Pat Brown

Selective Harvest > Catch and Release all LMB I've changed my tune over the last 4 years for sure.

3/4-1 oz grass jig and craw or swimbait shad colors 7/16 oz pegged T rig beaver green pumpkin I like missile baits d bomb. Worm weightless (I like trick worms/senko/mag speed worm/fluke etc) Spro Frog any of them will but it should probably be white or black or yellow or clear. Buzzbait - black 1/2 oz with skirt rage menace and trailer hook. Spinnerbait 3/4 oz white chartreuse gold tandem willow with no trailer. Lipless 1/4-3/4 oz rat l trap or red eye shad in a clear shad color Jerkbait Berkeley stunna, lucky craft pointer, Rapala, whatever is your favorite. Best bait for suspending fish that are actively chasing.

Jake waxed everything at the pressured public pond last night on the pop and fly. I sadly lost a 6+ at the bank that I was in the water trying to land - she was even hooked nicely and stayed on longer than she should have during the clumsy and awkward job I had to do landing her. I almost snapped my jig rod going into the water for her and I had to grab the line both to protect the rod and to keep her in grabbing range and she started flopping and jumping in 6" of water on some rocks 2' down from where I was standing. I went in for her and even bloodied my knuckles trying to get a hand in her mouth but she was a cunning old girl and she slipped through my fingertips quite literally. Good for her! We also saw a MASSIVE bullfrog being consumed by a water snake and it was epic! To give you all an idea of the absolutely stupid size of this bully - it's hind leg to the right of the snakes head here is 5" long extended fully. Jake also got his biggest sunfish in a while and found a quality toad peeping under a street lamp!

Missed some dandies this week due to user error and general lack of skill fishing 😂😂😂😂 Can't complain - Lady Luck™ has been very good to me lately and as such I will count my blessings and be super grateful to have caught my first 3 wacky bass in 4 years! Been too long - great to be backy on the wacky. 😂😎🥴☝🏼🎣 Jake got a couple nice lil guys on the minnow! And some pretty gills It's Friday and we are gonna hit the ponds when he gets home! Tight lines to all this weekend!

Good to see some chunks showing up for you @Team9nine - 75° water temps is wild! It warms up and cools down fast this time of year around here huh!?!? 😂😂😂

I was actually gonna suggest - if you have a tackle shop even semi local to you - consider ordering from them online - most have in house pours and they almost all roll their own tubes!

Yeah I fish hard and often so I store my jigs pretty un nicely but also I catch fish with them so whatever. Basically sometimes the action of your plastics will get messed up by storing it not in the original clamshell - like a rage craw or a swimbait - but dead action stuff it's less of a concern. Heck I've caught fish on jigs where the swimbait tail was bitten off or the claws of the craw trailer were gone - so basically it's probably more about creating a profile and casting it to the right spot sometimes. When I'm swimming it - I definitely care about the action on the trailer being good.

Boy can I relate to the part where you said 'hooked some heavies' a lot - believe me if I caught all the fish that bit and were on this spring - I might seriously have a new PB right now. It's been brutal. Thankful to have had some success - but I have lost some absolute dandies this spring.

Probably worm or jig and craw in NC. Pretty hard to beat 365 days a year. I personally would give the nod to The Jig mainly because of the fact that I can be more efficient and typically save some money by fishing jigs over a Texas rig which tends to get torn up and has to be redone with each fish.

Lately, everything I've been seeing has been leading me to believe that of those three you're going to have the most fun on Sharon Harris. Seems like it's a little bit more slept on and less hammered. But Jordan has some giant freaking bass in it.

So how'd it go? 😂😂😂

I've done really well with a few. Dobyns Sierra 7'6 heavy flip Favorite Emperor 7'3 MHF Abu Garcia Veritas 7'6 MHMF Irod Gen3 Sniper Swim (excellent jig and t rig rod) I'm probably going to get a dedicated jig rod from irod next and it will probably be a gen 3 in the 7'3-7'5 range and probably be a MHF ish action.

We have been spawning, post spawn and pre-spawn for a couple months now and I expect us to stay that way, probably until December sometime lol

I use the supreme grass jig 🙂 It's very similar to mud shad I believe! Heavy jigs have a faster rate of fall and are easier to cast accurately - especially from a moving boat on a windy day - and feel bites with etc.

Water temp: 72° on the surface. Time of day: 3 pm. Wind: steady 12 mph out of SW. Lure : Siebert 1 oz grass jig in 'Pats Gizzard' with a green pumpkin speed craw trailer. Water clarity: 5 feet of visibility. Cast to a pale spot on a wind blown bank on the sunny side of the lake and she ate it rather instantly. My line started coiling up towards me which was of course against the laws of physics so I reeled fast and set the hook hard and she was in my net a few seconds later after pulling some major drag and trying to jump off a few times.

