Pat Brown

Heavy jigs for the win! That fish makes me smile from ear to ear dude! Can't wait to fish with you!

I hate when I do everything right - they bite - I hook em - I fight them to the bank or boat - I get them right where I can smell em and they flop right off and slowly lumber back down It makes me sick but I'll tell ya - it's part of fishing and I go through periods where I land a lot of em and I go through periods where they come off.

Cold fronts in the fall = shallow water big fish gorging. Cold fronts in the spring = shallow water big fish sliding a little deeper (usually) Cold fronts in the winter = stay home unless you are insane. Cold fronts in the summer = probably the best fishing you can have in the summer up shallow. Warm fronts in the fall = usually slows the shallow bite down but doesn't move the fish much. Usually need to slow down and finesse more than power fish when it gets warm and stagnant for a few days in the fall. Warm fronts in the spring = LOT of variables here but for the most part - this is when you can catch the biggest shallow fish at their biggest the easiest. Warm fronts in the winter = can be very good if sustained but general don't mean a whole lot for shallow fish at all. But this time the shallow fish are mostly not shallow and aren't reacting to a few days of warm weather at all. The main reason to fish a warm front in the winter is because your guides won't be freezing and you'll enjoy yourself and it will be a nice day! 🙂🙂🙂 Warm fronts in the summer = can be very very good if there's a lot of wind and rain. If they are warm fronts without any wind - can be the toughest fishing in the summer unless you get some good rain that blows out the creeks and stains up the water. Those steamy still mornings after big storms like this can be THE best to catch giant fish on frogs with minimal effort or skill. 😎😎😎👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼 Most hardcore big bass hunters know the REAL secret to catching big fish in ANY season is *stable conditions*. You want many consecutive days of roughly the same weather and that's when you REALLY get them acting stupid - regardless of season so pay attention to stable prevailing conditions. 🙂

You need to come back down to NC this summer and we can betray together some more and maybe we can betray you and NC 5+ lber 👍🏼🙂

Let's call it 10 inches of water lol - I threw my frog an inch from the bank and then on the first twitch she got it so she ate it out of 1 in of water.

Congratulations and good job for passing down the tradition of bass fishing to the next generation!

I see otters all the time at my big fish ponds AND people keep fish there all the time - it don't matter. You will never hear a good report from anyone who fishes that pond ever. That is often a sign it's got giant fish in it - it's tough. Big fish are smart. You do realize the Japanese govt tried to wipe out the LMB with gill nets and chemicals and paying citizens to keep and kill them? Well it produced the world record - that and some trout 😂 In BIG FISH ponds - you usually catch nothing or a big fish or maybe a dink now and again because the big fish eat everything including other bass and it's just a couple schools of really big smart fish and some super scared dinks. Numbers ponds are different entirely and in general - we don't have those here. I actually think otters and people accidentally selectively harvest for giants and make fisheries into giant factories. We might get angry when we see the bucket brigade pull a few 4-6 lbers off the banks and eat them every year but consider this - those are often the smallest and most competitive females on the pond - and the stupidest - and the ones you really would be worried about them catching - you actually don't know exist - and you'll never see them spawn in your life up shallow. AND - those folks keeping those couple dumb 4-6 lbers aren't touching the general population of 4-6 lbers that now have enough biomass to become 7-9 lbers next year.

One thing I will add to this discussion that is a piece of wisdom that really helped me catch big fish early on in my journey - pick ONE spot and always go there until you catch one fish. Then try to build on that one fish etc. I think spending time trying lots of bodies of water has a novelty and allure and a rush early on - but generally leads to frustration and more failure than success - every body of water is different and I try to digest them one at a time. I finally broke the 8 lb mark on a public lake I've been pounding for 5 years that has WAY bigger fish than 8 lbs in it - and then...- I caught my second fish over 8 lbs on that lake a few days later! This happened a couple weeks ago! When it rains it pours. I'm still buzzing from those fish - 9 lb 14 oz on a jig out of 14 feet and a 9 lb 3 oz on a frog out of 0 feet lol - opposite sides of the lake - just a couple days apart. Never broken 7 on that lake fishing it hard for 5 years before that. I know there are tons of fish in the 8+ range on that lake it's just very very different from other lakes I fish and I really had to hunker down and grind on it to start to figure out what fish do there. Point being - pick one you feel good about - and hammer it every chance you get doing everything you can to learn to catch *those* fish.

