Pat Brown

Braid for frogs and buzzbaits and spinning rods. Big Game for everything else. 😎👍🏼 Fluorocarbon has been nothing but lost fish and wasted money for me personally and I catch plenty of big bass. If I was guiding - I'd use big game all day every day - to heck with what's trendy - I'd want my customers catching fish not breaking off and backlashing spools of 40$ line. I fish big game for red drum in shells and rock and heavy vegetation and we are catching 30-50 lb fish. You can feel a bite 200 feet from you in HEAVY wind with a huge bow in your line on a c rig. It's plenty sensitive. Also if you fish as often as I do and retie as often as I do - no spool of any line lasts more than a few trips! Huge waste of money to go with something extremely pricey when you fish all the time and retie and then need to respool all the time. And I will never go braid to fluorocarbon leader. That's just a horrible idea fishing shallow lakes with heavy rock and wood cover! Big game is an easy choice.

The big gizzard shad seem content to start at about 58-59° 🙂 Thanks for the kind words - I actually submitted bass 4 times last year and won my entry in December with the 7.35 lber I caught day before Christmas Eve. I submitted 8.4, 8.0 and 6.5 lbers during March, April and June respectively and then had a hard time coming up with something that beat any of the big fish during the other months of the year. It felt wild being beaten in March by .2 lbs. Felt surreal after catching a fish that big! There's definitely some giant bass down here and the multiple shad kills this winter and last winter (and the last two summers) have certainly resulted in some absolute freaks! I don't think it's absurd to assume some of the bigger bass with better genetics and crazy appetites are growing 3.5 lbs a year in some of the spots I fish. 🥴

I think if you can find em: 9-10-11" lizards etc can be VERY effective in the spring time. Usually hand pours and small makers are who make them. Well worth the investment I have found over the off the shelf offerings. Zoom 6" lizards work like a charm though. One of my favorite things to do with a lizard is bite the head and front two arms off and rig just the torso and back legs and tail to a pegged t rig weight. I don't know who invented it - but Richard Gene is who I learned that one from! It works great!

I find that there's times we are finding where they are and times we are catching em. Ain't always the same days. It's a chess match. You got this Mike!

As a fluke and frog fisherman - you learn to play with size fast if you like getting bit! Seems like as the forage they're targeting through out the year changes - the sizes of fluke or frog they generally prefer shift around. I'm sure it's also true of flipping baits - I'm just less dialed into the nuance - I flip a lot of small baits on my home lakes - mainly to be a little different from everyone else - not sure if the fish prefer it or not - but they get bit. Sometimes I feel like it's big bait time - and fish those instead and also do well. Seems more seat of the pants with plastics for me 😂 With the fluke or frog I will definitely go smaller if I see tons of minnows up shallow but if I know there's huge bass - I will often go bigger on either or both. Sometimes I go big on the fluke and small on the frog and play with different sizes on different bait categories to zero in on a preference faster. I definitely think bigger gizzard eaters are more into bigger baits and sunfish and perch and crappie eaters seem more into smaller baits but this is not an exact science - just a little guessing.

Fished my first little local derby this weekend out of a Jon boat and caught a 4 and 1/4 lb bass that earned me 7th place out of 12 boats - felt cool to catch one in a tournament and weigh it in! Caught it during a shad spawn right at sunrise on the Berkeley stunna in a color I custom did (scratched the paint off and made it chartreuse with black back but see through). Fished hard all day in 30+ mph winds and got one more in the boat that didn't help me out And headed back in at 3 pm - missed a few bites on the fluke that could have helped me but the winner caught an 8 lb 10 oz bass on a main lake point before the sun came up in 19 feet of water on scope - so I don't feel so bad. Meagan and Jake took me fishing to make me feel better on Sunday after my defeat - 3 casts into the day - I hook an 8 + lber on a black and blue jig - she comes up jumps one good time Two feet before netting range and comes off in slow motion and then sort of slowly swims back down. It was really something. Kinda hurt my feelings. She was real fat and healthy - but I had such a good week - I accepted it. Managed to boat 4 nice fish on a nice fun trip with the family mostly flipping shallow cover with t rigs - my kinda bass fishing! Didn't get another shot at a giant yesterday - but if last week is any indication - it's giant time here in NC! @Bluebasser86 WOW! That clump of brush is something you'll be dreaming about for decades huh!?!? 😂😂😂❤️❤️❤️

