Pat Brown

It's kind of funny. I think that if I was limiting myself to two poles I would bring a 7 ft moderate action spinning rod and a 7 ft 6 medium heavy baitcasting rod. But since I'm allowed to do whatever I want, I rarely bring a spinning rod on the boat at all. When you're gonna be switching baits and techniques a lot and need a bite badly, hard to beat a spinning rod with 8 lb test line. They hold a lot of line and are easy to present baits a variety of ways effectively. Last year when I got serious about bass fishing, I bought baitcasters right off the bat and tried to catch fish with them from the boat but my first few 6+ lbers were all caught on spinning rods with 8 lb mono and weightless plastics fishing from the bank. I will ALWAYS value that particular piece of humbling history in my own story because you should NEVER write off a magical wand that catches giant fish.

I like the ones with the full living rubber /silicon hybrid skirts that I can trim to my liking with the wire tie so I get the Dredge Brush Mata most of the time. I love setting the hook with the Owner Deep Throat hooks. Seems to really keep em pinned and I can reel down and pressure set easily which is my preference.

North Carolina 'seasons' are so poorly defined at this point that it's difficult to say which season is the best or worse but the late summer/early fall was pretty tough for a second there. I'm gonna call it 'fall' more so than summer because it felt transitional.

Seems like a mixture of Florida and Northern LMB. Lots of crappie and shad and sunfish and frogs and crawdads all over. The vast majority of the pond is about 3 ft deep with the deepest spots being about 5 ft deep. So regardless of water clarity on any given day they can see very well because they're never very far from the surface and the water never gets much murkier than 1 FOV. Most of the time the clarity ranges from different areas across the pond from 1 ft to 3 ft of clarity. The clearest water being the water right up against the bank (where they typically lounge). So that means more or less they can see anything and everything in their vicinity all the time most days.

All I can say is, you kinda gotta fish this pond to understand but not all bass or bodies of water are built the same in terms of how they behave and how easy to catch they are. According to the people who live around it and have fished it their whole lives, there's no fish at all. I'm here to tell you that is false and they even bite and there are big and small and medium sized ones....but on this small public pond, they only bite twice a day and then beyond that you're praying for anger/aggression/stupidity and these fish just don't behave like that. They don't even eat worms or live shad or bluegills. All I can figure is that with a small enough body of water and a consistent enough threat, they can get conditioned into being cautious enough to only attempt eating specific foods at specific times.... You can see them swim around and ignore the abundant forage in the area and sort of swim away from any lines at all in the water at most hours of the day. Most places I fish, bass just bite or they don't and there isn't much rhyme or reason to it. The only exception I can identify on this small body of water is an extreme weather shift. Big fronts or rains rolling in can turn the bite on at times when normally they are 'dormant'. As far as the OP, I still think it just depends on the body of water and the fish. Sometimes it really really doesn't matter and sometimes it matters.

Fish every 2 ft of a laydown instead of left right and front and then move on. Parallel a bank 1 ft, then 3 ft, then 5 ft, then 10 ft instead of one cast and retrieve 5 ft from the bank etc. I think of slowing down as simply being more deliberately methodical and systematic in my covering an area, where as fishing fast I may make one high % cast in an area and then move if I don't get bit. It's not really what speed I move the bait necessarily although some days (usually slick calm super hot days) dead sticking can get bit if there are fish around. I try to always vary my retrieve regardless of how fast I'm fishing.

I fish bodies of water where they eat for an hour a day twice a day and that's it and they only eat shad. I fish other bodies of water where they eat pink hairballs with tentacles. I think it's just kinda how hard they get hammered on and how much they love their favorite food (and how much of it is around).

As a dad who fishes with my son often, I can attest to this but I like to play the long game. Let him win a few and then show him how it's REALLY done now and again. (At least that's what I tell myself when he smokes me on any given day! ?) Like he did yesterday with the one bass we got all day!

This is about the long and short of it. Here's my overly wordy abstract probably unhelpful two cents on this age old bass fishing conundrum: Bass fishing is a lot like playing the lottery. Every cast is a ticket. Would you keep playing the same lottery number over and over and over at the gas station? No you buy another lottery ticket to increase your chances of securing a winning number. Basically bass fishing is the same. Different baits, locations, speeds, depths etc etc etc is like buying another lottery ticket before you cash out for the day on the lake: Thing is, unlike gambling at a gas station, it's free to play around with retrieve and location and depth and speed and bait type and all that stuff so I suggest, on days where they aren't biting' the usual stuff in the usual spots: Buy lots of tickets! Think outside the box and try lots of different things....sometimes in the same cast (like going slow....then fast....then stopping....then fast....etc all in one retrieve) It can feel silly at first, but days where I just play the numbers and just move and try lots of stuff I can usually figure out a bite happening somewhere on something. Let the bass and the conditions and time of year guide you but not cloud your vision. Stay open minded!

A channel not often talked about that I found completely MIND BLOWING is The Nature of Fishing. I mean....this man goes DEEP into bass behavior and his series around the spawn is breathtaking. You can feel his passion and obsession and he really clarifies a ton of bass behavior tendencies and things of that sort for each season and even for different water types and weather conditions. Just unbelievable information. If you love Bass fishing, do your self a favor and watch The Nature of Fishing. No affiliation what so ever, just never hear it mentioned and it's great! All these other guys are great too and I love em all!

