Pat Brown

Was just gonna say what @Cattsaid If it ain't white, they don't bite w/ regards to topwaters on my water. Day or night. White catches the giants.

@AlabamaSpothunter one thing you can do is a bobber stop on BOTH sides of the tungsten weight and then adjust how far down you go before you come out of the worm. My knots have a couple mm of solid rubber protecting them all the time and if I want my glorious punch rig to become a glorious C rig I slide the pair of bobber stops and the weight up and then cast it out. Caught fish on the fake c rig and the punch rig a lot this season. I actually think it's getting more bites for different reasons than you think the free rig is but similar. I think the fish here are dealing with a LOT of unpegged weights and when they see some little thing popping around in front of some plastic I think they are more weary than when you take the time to thread the plastic so it looks like a single streamlined profile with the pegged weight, which makes it a nice profile with no obvious 'seam'. Still you got me wanting to try the free rig! ??

Weird story surrounding worm fishing: one of my best friends of all time isn't much of a bass fisherman. We Catfish and fish for drum and have a blast but for some reason when we fish artificials together, I smoke him and he can't get bit. Well back years ago before I was a bass fisherman proper, we went to a golf course pond one summer night near our mutual friends house to enjoy a cold beverage and feed some giant snapping turtles. My friend brought his spinning rig and decided he wanted to make a few casts at the burgeoning lily pads and perhaps catch a sunfish or two. He dug up some nightcrawlers out of the dirt near the bank and put one on a bobber and cast to the edge of the lily pads. There was a huge boil and down the bobber went. He caught a 6 lber. Biggest bass any of us had ever seen at that point. Worms work.

One thing I keep coming back to is that you caught that fish in Maine!!!! And she's like completely spawned out. You got your work cut out for you next spring/this fall when they are full. A 7 lb largemouth up north is like a 12-15 lber down here. That's a heck of an accomplishment.

I really really like fishing when it's windy. I don't care what direction or time of year, if it's windy, I'm going. To expand on this just a little bit. I fish a lowland reservoir that barely ever flows any sort of current what so ever. When the wind blows, fish eat. It's about as close to current as they ever experience in their lives.

@TnRiver46Yeah I mean sometimes I feel like they let me reel them in and sometimes they try to jump off and sometimes they pretend they're red drum ???

This past weekend was incredible for bass fishing! For me, I typically get bigger bites around a full moon, so my plan was to fish hard this weekend when plans allowed for it and it just so turned out that Monday was the magical day. Wife called in sick and told me and Jr. to get lost so we happily hopped on the Jon boat at about 9 am yesterday right as a moderate summer rain came through and cooled everything off. We got out on the lake and it was very breezy and all of 74°, a marked change from what we had been experiencing on the boat the last couple weeks. I morning fish at the pond a lot and don't get out on the lake early in the day nearly enough, so I felt uncertain of what to do and the feeling was... exhilarating? My instincts told me that because it had been raining, a lot of fish were going to be pushing up shallow to enjoy an easy meal washed into the lake as the sun finished coming up/out and killing all the shade. My thoughts were: offshore humps or steep bluffs and just target the shallower 'feeding' zones more directly than on a hotter sunnier day where I'd target more outside cover in general. We made our way to the first stop, a main lake point with two nice steep bluffs loaded with deep brush on either side and started working the shallower cover. It wasn't long at all before we were getting bites. Then even less time and Jake stuck the first one of the day on a big ribbon tail worm. Close to three lbs and clean and healthy looking. A bite this early into the trip at our first spot, gave me a lot of confidence so we kept going down that bank. A little further down I stick a nice 2 lber out of brush that is just starting to peak into the emerging sunlight. Temp is starting to climb a good bit. We are probably one hour in. We head over to the next channel swing/point and stick two more nice 2 lbers on worms. I am convinced at this point they are feeding everywhere on the lake in the cooler post rain water and our opportunity to capitalize on that bite is waning. We head offshore to one of my favorite humps. We pull up and I make my first cast and stick a gorgeous 5 lber immidiately. I decided at this point to try a jig and see if I can upgrade my size on the hump. I catch another small 2 lber immidiately and Jake also catches a 1.5 lber on the worm. The sun really starts to beat down and the wind all but dies. It is now approaching 1 pm. The bite slows down a lot on the hump. We see the fish and present lots of stuff but they seemed to pull deep and lock jaw as soon as the sun began baking the flat. Jake suggests we head back to the first point we hit and fish that still shady channel swing bluff wall where he stuck the 3 a couple hours back. I like that idea mainly because there is a nice shadeline that's still a good 50 ft out from the bank we can position in for another hour or so. We pull up at the log where Jake caught his 3 and I see mayflies going nuts under a tree 50 ft to the right of us that sticks out maybe 20 ft over the water about 10 ft up off the surface. Nice easy clearance, well within casting distance. I see on the graph it's about 10 feet of water, so I know there are probably some bass lurking below. I cast my new Bizz Baits Flip n Skip black and blue jig with a chigger craw on it directly at the bugs instead of past them knowing full well that the disturbance could draw up a fish who's been watching and waiting for anything to change. Well.....my jig hits the water and I BARELY feel the lightest tick the instant after I engage my reel and move into position. I remember the wise words of @Catt and I reel down and set the hook like my life depends on it. No waiting for nothing. I feel immidiately like I have deep hooked a stump....but my bait was centimeters beneath the surface. Then the shallow floating stump just DIVES. This fish pulled harder than any fish I have ever caught of any species. I'm thinking this is a 30 lb catfish or something at this point. It literally feels like dead weight that is aggressively pulling drag. Remember the previous trip out I broke off TWICE on hooksets not far from where I hooked this fish....well I went ahead and bumped my set up to 20 lb big game before me and Jake went out yesterday. I'm convinced that is the ONLY reason I landed this fish. She should have broken me off at least 4 times during the fight. At one point she pulled me directly under the boat and had my line scraping into the aluminum and even had my 7'6 rod buckling under her force. I finally turned her head and brought her up and it's an absolute giant largemouth bass. She jumps and Jake misses on the first swing with the net. She plunges again. I'm convinced she's gone but I turned her around one more time and bring her up and Jake scoops her. I can tell Jake is struggling to lift the fish out of the water and into the boat from her sheer mass. She barely fit in our net. I need a bigger net. Her belly was SO post spawn but she is probably the longest fish I've ever caught on my home lake. She weighed 8 lbs on the dot but is the skinniest giant I've ever seen. Hooked firmly in the upper lip, she was never coming off and swam away chipper and unharmed after photos and revival. We are struggling to maintain our jubilation at this point. We do a quick lunch break and drink water and head to another offshore hump as the shadeline is gone. We stick two more 2 lbers at the second hump we visit and then I catch a 1.5 near the marina and then it's time to go because we don't want to die of heat exhaustion but from 9 am - 3 pm we caught the most bass we have ever caught in one outing on the home lake and we caught our best 5 which weighed 22 lbs. I know some of y'all catch bazillions of bass and lots of big bass but for this lake and for us, this was something very very special and rarely happens like that! Here are some of the highlight fish: Hoping to get a full moon giant on the pond also this week but I probably missed my opportunity when I tried to bank flip a 7-8 lber I caught on a buzz toad and it simply flopped very hard and fell off the hook and swam away. That was Friday morning. ? Luckily I didn't snap my rod with the 50 lb braid. Lesson learned ? TIGHT LINES TO ALL!!!! It's hot out there but there's plenty of excitement and beauty to experience outside even in the dead of summer!