Funny you should ask - I fished a pond for years before I ever caught a bass and even had folks tell me there weren't fish in the pond and not to bother. COVID hit and I decided to really try....well I got a little better at bass fishing but still struggled to catch my first bass at this particular public pond despite multiple good efforts. Then suddenly in the fall of 2021 - lightning struck and I caught my first bass out of this pond on a jig. I couldn't believe it - not my beloved senko or a fluke or a Texas rig - the, at the time, confusing and frustrating jig got my first fish to the bank and it was a nice one too. I devoted a lot of time to this particular spot and since then it has produced a 9.1, 9.3, 8.9, 8.0 and many many fish over 6 lbs and I'm positive it has fish over 12 in it that are very very tough to catch. Fairly certain I've been broken off by or lost some of these extremely illusive giants mid fight over the years - and I can't begin to explain how emotionally stressful that gets when you work as hard for a bite as you do at this spot. People seem aware that there are fish in the pond now - but I mostly see people show up with the best of intentions and then they trudge up to me looking fairly foresworn and ask if I'm catching anything and I always say the same thing. Nope. 🙂🤫

When I'm really out looking for big fish, I rarely go lighter than 5/8 of an ounce and often go up to 3/4, 1 or even 1 and 1/2 oz!

I don't really necessarily care much about the size of the jig so much as the size of the trailer and the weight of the jighead. I find it's way easier to feel slight changes with heavier jigs and they tend to get bigger fish. Not necessarily 'bigger jig' - just heavier - maybe the faster rate of fall gets them to react? Hard to say. But it's also a lot more efficient - way less waiting around for the jig to get to the bottom or into the cover. I catch plenty of smaller fish on heavier jigs also - but it seems like the really big ones get it on the fall or right when it hits the bottom and starts to move. Sometimes the trailer needs to be compact and sometimes it needs to be bulky - I just let fish tell me which they prefer - catch tons of big fish on more compact profiles.

Probably nothing you really could have done but I agree with everybody who says that when you grab the line you take your drag and the rod out of the equation. And those are your two primary lines of defense between you and braking fish off. Beyond that, checking your line regularly retying regularly and also making sure that you're fighting the fish the appropriate amount of time given the tackle that you're using is all very important. Here in North Carolina I'm very very likely to tangle with a fish over 6 lb so I very rarely fish anything under 15 lb line. I catch a lot of big fish so I don't really think my line being bigger and more present is that big of a deal when it comes to catching bass - but I do know that when I don't use line that's up to the task of catching the fish that I'm fishing for in the types of cover that I'm catching them in - I lose a lot more of them! Even the finessiest presentations that I'm likely to throw usually get bumped up hooks and bumped up line and bumped up rod power and bigger spools in general because I've been burned far too many times and so has my son and my wife. Good luck! Get back out there and catch you another one! The main reason Bass get off in my experience is because they are the types of fish that actively want to get off and know how to get off and they basically don't stop trying to get off until they're completely convinced there's no hope for them to get off and for the big ones they don't lose hope. When I'm on the bank I go into the water to land the fish a lot of the time. I don't bother trying to fight them up to the bank because that's usually exactly when they make those types of runs and break off. I go into the water a few inches up to my ankles and try to let them fight themselves to me - if I have time. With something like a frog or a jig they're coming in and up on land if it breaks my rod - you don't really get much forgiveness playing fish with those baits at all. With a wacky rig or Jerkbait or lipless - I'll definitely let the fish fight longer and try to lip it in the water because they stay pinned while fighting much better with those baits.

The best thing anyone ever did for me was get me to look at the *prevailing* conditions and trends moreso than the *weather today* I agree that basically different seasons - different answers to this question - in addition to different bodies of water and fish. Best you can really do is get out there and start observing *your* fish during different conditions seasonally and learn them. As much as we all want bass to be a thing that can be explained by one angler to another - it's largely a lake by lake/fish by fish type deal - especially with regards to how your fish react to changes in weather seasonally.

