protected areas were in the low 50s this weekend. Totally wild. Those suspending schools in mid depth are a really good sign - the bait being at the back of pockets right now blows my mind. I think the real kicker is nights not getting below 40 for 6 days - that’s a big big deal usually in late February or March. Gotta figure it could move a substantial number of fish in a hurry if they feel that it’s stable-ish.

We have a big time warming trend hitting this week: One night this week where it gets below 40 and only just barely. Yesterday was extremely warm too. How are you guys attacking a 7 day stretch of 70 degree days in mid January? Past experience has taught me to start looking at spawning bays sooner rather than later. The bigger ones don’t know that it’s not spring - they just feel it warm up and see that crappie and sunfish aren’t infesting their nesting grounds and set up shop. Surface temps were already back in the low 50s yesterday and I predict mid 50s by mid week. My experience has taught me that these early spawning fish will set up more on staging areas and even spawn on the points leading back into the main coves. What are some other early spawner/staging areas you like during a false spring and how do you typically fish a day when it’s warming. I have found that during these warming events - it pays to fish sunrise as though it’s April or May - it seems like the bigger fish don’t know that it’s not April or May during weeks where it does this. Anyone else have similar weather coming in this week and how do you plan to be one step ahead of the bass?

same I do it every so often when I’m about to cast. I have flattened hooks banging a jig into a bridge piling. Sharpening a hook takes maybe 5 seconds. I do it to treble hooks because it’s extremely rare that all 6-9 tips are dull. And even if they were - sharpening them all will do wonders for your confidence. I had 11 fish hours this fall on the lipless - had to sharpen it mid bite window when I started losing them on the only lipless they’d bite! Started landing them again. It’s one of the only gimmicks that isn’t just a gimmick to sell you something. Sharpen your hooks if you like landing the fish that bite!

I had to follow @Fried Lemons lead with a season opener on a jig and conditions were perfect for it. What makes this one special is it’s my first bass on a jig with a pork trailer that i haven’t instantly broken off on the hookset - I did the classic Tom/ @WRB-2.0 reel fast and sweep hard hookset and her extremely sharp teeth didn’t cut my 15 lb big game. Got it on camera too! she had a nice fat belly and I found her in 4 feet of water on wood - water temps in the mid 40s - nice and cloudy. @Siebert Outdoors 1/2 oz living rubber black and blue brush jig with a paw paw E pork chunk in blue on the back did the heavy lifting. I didn’t feel the bite or even move my bait. Just saw the line swimming. Made the flip from probably 5 feet away from the laydown she came off of. really nice way to start the year - a jig bass with pork for Tom!

What a great start to the year! Well done! 🔥 🔥 🔥

It’s warm and I’m heading out for a brief trip on the lake - I might have you beat by the end of the day if all goes well*@TnRiver46 . * getting a single bite

Mag speed worm in green pumpkin with a pegged tungsten sinker got my 11 lb 5 oz bass in May of last year and then the grass jig in pats gizzard with a largo shad got me a 9-14, 9-3, 8-8 and a bunch of 6-7 lbers between March and May. Spro Bronzeye 65 also got a 9-3 for me which I was thrilled about. Got an 8-8 on the black Spro popping frog and and 8-8 on the aaron martens hog snatcher buzzbait both from a public pond I love to fish! Got some tanks in the 5-7 lb range on the red eye shad and the hybrid Hunter in the fall and the bladed jig finally made a come back for me this year picking up a couple nice ones this fall for me! Floating trick worm got many 5-7 lbers in the post spawn. Free rig ribbon tail came to play in July and caught everything I caught until about September including some tanks. Caught a good number of 5-7 lbers in the post spawn on the 7” Zaldangerous swimbait on lakes and ponds. Every season played a little differently from the previous season in a fun way this year - much less overlap in terms of bites fading and activating. It was hard and defined changes for me on my lakes this year where they’d be on something and everywhere eating it for two weeks and then things would move and change and they’d be on to the next thing in the next area. Most years they settle in to something for a while and usually you can still catch them on that bleeding into the next phase around here pretty good . This year the fall feed in shallow flat areas was super hard and fast and lasted a very clearly defined two week period and then they were gone to deeper areas. Not at all like 2024 for me where they were eating a frog while it snowed in December. I feel like the winter was so hard in 2024 - it kinda made them more aware of the temps this year it seems like - hard to explain but they seemed to react very quickly to minor temperature shifts way more than previous years and I’m suspicious because we had ice for 3 months last year - wonder if it scared em! 😂