Funny anecdote from yesterday that sorts relates to the topic of this thread: After returning from a trip to visit family for Easter - we decide to hit our small local lake one time before going back to work for the week because the bite was red hot all last week and we feel we have a good shot at a trophy. Well - in the first 20 minutes of the day - I see a great big hAwg swimming around a spawning pocket and Jake and I work the area and can't get her interested in anything. She inspects a frog but that's it. We can see she's big and me and him start to get the big bass jitters. Anyone who sight fishes in the spring knows what I'm referring to. Wind is blowing us in a way that makes it very difficult to maintain boat position and I can't see her or my bait or really anything at this point and as we are leaving I make one more cast to the general area from a good distance and my bait doesn't reach the bottom. Just starts swimming. I reel down and feel the fish and give her the business - she loads up nicely and starts pulling drag. Fish comes up jumping and I call for the net. I see her - solid 4-5 lber hooked nicely. She digs once really hard and comes off. At this point I feel pretty defeated. It's rare that I have a great day after losing a big fish early on but I'm feeling confident that it's hopefully a sign of good things to come and try to convince Jake of the same. We work our way up the lake some - encountering boat after boat after boat in all the protected areas I planned to check. Finally I resign to fishing the Windy Banks. Not my favorite thing to do during the spawn but I can't stand fishing around other boats. It just feels wrong. We are working hard to maintain boat position and I'm keeping the boat in roughly 4-6 feet of water and looking at the shallow water the best I can with the ripple and chop for fish. I see a pale spot WAY up next to the bank a ways away from the boat and blind cast it with my jig and the line goes limp and starts moving back towards me. I pound the hook hard and my drag starts screaming out. Fish is WAY bigger than anything I imagined would be way up there in inches of water on a sunny super windy bank. After a heck of a fight - I boat this beautiful 9 lb 3 oz bass. One of the biggest of my life. The main point is - DON'T let failure discourage you. You're one bite closer to the fish of a lifetime. ALWAYS.

You don't really need every paddle tail on the market. Just get a few different sizes in like a more clear water and a more dirty water color and call it a day. They all get bit. Best bang for your buck on the market? The Storm Largo Shad hands down. Super durable and two different actions with or without the little Achilles heel attached. Perfect colors. Great size options. Buy some gorilla glue and glue the trailer onto the jig and they will last you til you lose the jig. Caught my largest jig bass this spring - a 9 lb 14 oz fish on a jig with a 4" largo shad on the back! Just saying 😉😉😉

@Susky River Rat I'm out of likes but MAN I need some smallmouth action in my life! Gorgeous fish! @Dwight Hottle - speechless as always!

Happy Easter! Hope everyone had good time with family and hopefully got to make a few casts this weekend. 🙂

Jake had spring break last week and to say it was insane would be a big understatement. I'll spare you all the 1-4 lbers we caught all week because it's not even worth going into - just know there were more than a few. We decided to do a trip out on a chilly Friday afternoon and I almost immediately nail a 7 on the missile baits d bomb. She spit up a golden shiner and had a bloody tail from recent spawning. Caught her near a bed area in a very secluded wind protected pocket. We catch a few more nice ones and then Jake shouts, 'BIG ONE!' and up comes something we have never seen on our lake! A real long and girthy chain pickerel! Jake's first and he's fiercely proud of himself. 🙂 I catch another nice one in the 4 range and Jake catches a couple nice ones and we end the day with a near 20 lb best 5. Jake caught a nice 6 lb channel cat that he made into dinner for us! Another one he was fiercely proud of! 🙂 Sadly no major bass activity on this boat trip. We decided to hit the small retention pond near Jake's soccer fields and catch 30 fish - a mixture of bass and sunfish and crappie and as the sun sets - Jake tied on a rebel Pop R and proceeds to nail a GORGEOUS near 5 lb slaunch! Before going to Grandma and Grandpa's for Easter - we hit the lake one last time and I get my first frog fish in a good while and it's a chunk! We catch a few nice bass and the wind picks up - we head back into a wind protected sunny pocket and on the first cast back to a grass line Jake sees a big golden flash on his D Bomb and yells 'BIG ONE' and he wasn't lying - after a wild fight I net him his biggest of the spring so far - a LONG spawned out 6 lb 3 oz toad. We have another fun night at the little pond before leaving town with no major fish and then after visiting with family and having a nice weekend out of town - we hit the lake today for a few hours before they close just to unwind and I'm sure glad we did. I nail a 9 lb 3 oz bass on the @Siebert Outdoors 1 oz grass jig in Pat's Gizzard with a green pumpkin speed craw on the back. One of the biggest fish of my life! Completely spawned out MONSTER fish. She had incredible features including an upper lip that seemed to have been broken at one point And the white rings around big bulging eyes. She was unreal. She peeled a lot of drag and jumped making me think more than once she was a goner but Jake was real good with the net and I got to hold her and return her to the lake. We had an awesome day with a few great fish and on the last stretch of the day I see a pale spot 100 feet off the bank or so in Crystal clear 4-5 ft deep water. Jake gets his bait hung in some brush on the bank and we go shallow to retrieve his bait and I remember the approximate location of that pale spot and cast my trusty 1 oz gizzard jig past it and slowly swim it up to where I think it should be and feel a *thunk* and my line goes limp - I reel down and pound the hook on ANOTHER drag screamer to end the day - a beautiful bug eye'd 6 lber! Putting us over 20 lbs for our best 5 for the day - one of my best days ever! Katy definitely must have started catching bass because my fish got the memo this past week! 😂😂😂😂☝🏼☝🏼☝🏼☝🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼🎣🎣🎣🎣 Hoping the madness continues! Happy spring fellow bass heads!

Let's go! Katy on the board - we can all finally issue a sigh of relief in unison - it's definitely spring time!

Frog Frog Frog

For efficiently searching cover in heavy winds for large bass I like a pegged 3/8 oz or greater and a 3/0 offset worm hook and some kind of appropriately sized worm or beaver or creature bait. I've had a lot of success with the 10.5" power worm, Missile Baits D Bomb and the Zoom Mag Speed Worm/Craw. 7/16 oz is probably my favorite weight in general for deeper brush.

For deep brush - try a heavy jig or heavy t rig. Fish it slow and in the cover very deliberately - if you suspect the cover is where they are - this is deadly and often much more efficient than using a moving bait. I also really like flipping a heavy t rig next to water willow/pad stems this time of year and picking those areas apart. Fluke + shallow clear water with algae = deadly!

I wanna go to your church! 😄😄😄