My son and I are on the water having one of the best days of fishing we've ever had and seeing your story today literally gave me chills! Congratulations! So so exciting! (Currently taking a quick water break in the shade and recovering from heat and fishes reading this)

Oooooooooooh yes LET'S GO @ol'crickety!!!!!

I really like fishing after cold fronts. Especially late summer/early fall cold fronts. I agree that they'll either be in the deepest water that they can find or the heaviest cover they can find. Weightless worms are always tough to beat but don't be afraid to try your usual stuff. You just never know!!!!

@king fisher I'm addicted to cheap glide baits that are on sale ??? I have a lot of them. Looking forward to the winter this year. Also addicted to lipless cranks and jerkbaits. Cold weather hurry up! My baits want to be loved!

I LOVE Pike and Muskie. I actually really want to target them up North with my Uncle next time I get up there. They're like pretty intensely cool and beautiful and terrifying and all the good stuff. Love love love em. Walleye too. And trout. And salmon. Dad gum it, I just love fishing! Now about them gar....I put 20 lb big game on my flipping stick. I aim to go back to that laydown with my battle-axe and my war paint and see if I can't figure out what done snapped me off. ??

@Woody B that's the darndest thing! I went out yesterday on the boat and got three little guys and on bites that felt like they should have been giant by the way they hit and loaded the rod and the areas I got the bites, I snapped clean off on the hookset. I don't play around with fishing line. 15-20 lb fluorocarbon is about all I ever use. I seldom if ever break off period, often dredging up logs and sticks instead. I know my knot was solid. I wonder if it was gar for me as well?!?!? I mean my line looked like someone took scissors to it next to a laydown. As clean of a cut as I've ever seen. Funny thing is I retied moved 20 ft down the bank and on the next cast same thing happened. Both times my worm got a healthy and assertive thump and the line started moving. I got nothing but gar seems plausible.

Both are top tier affordable reels. I prefer the Fuego personally but it's just how it feels in my hand. I could happily fish either.