I'm very curious about Mexico, Africa and Japan only because I find it so fascinating that bass fishing is taking off and there's giants in these locations. I love fishing Santee Cooper - Jurassic Park but it's a real lake. Feels like a t rex could come stumbling out of the treeline and into the lake to cool off at any second but he'd have to contend with 7 ft gar and 15 foot alligators so he better be careful!

Make your home lake your bucket list lake and then catch the biggest bucket mouth out of it before your bucket tips over and your bucket will be full.

I fish pressured waters and I have been lucky enough to fish private ponds a couple times in my life. I can tell you one thing is for sure - the bait monkey loves fishing pressure. 😂😂😂🤝🤝🤝

It was a very cool experience. 12 boats showed up and were ready to launch at sunrise I was last out of the marina. I saw the running lights dotting the blackness of the steep bank in the morning stillness as the fancy boats settled in on the big pre-spawn fish they had marked and most remained on these spots for a few good hours. Being that this was being held on a 50 acre Lake and the wind was already blowing - expected to reach 20 with gusts of 30+mph - my plans for fishing shallow were not looking super promising. When the wind blows like that it shrinks the lake down tremendously and it was a Saturday where the lake is open to the public. Every spot I had interest in checking early on had boats on them - but the bay adjacent to the marina was fairly calm and I noticed shad flickering on the surface as the sun came up. I threw my Berkeley stunna into the heart of the bay with my boat sitting over 12 feet of water and let it sink a bit knowing it would rise up on the retrieve - in spite of its sinking feature. I worked a fairly steady but gentle cadence and didn't get any hits so I start to reel in to cast again and BANG - fish on - my pole is doubled over and my drag is screaming - I'm thinking - have I won this thing next to the marina in the first 10 minutes. Up comes a fat fish - she's hooked good - short - but very fat. I fill the livewell and prepare to submit my very first fish in a tournament - being that I'm only a stones throw away - I figured better to weigh her and then let her go than drag her around all day and hope to upgrade. 4 lb 3 oz on the marina scale and the first and only submission til about noon. This had me feeling pretty good because my strategy was basically to fish the morning opportunistically and then head up the lake and fish the juice later on. I felt because of how cold it had gotten the night before - waiting til later on would be wise. In retrospect - I think I should have gone for the Hail Mary and went straight up the lake first thing and camped it out and rotated spots up there waiting for something to fire. I ended up missing one on the fluke in a pocket that grabbed my bait but didn't get hooked and then I decided I needed to make a move. This was around 11 and the wind was really starting to get rolling. Fortunately the wind is blowing back to the marina so I know my run back at least won't be so bad. I make it to the bridge that I caught the 9 lb 14 oz fish on in practice and there's a boat on it and recreational anglers in line to fish it so I just try to politely idle through as it is the only way up the lake and I need to make moves. I get past the bridge and it's white capping. I push through it and there's boats on literally every spot I scouted. I think essentially - boaters caught heavy duty pre-spawn fish early on with electronics deep on points and then a lot of them went sight fishing and structure fishing. I found some water in a protected bay that wasn't being pounded and tried some things out. I positioned my boat in about 3 feet of water about 75 feet from the bank and cast back towards the main channel (deeper) and let the fluke sink a few seconds. Started with a really slow cadence and then kinda popped it to get it speeding up like a fleeing bait fish - I get slammed - I feel her shoot left and feel her weight for a split second and then nothing. I reel in and my bait is all jacked up