Pat Brown

NC is working on laws. Crappie populations at Shearon Harris are 30% down in the past 2 years. While I'm not sold on it directly impacting bass populations - my big girls eat crappie and I don't like the food web getting torched with gasoline by idiots with tv screens on their boats.

Must. Throw. Frog. 🥹🐸🎣 Looking spectacular!

To all saying she is struggling in the spillway due to her condition: Here in NC the bass spawn all summer and into the fall as temps drop. All of the fish I caught this past weekend had bloody tails and all the females were extremely concave - there's no shortage of food/cover or depth. The river system goes on for miles into the forest - it's not just a puddle that the lake empties into. If I had to wager a guess - these fish are beat up from spawning relentlessly - it's just how female bass at the end of the summer tend to look around here - especially if they just spawned. They look this way in big lakes and ponds too and it starts as early as April. She fought hard and swam away vigorously and I assume next spring she'll be porky again for the first round of spawning after winter peaks. With regards to the changes in her lateral lines and darkness of her patterns - bass change colors like chameleons and in dirtier water or deeper water they tend to make themselves pale! In cleaner water or around dense vegetation - they tend to be more defined and dark in color. I have caught an 8 lber that was pale and put it in my live well and when I pulled it out it was super vibrant and defined. I have also seen them flaring their color back and forth when sunfish were attacking their beds in the spring. It's pretty wild!

So as you know from Latest Catch - I caught some doozies on August 2 this week. Full report in there. Second biggest fish of the day was a STRIKING fish. She had bug eyes and a really gnarly dent in her dorsal fin that looked SO distinct. Jake and I observed these things in awe as we released her. Her eyes bulge out in a very specific way. And there's another shot of the dorsal fin. Jake and I sort of wrote it off as a well worn late summer spillway monster but her distinct features kept pinging my brain. My bassin friend who is a big swimbait and lipless crankbait master - basically got me successfully catching big fish with both - caught a lunker back in June at the opposite end of the spillway on a football jig and then it dawned on me that he had picture on his fishing page. There she was! The dorsal indentation and insane bug eyes - unmistakable! Months apart - two friends catch the same fish at far ends of a spillway river. We both found this incredible and amusing at the same time and agreed it was a sure sign that catch and release works. But then - it kept nagging at me. I still felt like this fish felt MORE familiar....I was at Jake's last summer basketball game in the bleachers during halftime looking through past large bass and there she was. I got a cold sweat. Like bass fishing X Files. In April of 2023 - I caught her full of eggs ON. THE. LAKE. Shady tree line off a main lake point. Nearly a MILE and a whole 100 foot drop down a spill way wall and a year apart. She certainly has been through some incredible things and she was by far the most beautiful in April when she was ready to burst under those trees. 7.4 lbs at that point on my scale. But what's truly remarkable is how much she endured and the fact that we were reunited beneath the spillway dam this past week just before I caught a 7 lb giant out of her sister school is even more unbelievable. I just had to put this out there for the bass heads of the universe to ponder and absorb. Catch and release the big ones.

I would go with the flipping hook all the way. That's the hook angle I vastly prefer when I'm fishing worms!!!

Stunna/Lucky Craft Pointer/Berkley Hit Stick/Rapala all various ones they make - all good to be honest/Jackal Rerange/6th Sense jerks are good/Strike King makes good ones etc They all seem to catch me fish when they're on a jerkbait bite. Doing stuff to make them sink or suspend and getting the right color and size and hooks and line and rod then dialing in the retrieve they want and where they are seem more critical than the brand.