I like winter and summer for size . Fall and spring for numbers and weather. Winter can get rough with the shivering and feeling forlorned and not getting a ton of bites but the thrill of catching a fattened sow in the dead of winter is the most exciting feeling in bass fishing IMHO. It's like stalking them. Hoping to be the first person to intercept them when they make their move. Summer can get rough with the sweating and losing consciousness from heat exhaustion but it seems like you're always getting bit in the heat and it keeps you rolling to that next giant bite. For some reason I catch the most big fish in the summer by far. Fall is probably pound for pound the most pleasant time to bass fish around here. You can have insane numbers days and the jig bite goes wild so you catch larger fish also. My son caught his personal best 7 lb 8 oz bass last year on Halloween and I caught a 2.5 a 3.5 and a 4 and he caught a 3 also and it was only a 2 hour afternoon trip out cut short by a nasty storm. Fall is awesome. Spring is probably the best time to introduce someone to bass fishing. It's a visual thing. Being able to see the fish and cast to them and learn how they react to your bait is both exhilarating and also invaluable when you make the leap to fishing for fish you can't see. You start to get an idea of what works to make them tick in general. Also just seeing GIANT female bass lumbering in the clear shallow water and Laughing at people trying to catch them is always fun. I kinda agree they're all the best.

I grew up fishing Lake St Clair and Lake Huron and Lake Michigan up North during the summer for smallmouth. Fished some of my home lakes with my dad growing up but mostly catfish and stripers, nothing like we used to do in the summer up North, which was way more of a foreshadowing towards what was to come years later for me. Wading in crystal clear knee deep water and sticking gorgeous untouched aggressive 2-3 lb bass on every cast til the sunset on crankbaits and floating minnows. Trolling around in the bay where you could see 20 feet down and watch smallmouth in the boulders. It was probably the stuff that led me to this world 'full circle' as an adult bass fisherman in NC. Largemouth Bass fishing is a little more of a stealth, strategy and raw power kinda deal, and it's got my heart now, but I will get back up there to those beautiful brown fish one day soon. Michigan is like ground zero for bass fishing for me. I'll always love it.

I can get with that @Catt. I'm a 'fish whenever I can' kinda dude so mostly I'm looking at weather and if the water is wet and then if all signs point to it, I'm going! I caught one lil guy on a buzz toad tonight and then a t storm hit hard and fast. Nope! Night fishing another night.

Even if it's all in my head it's a good time if only because it's well lit ? I seem to catch my biggest fish around the full moons or new moons almost categorically, so maybe my local fish are more worried about it for some reason. ?‍♂️ I'm gonna go with 'it never hurt nothing' ??

Full Moon Fever ™ is essentially happening from now til next weekend so I expect to be wetting a line in the dark a lot this week. Got a devil's horse, clacking buzzbait, frogs, toads, poppers, spooks, ploppers, big Colorado spinnerbait and of course plenty of jigs and worms for the bottom. Night fishing around the full moon in the summer is a special thing. Fingers crossed for all of us!

Id keep the boat in a heartbeat but that's just me. I like standing up to bass fish a LOT.

I think there isn't a better way to learn to fish a new technique than to put hard sweat time in with it exclusively til you start catching fish. It forces us to be creative and to experiment and to really learn the technique and most importantly it forces us to learn what not to do when throwing the technique, which almost more important than knowing how and when to throw it. The dropshot is incredibly versatile and a known fish catching machine, I'd bring two or even three rods with different leader lengths and weights and bait profiles. Maybe mix a power/bubba shot in there. Go in DEEP when you're learning a new technique.

Jigs. I have so so many jigs. But they are fun to fish and I do lose them so whatever. ????

I feel like it's still hard to rule out confidence if other people catch fish on jigs on your body of water. It's weird how that works but it doesn't really matter. If they aren't working for you, skip em! I'm trying to be more fluid and adaptable and less worried about what it is I'm throwing and more worried about where the bass are biting and what they want.

The electronics don't do you any good if they're sitting in the driveway is another way of looking at my point of view? Still gotta get those transducers and your boat and your line wet. Also for every kid smacking old timers there's a bunch of hardened tournament veterans who don't use technology smacking tech junkie newbies in tournaments. John Cox, Keith Poche, Seth Feider and many others don't rely much on their electronics and still do quite well and aren't super young bucks. I mean all that I personally would have ever needed even back in the day/now to get where I need to go and do what I do is an accurate topographical map with good contour lines, which did exist in many cases back then along with fly overs and guides. I like using my 150$ Garmin sonar unit but after you've used it a couple times and know what's where, you could probably leave it home and do okay. Still nice for identifying if bait is in an area. Still get skunked. Plenty of guys with FFS and all the skill in the world get skunked. It's definitely a different thing entirely than it used to be but it's always been evolving. All this to say, life is short and It's nice that people can teach themselves things fast now. The fish always seem to adapt and make it hard for us about as quick as we figure out how to easily catch them a new way.

@Team9nine I agree with most of what you're saying but I still think if you can't cast or dangle in a way that makes the green slimy ladies wanna mingle, it's a lot of smoke. Now sure, if you got some skill, all that technology and information sure as heck gonna put you in a position to win but where 'time on the water' still matters (even for these young tournament hungry electronics experts) is actually getting fish to bite lures which takes the same amount of practice and nuance and understanding as it ever did, if not more because of how smart and pressured the fish have gotten. It's kinda a dragon eating its tail and always has been and we keep getting older and bass keep getting smarter and new anglers hit the ground running with the whole tool box and it feels like they aren't working for their success, but they are. They just have the ability to maximize their time and be more efficient in eliminating things that are a waste of time than ever before. Perhaps?