sideways and on the hook I have some clean fresh healthy Hydrilla. I haven't seen healthy Hydrilla anywhere else on the lake at all so I decided to work the area thoroughly. I fished a lot of baits over that grass and never got another bite so I figured it was a real big one and I blew my shot. I think she was staged up and preparing to head back into the pocket I was fishing from and that was exactly why I fished that area that way. I waited and waited for the area beyond where I was staked out to free up but it was a revolving door of boaters both recreational AND tournament anglers - I didn't want to cram into that area with them so I decided to continue fishing outside that area and hit some isolated lily pads across the channel from where I got the big bite. I opt for a heavy t rig - my weapon of choice for efficiency in pads and get bit and boat my second bass or the day. A short fish and lighter than my first so I let it go immediately. Still felt good to land another fish and get another bite. It's about 1 at this point and I know I need to start moving back in and simultaneously fish good looking stuff. With the wind at my back I go back by way of the sunny side of the lake hoping to hit some bays on the way in that I scouted during practice and of course each one was backed up with boats. I try fishing the steeper side and the wind is super strong so I throw spinnerbaits and flukes and try to make the best of it but don't get any bites. I finally find a pocket I know has been hammered all day that's finally boatless and with an hour and a half left I decided to try it because it's right around the corner from where I caught my 9 lb 14 oz base. I fish the cove and see a small male come up on my Jerkbait and fish the cover very slowly with t rigs and jigs but don't get any bites and even in this protected area the wind is making it very difficult by this point to maintain position. I turn around and begin to head out of the cove and the wind is pushing me into the bank I'm trying to fish and out of nowhere an 8+ lb bass slams into my boat and then darts off into deeper water. I must have been in her area and she was ticked. I tried to fish the area some more but time was running out - I see I've got maybe 40 minutes til weigh in and realistically to hook net and then successfully get back in with a fish I need to hook it. There were 1-2 ft swells and white caps rolling all the way in. I toss heavy spinnerbaits at everything I see that looks decent but I know it ain't gonna work because I know the fish I'm throwing baits at are spawning and the fish I COULD catch on a spinnerbait are somewhere in the abyss on the colder deeper stretches of main lake structure that the spawn hasn't quite hit. Which is precisely the fish the boaters weighed in. The fish were beautiful. They each looked like different proportion clones of absolutely stuffed Thanksgiving turkeys. Winner caught an 8 lb 10 oz bass and second place was just under 8 and the rest were between 5 and 7. Each one looked stuffed with Shad completely and absolutely untouched and young. Small heads and huge bellies. It was cool because I NEVER catch those fish. I see them on my cheap 2D sonar and I know exactly where those boats caught them first thing in the morning - but I have never been able to catch a single one. 5 boats didn't weigh a fish - making me place 7th in my first tournament. The conditions really made it hard for me to do my thing and the number of boats and the size of the lake hurt me too - but I'm super proud of myself and I know that if I could have capitalized on those fluke bites - there's a chance I might have been a little higher up. I was fine not having a fish at the weigh in knowing my girl got to swim free minutes after we weighed and submitted her mere minutes after catching her. And in practice I caught fish that would have heartily won - and had some of the best fishing both deep and shallow - of my life. One thing is for sure - I still love bass fishing - tournaments are wild - but I don't love em as much yet. 🙂😜❤️ I'm gonna keep trying to learn to love em but mostly I'm gonna keep fishing for Pat.