This state you refer to is necessitated every day by the pressure I'm competing with on my lil bitty bass puddles. One of the reasons I love to fish fast is to keep enjoying new scenery while I'm getting skunked! 😂😂😂😂😂

Well with the new moon coming I figured I better fish a little harder than normal and was rewarded handsomely yesterday. After work a storm was set to roll through hard and wet just around sunset and we said 'heck - that sounds pretty swell'. We packed ourselves into the car and made our way to the ponds and only got some hits and taps with one small fish upon a mepps for an hour of our time. We changed the tune and decided to hit a local spillway that has produced before but only a couple dinks - figuring maybe the weird weather would activate them. Well it was a good adjustment. Minutes after we arrive Jake nails a really nice fish on the ox blood dinger weightless: A very healthy fish that portends good things and tells me we are in the right spot - maybe. Jake and I make our way to the dam - me with my frog and Jake with his dinger and Jake proceeds to nail fish #2 on the finger: I'm feeling antsy about my choice of the frog - but the storm is getting closer and the weather is getting funkier so I keep tossing it. I bomb one waaaaay out into the main river channel the dam dumps into and my frog gets smoked nearly instantly in about a foot of water on a hump I know is out there. I somehow manage a hookset and it feels nicer: It is nicer. Sadly it snapped my frog rod on the landing but a fish on topwater from this spot seems very odd and special.....Okay maybe we are getting somewhere with the bite. I release this healthy porky fish and return the corpse of my frog rod to my trunk and retrieve my drop shot rod. After about 3 casts I conclude a dropshot is not going to work at all with the bottom composition and retie with a weightless Zoom Speedworm in green pumpkin on a 3/0 offset worm hook. I bomb my first cast out on a rocky flat and try buzzing it and it gets smoked by a dink - I land this fish and continue to try to get one buzzing the speedworm to no avail. Storm is getting rather serious at this point. Some thunder and some lightning but very far off - the rain and wind however were picking up. I insist that the bite is exceptional and it's nearly a new moon - I decided to make a few more casts at some choice locations before we depart. I head to the mouth of the creek that the spillway dumps into and bomb one to a sandy point that sticks out into the main channel noticeably with a ton of wood dammed up in the water just beyond where I can physically get my bait. I very very slowly begin to retrieve the bait with my rod tip down. Rain is pouring everywhere and we can't really hear anything. I merely felt like I was snagged all of a sudden and then the snag began to pull back! Oh boy fish on and it's a doozy. We get recombombulated after the excitement of a big fish and I bite the head off my speedworm and retie my knot with shaking hands all in a matter of 1 minute and make one more cast to the same spot. I begin the same barely moving retrieve. This time I'm sure I'm snagged (I've lost dozens of baits at this spot to fishing line and rocks and trees limbs under water) but this snag begins to pull back and my drag slips. Then she jumps. Uh Oh. Back to back casts yielded giant fish number 2. This one a true NC trophy. Spawned out 7 lber that would easily go 9 in the spring. Incredibly healthy fish with a small mouth and a giant body. Probably from the same school the first one came from. Jake and I pack the car- soaked in silty spillway water and rain and fish goo - with adrenaline pumping through our veins. Not bad for a quick trip out after work before a storm hit around a new moon.

I always think it's really cool when you catch a fish that's blind in both eyes - they tend to be almost bleached white in my experience - I assume they just feel like they're in the dirtiest water/deepest darkness at all times and as a result they turn that same color. Sometimes in the very Early springtime at the shallow clear pond I fish. I can see large wolf packs of females cruising looking for beds and sometimes there will be one that is extraordinarily pale when the rest are more in line with the bottom composition. Blind ole gal?

I know this sounds silly - but those little trailer hook attachments for frogs haven't done me much good - but if that same thing had a free swinging feather tail 😏😏😏😏😏 For now it's a DIY deal or buy a frog with a feather out back out of the package..but it's definitely something they don't see.

I'll go sneaky and I'll go not so sneaky 1 weightless mag speed worm 2 weightless fluke 3 3/4 oz Siebert brush jig + rage craw 4 drop shot with worm 5 t rig with worm 6 3/8 oz Swim Jig + swim bait 7 Owner Flashy Swimmer + swimbait 8 Frog 9 owner beast hook + 6-7 inch soft swimbait 10 weightless mag speed craw 1 buzzbait 2 lipless crankbait 3 spinnerbait 4 hard Jerkbait 5 spook Haven't ventured very far outside of my core confidence less sneaky baits this year. Not really been fishing diving cranks or any size, haven't been fishing bladed jigs at all, haven't really fished much non frog or buzzbait topwater besides some spurts with a spook early in the spring. Looking forward to winter and throwing some hard baits!

