Pat Brown

That might be the coolest thing I've ever read on this website!!! Teaching Aaron how to fish a jig!?? Of course he caught some fish doing it like you taught him 😎👍🏼😉 Truth be told I started catching fish on jigs and big ones and frequently under the long distance tutelage of guys like Tom and Catt so thanks guys!

I think that the electric guitar and the acoustic guitar are very different tactile experiences and I thoroughly enjoy dancing backwards and forth between the two worlds. Much like topwater and bottom contact or spinning rods and casting gear 🙂 I like exploring open tunings more within the acoustic paradigm these days. I like how acoustic guitars ask you to dig deep and really find the intention within your playing. The electric guitar can also be very inspiring in this way - especially with low output pickups/low capacitance cables and high headroom amplifiers 🙂. I like how there's not only dynamic range, but sort of like expressive range that can be intentionally constructed with an electric guitar based system. Amplifiers and pickups and strings and speakers all kind of interact to create a system that is very expressive and reactive and it is a entirely different experience from playing an acoustic guitar. The acoustic guitar is definitely capable of dynamic range that an electric guitar can't have without necessarily having the lateral expressive qualities. I don't want to have to choose! I really like how an electric guitar is sort of a modular system where you can play around with different elements and get it to do different things for you. I like how an acoustic guitar is sort of an imprint of the intentions and skills of the luthier (ideally). Because I build fuzz pedals for a living, I spend a lot at the winter time tuning fuzz pedals and playing them loudly! 🤷🏼‍♂️😎🎸⚡

Stunna/Pointer/Rip Stop/Husky Jerk/hit stick/x rap/maverick/mcstick/provoke/rogue/KVD etc etc I've even caught fish on the cheap Amazon ones. Get some solder and some decent hooks and split rings and some 8-15 lb line and any of these work great.

There's a lot of good coaches in here. I learned to use Google to search topics on this site and it sped my learning curve up a lot. The most important coaches in bass fishing are slimy and green and live under the surface of the lakes and ponds you're fishing. They try to teach us every year - we don't always want to hear what they're telling us!

Green Pumpkin/Chartreuse Laminate Green Pumpkin/Junebug Laminate Green Pumpkin/Smoke laminate.

It's 20 and our lakes and ponds are frozen again. This winter has been the most wintery in the 4 years I've been seriously fishing - I did a full inventory and organization thing and cleaned and oiled my reels etc. Got my tackle selection for when the lakes warm up ready to rock and roll. The good news is when it lets up - it's probably gonna be go time in a big way. Just hard to say exactly when that will be. Surface temps last weekend after a major warm up with rain were still 36°. Now they're 32° 🥹

There's a small handful of presentations out there I think you can trick a smart fish with more than once but I think they do learn to recognize threats and not food quickly. The term 'reaction strike' gets overused - but I think this is often your best bet with smart fish. Your cat may be a very very smart cat and very well mannered but you toss a ball of twine past her face and she gonna go full on tiger mode and snatch that thing out of thin air like it was nothing. Same deal. With that in mind - it becomes a matter of timing and location - both can be very specific for smart big fish on smaller waters. All stuff I've definitely observed. You could think a place has no fish until you make a cast at the northwest bank at 4:30 am during a new moon in February. And then you might be very pleasantly surprised! 😉😉😉👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼 Play around with night fishing. Early morning fishing. Try deeper and shallower. Try going very fast and very slow. Very small and very big. Extremes pay off when fish have seen every version of medium on the planet. Big fish get big by being smart - not stupid. They learn how to not get caught or die for years and are very good at feeding themselves. This is what makes catching them a feverish pursuit and super rewarding!

I don't know if this is the same situation you're describing necessarily - but I have noticed that on smaller bodies of water, fish seem to change their spots a lot. You can catch em REALLY good in an area and it might be a year or two before that area fires like that again. Just depends on how hard they get hammered on and how small the lake is and how long of a break they get every year etc.

Hey @NorthernBasser - I was confused by the wording - you're our family and we love you too. I'm so so sorry. Keep up the positivity til the very last scene plays out. We are all here for you to vent or anything you need to do. Please tell us news as you get it also. What's your real life name?

Galen (thanks for telling us your name!) - we love you too. I'm heartbroken for you. This isn't fair - I am bad at words sometimes. Stay strong and spend as much time with the ones you love doing what you love as humanly possible. -Pat

True story and good advice. Help those welterweights ascend to Big Mamma Status™ All I know is it's 14° right now and my percentage today is gonna be 0/0/0 😂 How do you like that!?!?

Gee wiz it's hard to say exactly but I'd say we catch a fair percentage that I'd call big - for me it's basically anything over 4 lb in NC feels like a pretty big fish/the kind of fish that could win you a tournament pretty well on most lakes I fish. I think of 2-3 lbers as good fish for the fight and the thrill and we catch a fair number of those and then there's the dinks of which I also catch a fair number every year. Id say probably somewhere around 30%/30%/30% or something like that for big/good/dink. Usually every 3rd fish or there abouts around here is a 4+ give or take for me probably. Sometimes there are droughts and sometimes when it rains it is pouring. But that's probably about how it shakes out for the year. It COMPLETELY depends on which bodies of water I'm fishing the most - all those who said that - agree.