She ain't skipping any meals! Let's go! Hope to see many more this season! 😎😎😎🎣🎣🎣

I actually forgot I will wake light swim jigs with bulky plastic trailers and wake glide baits and swim baits with lighter weights and I buzz a lot of weightless plastics and quickly walk the dog with weightless flukes on the surface a lot. Basically I use stuff I already use but near the surface - sometimes. I did really well in a small friends tournament once on walking bait but it was a private pond and the fish weren't very smart. I can't seem to buy a bite around here with most baits with visible treble hooks during most conditions. Treble hooks I need a lot of wind and muddy water and very active fish on the public spots I fish - so I opt for many more bites from much bigger fish much more often. Frog and Buzzbait don't scare big girls away no matter how much I throw them it seems like - as long as I'm mindful of conditions and where the fish are and what they're doing. The buzzbait is my favorite way to cover a ton of super shallow water. It can be sparse cover no cover or covered in emerging pads - hard to beat the buzzbait for 2 ft or less and lots of water to cover. The frog is my choice when I know they're there and I don't want to scare them off - working an area slowly and methodically with the frog one of the best ways to tempt a giant fish that has seen it all. I'll throw a frog in up to 10 mph winds and when it's 15+ I'll find protected areas and do really well on it. The buzzbait is better for efficiently going down the windblown areas and getting them to react.

I just use a frog when it's calmer and a buzzbait when it's less calm. That's about it.

I got into bass fishing because I like it. I never in a million years thought it would be as serious as it became for me as a passion and hobby - but here we are - my wife entered me into my the Big Bass Bash last year for my birthday for 25$ kind of half seriously and said 'you will probably get in!' Getting in means catching and weighing in the biggest largemouth bass for one of the months of the calendar year at one of the three participating lakes - I won in December the day before Christmas Eve with a 7.35 lber that I caught while fishing with my son and @LrgmouthShad Caught her on a 1 oz jig in a foot of water on a channel swing in 41 degree water days after the lake was covered in ice - shortly before it iced over again (we were covered in ice a LOT of this winter - it was wild) Well fast forward - I am about to fish the tournament tomorrow! I will be going up against 11 passionate and devoted local hammers - some of whom have title sponsors and fish professionally - others who have merely been fishing the lakes for decades and are great bass fisherman. All of them have bass boats and electronics and outboard motors and all that stuff. I'll be fishing from a 14 ft Jon Boat with a trolling motor, an anchor, a home made live well, a few rods and reels I could afford with a few baits I like to throw - all of which I consistently use to catch big bass - but still - I'm nervous! I'm even a little bit embarrassed and feeling like I've got some imposter syndrome going into this, but I had a really good week of practice. I caught the second biggest bass of my life. A 9 lb 14 oz fish again on a jig and then a mere few days later I caught the biggest bass I've ever caught on a frog. A 9 lb 3 oz Bass and I also boated multiple fish in the 2-4 lb range and a 7 lber. We launch at sunrise and everyone has til 3 pm to catch the largest bass they can catch. All this to say - I'm probably gonna get my butt handed to me and I'm okay with that - but practice was really really good and I gotta believe I truly have a shot at this! I'm humbled and grateful to be where I'm at with it and hope mostly I don't embarrass myself out there and hope I learn something and look forward to meeting the hammers and sticks that are as ate up with these particular fish as I am. It's gonna be a good time. 🙂 I'll let y'all know how it goes tomorrow.

I think fish can definitely get conditioned to individual baits and anglers. Specifically baits that have a mechanical and predictable sound or action / anglers that do the same thing all the time with their baits and always fish the same bait. Fish baits that are hard to learn and figure out the timing and locations seasonally that put you around fish while they're active and it's very hard to overfish them. I like early in the morning and finesse presentations like a frog or fluke or swim jig when I'm feeling very serious about catching fish that are tough to catch but there. For what it's worth I would avoid cycling locations a lot - learn one location inside and out and catch the biggest fish there and then move on to a different body of water. I get MUCH better results when I focus on one body of water and grind.

Hope it was fun Clayton - boating a few 8s in practice sounds like an incredible practice and experience and even if you didn't take the W - that's gotta feel amazing. Looking forward to your report!