Let the fish tell you what they want and yeah usually these days a point might be good for a cast or two maybe but with the way lakes are hammered most places you gotta let em rest and hit other stuff - then return and check when you feel they've had enough time. Unless you got a farm pond or something - then all bets are off. Points are like any sort of structure or cover - sometimes the fish are there and sometimes they are NOT there. Can't force em to be on points if they're not. When they are it can be fun to fish points!

Fall transition has begun here . Vegetation is dying/shad are moving shallow again, nights are getting cooler, daytime cold fronts coming every week with chilly rains. It's well underway here. Should be really feeling fally by mid August but it's flickering to life right now. Plenty of summer left in the tank but it's not something that happens all at once.

Steve Bardin is the man and I've learned a lot from listening to him over the years. Bass anglers often don't understand what is best for fisheries - even with the best of intentions. I mostly hear other fisheries biologists in other places echo the points made here. Basically, applying his philosophy to small bodies of water can radically shift the size in a positive direction. Too many little mouths to feed with no competition or predation = stunted dinks. Happens on big lakes too. It's wise to keep small or unhealthy fish if you like catching bigger healthier fish on small highly stretched fisheries with tons of competition for forage.

Just one on the speedworm right after the sunset near a seawall shadeline. Just keeping them honest - the bite has been rough.

I'm pretty sure you still got eyeballs and ears buddy. 😂😂😂😂

Makes me want low water conditions more often! Keeping notes!

Yeah, I've pretty much only been fishing a frog on that exact setup from sun up until sundown for the past 3 months. I relate to you. 😂😂😂

You're making a strong case for 6 lb monofilament and weightless soft plastics here 😂😂😂

Timing, timing, timing (and location but also timing 😂). Completely agree with this and love that you thought to add this point because we as anglers so so often forget: bass don't read rulebooks. 😎😎😎 Edit: just saw No See Ems referenced in another post. Had flashbacks to trying to rip the skin off my legs scratching those bites. Oh. My. Goodness. So so bad. And so prevalent on the NC coast.

Sounds like a good place to try weightless plastics/dropshot/subtle topwater/jigs/t rigs/C rigs. What I often like to do on super pressured fisheries is find out what works the best for most people when fish are super cooperative and then tweak that presentation so that I'm doing it differently from everybody else and that usually racks up the bites pretty quickly. If a frog is good on a lake I'll throw a tiny frog or a giant frog and fish it very fast or very slow. If a worm works well and everyone says throw a T rig - I'd find the worm that no one in your state has ever thrown and order a couple bags and throw them on a c rig. Fishing pressure usually just means the fish have seen a lot of what is sold at the local Walmart tackle section etc Sometimes you don't have to be good - you just have to be a little different.

August is usually when I really start to fish them again and then September they tend to catch some good fish before it gets really cold, but my son Jake and our buddy @LrgmouthShad proved to me a week or two ago - without a doubt, you can get great numbers in July on a spinnerbait. @king fisher pointed out the most important thing IMO - looking for the right conditions! Dirtier water/wind/shade/the right kinda cover/shad/bluegill fry etc. You can catch fish any time of year on a spinnerbait if the conditions are right and you got the right kinda bass around the right kinda cover.

I fish with my 11 year old son almost every day. People kinda give me funny looks and are hesitant to fish with me when I tell them he's coming sometimes a tiny bit - until they get in the boat and see him fish. He's passionate and consumed with nature and the sport and it tickles me to no end. I remember being a kid and fishing with my dad and how special and exciting it was to become consumed with the pursuit of fish with him - sharing that with my son is sublime. I enjoy when Jake invites a friend fishing who likes it but doesn't know *much* and we get them on some fish! IMHO - it's all about the love of the sport and the outdoors and the only way it's gonna survive is if we keep sharing it. Good on you sir!

Nice to see folks catching em good. Been mostly catchin dinks and snapping turtles. Missed some big fish this week but we gonna get one. 😎😎😎🎣🎣🎣 Keep up the excellent work folks. Love seeing all this action - summer is fun.

Same same - definitely depends on the fish 😂😂😂👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼 I don't want to get anything confused here either - worm is 100% my favorite bait for bass! 😎😎😎🎣🎣🎣