11 lb 5 oz (pic is my profile pic) on a Berkeley Power Worm 10.5" in motor oil red with a pegged 3/8 oz tungsten sinker and a offset worm hook on a mainlake point around 1 pm in mid July. I've caught a lot of fish between 8 and 10. Most of them on jigs, frogs and lipless crankbaits.

Senko, Dinger, Trick Stick, Sassy Stick, Ocho, Bang Stick, Trick Worm, Mag trick worm. Free rigging a wacky rigged bang stick is pretty cool. You can let it float up and pull it back down.

Looks like beaver lodges might be a good thing on that body of water. Definitely always prefer muddier water with more current. Good stuff @bp_fowler 🙂🙂🙂👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼

Well the spring bite has finally picked up. Lotta fish on the glide bait and jig and drop shot this week. Lotta 2-5 lbers showing up in the shallow water.

I still use it very finesse and catch lots of small bass with it but if I hook an 8+ lber which is a very real possibility here - I'm usually okay. I also have to fish it around or on heavy cover to get bites so the heavy line is merely adapting to the fish. My son tries to fish light line for big bass around here and he's broken off every one of them and it's not really his fault or the gears fault - the line just isn't optimized for fighting bass of any size around here in the types of cover they live in. 👍🏼🙂 I reckon light line in open water situations would be amazing at times for getting more bites especially in super clear water.

I fish a drop shot on a 7'6 flipping stick with 20 lb big game and no less than a 1/2 oz sinker. I like 1-3/0 offset worm hooks and I always t rig the plastic. 🙂👍🏼🎣

Jake is a kid and I don't always make him endure the struggles I endure. I'm all in on tricking big bass with my skills but I don't expect everyone else to always be as devoted as I am. He does really well with live crawdads, shiners, shad and baby sunfish and of course good old fashioned night crawlers when the bite is extremely tough and I don't want him to get discouraged!

Big fan of fluke, glide bait, Jerkbait, lipless crankbait, buzzbait, frog, jig and swimbait at spillways.

I think a finesse jig is still more of a power fishing presentation kinda thing. It's like a smaller but still bulky presentation that is gonna appeal more to bigger fish in dirtier water etc. I think a shaky head is more of a finesse presentation through and through and works better in clearer water and appeals more to any fish that happens upon it.

I swim the @Siebert Outdoors sniper a lot. It's great!

The bigger ones are really really good at hiding and not getting caught. I was trying to point out multiple large fish to my son yesterday walking around our spots - he saw not a one. Takes a well trained eye. They can make themselves pale in sandy bottom water and make themselves dark on grassy bottom and they instinctively hang right where OUR visibility starts to fail. Usually a few feet OFF the beds.

Let me just preface this by making it abundantly clear that I'd be bad at doing anything that isn't my thing. Okay. Now that we have gotten that key piece of wisdom taken care of - the fun part of the thread! @Swamp Girl back at you! I wouldn't know what to do with myself trying to find an off the grid backwoods bog by myself dragging canoes around in the dark. You're a unique and truly passionate angler and you're proof that Maine has lots of big bass lurking in the backwaters - if you're brave enough to look. @A-Jay I am deeply envious of your deal. You seem to really be in tune with the water and the fish you chase and you do it all in a manner that feels like it might as well be from Mars or Jupiter. Fishing a heavy bladed jig deep for 7+ lb smallmouth? Weighted Jerkbaits in super deep clear water in perch patterns? Yo yoing giant lipless baits tiny bits off the bottom for huge bronze bass? Yeah you're on a another level and I wouldn't know where to even start with your fish OR your waters so hats off. @WRB I fish stained shallow reservoirs with gizzard shad and crappie mostly being the preferred food of the LMB and the big ones are usually found in ~0-3 ft of water most of the year. I am in awe of the California clear water bass fisherman who hunt trout and crayfish eaters in deep rocky waters. Toms techniques are so different from what I consider my bag of tricks and I'm always wondering what would happen if I try Toms deal on my fish and then I remember - his deal - his fish. I wouldn't know where to start out west and Tom is one of the greatest to ever do it out there!