Anyone who knows how hard I've been grinding this spring/winter for that frog bass knows that was my trophy of trophies for the year pretty much. Anything else from here out is icing on the cake. Thanks for all the kind words y'all make me blush. Frog fishing is basically simple - be dumb enough to keep throwing the Frog and eventually a big one eats it. 😂😂😂🐸🐸🐸🎣🎣🎣

The most reliable pattern for me is the make really good casts pattern 😂😂😂 When I get on that pattern I can sometimes get a bite or two. 😉

I pay close attention to the types of cover and depth I'm seeing fish in and sort of optimize my selections for that. If the water is cleaner I want to be moving faster and not letting them have as good a look at bait so I'm gonna go with heavier swim jigs and smaller spinnerbait blades - as long as there's some wind - I'll toss that spinnerbait if the fish are super shallow - if I get to an area with clean water where it's slick from being wind protected but I know it's real shallow and mucky bottom - I'll fish a super light swim jig or topwater or weightless plastic because those will efficiently draw strikes from that kind of area etc etc. Always be mindful of your retrieve and try to intentionally impart variations - reel it steady - reel and pause - burn it on the surface - slow roll it with occasional pops - anything you can do to figure out what could work best for a given day. If my swim jig is getting bit when I'm slow, rolling it and popping it, I'll switch to a fluke because I know I can do a cadence and presentation with that bait that is much better and much more efficient. If the swim jig is getting smoked when I'm burning it, I might switch to a buzzbait because I can much more efficiently burn a buzzbait around in pockets under the surface and get fish's attention. It's all kind of a puzzle where you're putting things together, which I think is why the word pattern gets used a lot. But I think the key thing to do is to figure out which baits are efficient on your lake for certain conditions and certain areas and types of cover.

I usually find a few baits that are working on the lake for a given time of year and for the key types of areas and cover they're in. Pattern? Maybe kinda - I think it's more just like they're in the right areas for those baits to work or something like that maybe. I guess that is a pattern kinda 😂😂😂 Now we are into semantics! I guess the reason I'm hesitant to call it a pattern is like - I don't think the spinnerbait getting bit a lot is a pattern - it's just like it's windy and the water is a little dirty and fish are higher in the water column on shallower banks around cover aaaaaand - that bait is pretty solid when the day is set up like that. I'm not gonna take that spinnerbait into the wind protected pockets and fish them the same way. It's not a pattern - it's just the right bait for the conditions at times in certain areas.

The more pressure the fish around here get the less I pattern fish and the more I junk fish. Take that for what it's worth! I like to have a few different baits that I can use to throw at anything that looks good and I rarely stay in an area for long. I find that if a fish recognizes one of my baits and decides it's not food, the area very quickly turns off for a long time. This makes for a situation where the best strategy to employ is to make lots of good casts throughout the day to fresh areas.

Biggest frog bass of my life today on the Bronzeye 65 in clear chartreuse. 59° water. Caught a 3 lb male on a grass transition in about 3 feet of water moving back into a pocket. (Pictured here) and a little voice inside my head said shut everything down and slow WAY down in that pocket and on the first cast under a shadeline into inches of water next to some submerged wood - this beautiful 9 lb 3 oz giant hit on the first twitch. I didn't wait for nothing. Swung hard and she launched herself into the air instantly. I could feel her weight fast - it was like fighting an angry stump on the braid - somehow I managed to get her head up and keep her pinned and into the net she went. Last day of practice for Saturday's big bass bash was really fun.

Got it - well during other non cold seasons - they are also reproducing and it's dictating their behavior and location and catchability - understanding their reproductive cycle is darn near everything there is to know about shallow bass - except during the winter if you get a real winter. That's when you need to understand what bait does in cold water in your area. If you're talking about catching bass that are feeding and not reproducing? You're confused - they feed so that they can continue to reproduce. 🙂

I find ponds and lakes at the beach when I can surf fish. It's a sickness brother. 🙂🙂🙂🙂

It's pretty much impossible to talk about bass behavior and catchability in the springtime without focusing on their spawn. They're the same thing. Prevailing conditions dictate which areas have the warmest water and the most suitable areas to make nests and therefore attract the most aggressive large populations of bass to the shallows.