I legit put a ribbon tail worm on the back of a square bill a couple days ago for fun and it looked better than I thought it would. I didn't catch any fish though. 😂😂😂😂

Sounds like you're doing everything right! IMHO - you pick the bait for the cover you're fishing - like @FishTax alluded to - if you're fishing a lot of wood go something you can get in and out of wood - if you're fishing a lot of rock and hard bottom - baits that take advantage of that would do well - lots of grass could mean certain lures excel etc etc. Once you have established the type of cover you will primarily be fishing - next order of business is to try presenting baits at different depths and speeds. On larger bodies of water from the bank, options are pretty limited unfortunately and finding active fish is very difficult this time of year unless you have access to a steep channel banks where the main river swings up against and you can hit deep spots easily. On ponds and the like, it can be easier to find the fish, but this time of year - periods where fish are active and feeding are very very small. I tend to do the best on calm super sunny days this time of year unless you have a super warm rain during a cloudy front - that can be a VERY good time to go fishing in the late winter for sure! When water temps are below 40 - you basically have to slow way way down. A lot of baitfish die when temps get below 40 and basically, bass don't gotta chase nothing when that's happening. Your only hope is basically deadsticking baits in high percentage areas when it gets like that and my luck has been zilch this winter. I do NOT like targeting Florida bass on shad fisheries when temps are below 40 - it's just really really hard. If your temps are above 40 - definitely a different situation. I like steep banks with rock and wood and clear water (good sun penetration to temporarily warm areas throughout the day) that are protected from the wind. Heavy wood cover is very good this time of year. They don't like birds. Birds eat them. Wood is protection. Lipless cranks and neds and all that stuff are staples for winter fishing around here - I like a lipless when it's dirty and warming up MUCH better than when it's clean and bottomed out. I have never done well with crankbaits when the water is on the clearer side. Ned rigs are good but snaggy - I like shaky heads and finesse jigs and dropshots when water is very cold and clear and fish are not having to chase meals at all due to shad kill etc. Super super slow and subtle is the way to go. It's not unreasonable to say 'cast it out - read a chapter in a book and drink a cup of coffee and let that line hold STILL' this time of year. That's how everyone's grandpa in NC caught bass in the winter and it still works if you have the patience! Good luck and show us your success in the latest catch thread when you catch em! -Pat

Surface temps : 36 - where there is water. 🥹 Spent three hours out in what was wet yesterday and graphed a few areas that had some fish maybe? It was a ghost lake. The guy at the marina said that nobody has launched a boat in weeks and that we were crazy and then pointed out all the dead shad and big crappie floating near the marina. Gonna try one more time today and then probably won't get out on a lake til February unless we get lucky. Monday through Wednesday are gonna have our lakes hard as a rock and deeper than the last two freezes. Today is my ONE day of wet water and air temps near 50 for a long while. Wish me luck y'all. Probably gonna try some really really slow presentations in some of the areas that looked like they maybe had some fish and see what happens.

That's what I'm talking bout let's GO Alex!!!

Oh I'm definitely haunted - wouldn't fish with the appetite I have if I wasn't! 😉😉😉 Thankfully for everyone - I get one every now and again and manage to live a somewhat functional life. 😂👍🏼

Little slivers of warmth moving things in the right direction this weekend- ice on the lakes and ponds should melt in rain Saturday - but night time lows still really low and then Mon-Wed next week, we have a high of 35 with lows in the teens and wind chills of 'the lakes are gonna freeze over again probably' If I was a ground hog - I wouldn't even be looking for my shadow yet. Since I'm a bass hog - I'll probably be trying to catch bass that aren't there until they are!

Just get a hook sharpener and you can catch fish with just about any hook that's not rusting. Nice hooks and cheap hooks all get dull of they aren't from the factory. Hook sharpener. 👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼

I'm gonna catch a bass by whatever means I have at my disposal - hopefully one of those is necessary! 😂😂😂 But I feel ya - lately I been mostly watching my lures skip across a sheet of ice that's too thin to walk in and too thick to fish through and I gotta say I don't envy our Northern friends!

I have a love relationship with bank fishing. It's really satisfying when you catch a giant fish at a small pressured spot with your feet on the ground just sneaking around and figuring out the where's and when's. I love forging new paths and finding casting angles and areas boats can only look at on Google Earth and say 'not worth it'. I catch lots of great fish in spots like this. I like knowing that my craft is honed and not limited to being launched in a boat at a marina with every rod at my disposal and lots of expensive electronics to be successful. Very satisfying for me! Also also - when fishing is REALLY tough (read: late winter and late summer) - smaller bank only bodies of water = less places to hide. My top 3 from the bank are 9.3, 9.1 and 8.9 with piles of 7s and 8s. Bank fishing is big fishing.

This may sound crazy to some people here, but I find that if the fish isn't biting on the first cast - it's probably not going to bite - and that could just be my waters - but it's just something I've observed over the years. I definitely pick an area apart with many first casts but I rarely do well soaking a bait or hammering a spot. I usually catch my biggest bass on the first cast to a spot and they usually bite within the first couple seconds or feet of the bait landing in the water if not instantly. I tend to not catch very many fish soaking baits or dragging them around in areas. Not to say that it's impossible. I have had luck with very slow presentations - especially night fishing - but pound for pound - when I find the right bait and it's the right day - I'm gonna be getting bit a lot and it won't be a lot of waiting. I'm usually bouncing around trying to get every fish that will hit what I'm doing off similar spots while the bite is hot!

That thing has eaten a fully grown nutria or two.

Dude - WHAT!?!? You caught a sea monster! What a day!

It almost feels like some *years* they want the worm and some *years* they want the jig more and then some years it has seemed like it's almost a trip by trip thing. You really do need to fish both if you are going to go after bottom oriented/heavy cover oriented largemouth! Some days you make the switch from the worm to the jig and it's like a light switch. I still think mostly it's a profile deal when that kinda stuff is happening - but it's hard to say - I just listen to the fish so I can catch em!