Just got a ton of three quarter ounce brush jigs for the hot weather times that are coming (big fan of fast fall in warm water). Super pumped to put them to good use. ?

Caught many huge bass on 12 lb test line so that's my baseline for everything but flipping and pitching which I use 20 lb for. 12 lb test + weightless Texas rig = the summer time killer.

Just a lil 4 lb 5 oz bass on the ole Siebert swim jig to start March out right. Great way to get the month rolling. So wild that she hasn't even started to feed AND hasn't spawned yet. Just goes to show that not all fish on the pond are on the same schedule.

I just use a Palomar for braid and a SDJ for everything else at this point. Works great! Double the jam if you are gonna be banging the knot into lots of sharp stuff!

The kastking is waterproof, backlit and it floats and it's 25$. Been using mine two years no problems. Just had to replace the battery once. I even use it to ship large international parcels my shipping scales don't cover for work. It works GREAT and it's accurate enough for customs!

Sounds almost like the bigger fish might be getting wise. I fish a pond that has GIANT LMB. I mean like I've talked to park wardens who can refer to the shock studies and the pond has quite a few 10+ lb bass. I whole heartedly believe it because I caught my 9.1 lb PB out of there this February. You go out there on a weekend and fish all day, you will not get a single bite. You will swear there are no fish. It's the kind of thing where old timers walk up to you holding a rod at 7 am and say 'son, ain't nobody caught a fish outta there since the 70s'. Literally, not even kidding. There are TONS of bass in this pond. I mean TONS. From fingerling up to trophy with everything in between. The fish are just VERY educated and have very specific feeding preferences and bite windows that evolved over many years of constant fishing pressure at specific times and with lots of specific baits. I would recommend the hour before sunset and the hour before sunrise and fishing as quietly as humanly possible. Plan to make ONE good cast and commit to it per area or you will scare schools away. Move with each cast and only retry areas after 20 minutes or so have passed. Just little things that seem to help me get more bites on the pond with no fish in it where I caught a 9 lber.

LMB please and thank you. Why? Because it would be so fun to reel that fish in! I'd let her go though. Let people argue about if it's real or not. The whole 9 yards ?

I find 90% of my bites on a jig come on the fall and close to 100% for bigger fish. I would just cast it, let it fall. Hop or dead stick it a bit and then reel in if no takers. This is what I usually do fishing jigs on mucky bottoms. I also like using a bulky trailer with lots of lift and as light a jig head as I can in muck but SOMETIMES the fish suspending around a log in the muck want the jig to rocket past their face on the fall...so there's that. My best advice is work it back less and if fish wants it presented horizontally, do so by swimming it as others have said and try to keep it just out of the sludge. This is actually deep level jig theory you're getting into because there are times they won't eat a chatterbait or spinnerbait or crankbait or a fast falling jig but you start swimming your jig back slow? They crush it. I often time find this kind of a swimming jig bite is more common at the muckier bottom fisheries than harder bottom ones. I don't think bass like that muck.

Yeah I actually generally really do well with numbers of large fish in the post spawn. Last year late April - late June was just completely wild.

That's fishin'???

Here's the first 4 from our trip out today. Jake got a nice 4.8 lber on the Siebert Brush Jig with a Yamamoto grub. We got a couple off the rip rap on lipless and football jigs. Moved back into the cove where Jake got the 5 lbe and tossed my siebert brush jig with a labbat chigger craw into a laydown sitting out in about 7 feet of water just off the bank. I felt her hit instantly and when I set the hook I felt my drag slip in a very satisfying tell tale screech that told me it was big fish time. My wife did a beautiful job netting my second largest fish ever and the biggest of the day on this short and fantastic February Jon Boat adventure! Stay tuned for more. Pre Spawn just getting started I reckon! ?

Very near every jig bite I've ever gotten from a fish that was over 5 lb came on the fall almost instantly. I do NOT fish jigs slowly MOST of the time. There are times when bass REFUSE to eat a horizontal presentation as much as I want them to and they refuse to eat it on the fall as much as I want them to. These are the times where a dragging/hopping/dead sticking presentation becomes necessary regardless of bait. I find this is most often when water is on the clearer side and fish are closer to the bottom/not actively feeding. I don't like fishing slow at all though (it can help get bites on certain days).

When the water temp went down to 40° I caught fish on living rubber jigs with low action trailers, drop shots with little worms, spinnerbait and lipless crankbait. The jig was was my best producer this winter but being around fish seemed to be the most important thing. Good luck with ice out!

He ain't much but he sure wanted that big old Siebert spinnerbait! Pretty morning with 70° warm winds blowing in out of the southwest. Gorgeous cotton candy skies. Paralleling the bank he hit like a freight train. Popped him right on back in where he came from and scurried home to get to work Tight lines!

Got a little largemouth on a big junebug lizard at the pond today during a brief trip with my son (teacher work day). He got 10 channel catfish fishing with chicken liver on a Carolina rig! He was needing a confidence boost and the panfish aren't quite hitting yet so I suggested catfish and boy did it work! Hahahaha