Pat Brown

I don't want to create the impression that by suggesting that you should keep moving that you should move over areas too quickly or past fish that are biting. The purpose of covering water and moving is to find the fish that are biting and sometimes 15 to 30 minutes is not an unreasonable amount of time to fish an area while moving very quickly. I don't understand why people can't reconcile these two things! 😄😄😄♥️♥️♥️ If anything, I find that while my intention is to cover water and move quickly every time I go out I end up spending 2 hours on a corner of a pocket that's about 30 ft wide LOL. Sometimes it works out but usually it works out better if I just keep moving. I am merely suggesting that the vast majority of people with good intentions and good information about bass fishing still generally fish too slow and don't cover enough water in a day to find fish a lot of the time!

I think bait matters a lot less than area and mostly we get stuck in areas that look good that have zero fish biting in them in the hopes that will change. Fact is - with you sitting there in a bass boat hammering the area - things are very unlikely to change for the better! Best to keep moving in bass fishing and work on keeping a good distance/boat positioning/stealth and casting accuracy. If you keep moving and master those elements of bass fishing - you'll always run into a few every time you go out regardless of the bait you use.

Fanny Pack!

I mean what I see is them seeming to do well instead of obviously immediately dying which they also do sometimes. There are surely dozens of bass that seemed to be doing well when I released them that later capitulated due to stress. These unfortunate casualty fish (that we never see die) are always possible - but to me, less what the thread is about. Just pointing out that fish that seem like they should be goners swim away *seemingly okay* and fish that seem like they should be okay go belly up. We can only do our best to read each situation and act accordingly. Best we can do is not tucker them out unnecessarily with long fights that stress them out and fill their blood with lactic acid and keep them in the water as much as possible after catching them with a quick release after any photos you need to take. My goal with my comment was not to spread any misinformation but merely to offer some compassionate wisdom.

It is necessarily true that that is what I have seen. I did not say for sure if the fish survived or not. Just saying for sure these are things I have seen. 😎😎😎👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼

This summer I really put a lot of time in with the fluke and the frog and I feel like you can take those presentations right to the bank every single day just about. Lights out money in the hot months. Slowly but surely getting the big worms and jigs back in the rotation because I miss it - but do I really? I feel like when it's hot you really up your chances of a bite fishing a fluke and a frog and just moving (on my lakes) and sometimes bites means fish! Been around the right ones too - things just didn't align when they were ready to go and that's fishing. These techniques work great for tricking the biggest bass. I just failed at other aspects when opportunities arose in the past few weeks. Oh well!

25" and 12.35 lb. What a freak! Sounds like a lot of fun too on a spinning rod in the grass 😂👍🏼🎣 What a HAWG!

Matched only by his love of golden retrievers. ♥️😂

Yeah a large bass can make a large crawdad into crawfish etouffee with its crushers in seconds. One gulp. Small bass gonna have problems with a bigger crawdad.

We throw gold blades on spinnerbaits/gold jig skirts/gold flakes in soft plastic - gold hard baits work great. Gold and Chartreuse are both very natural 'bold' colors that work well for LMB. There isn't really a water clarity for gold. It just works.

I used to think this was a good idea, but a bunch of people on this forum have debunked this with biological precedent. I don't do it anymore. I think it was just false equivalence every time I ever saw it 'work' and I may have harmed fish I did it to. Gut hooking fish. If you fish a lot - it happens to you. No angler likes to see it - but eventually you come to expect it to some degree. Baits I have killed bass with for no reason whatsoever that I could even detect (blood pumping out of the fish profusely even though the bait was in a lip): Chatterbait Spinnerbait Buzzbait Football Jig Lipless Crankbait Squarebill Frittside Many Jerkbaits of various sizes and brands Baits I have gut hooked bass with (hooked the skin at the back of the mouth past the chompers resulting in a fish death): Weightless Plastic Football Jig Frog Popper Lipless Crankbait Squarebill Frittside Jerkbaits Basically I have seen fish that should have died do well and make it AND I've hooked fish in the lip that nicked themselves grabbing the bait in some way that was fatal. We don't have a ton of control over the situation - we just driving a hook point into an animal that's biting our presentation. What you can do if you care is bend the barbs down on your hooks. This will ultimately completely eliminate gut hooking a fish. The ones that nick themselves fatally going for the bait? Yeah I got nothing there. It's a freak show every time that happens and it sucks. The best thing we can do in any of these unfortunate situations is honor the animals life by taking her home and nourishing our bodies or our gardens with her. Leaving her for the turtles is okay too - nature spares nothing. I just prefer to take em home and feed my family.

Drop shot in a drain during a steady downpour can be a lot of fun. I avoid lightning but rain doesn't bother me.

Another vote for the Fuego CT - hard to beat for the money. Still rocking two I got 3 years ago and they've caught some doozies.

@ChrisD46 I tend to think of it more like sometimes they just want a smaller profile - big fish sometimes key in on smaller bait fish or bugs/calmer conditions/clearer water etc. (happens on big lakes and small ponds as seasons change) and sometimes they want a bigger profile (heavy wind/darker skies/clouds/bigger baitfish in the area/dirtier water etc) I just try to keep an open mind and ask myself if a smaller profile or a bigger one is gonna get the bigger bite and watch the conditions.

@ChrisD46 I use the trophy series a ton and they are fantastic. The trophy series is more of a heavy cover frog and the launch is more of an open water frog. The XS is a great smaller profile frog that casts a mile. Awesome when they don't want as big of a bite. The trophy series popper takes this one step further and is the smallest profile in their line up and it works very very well. The 1/2 oz trophy is similar to the XS in size and gives you the head bobbing spit action of the 5/8 oz Trophy in a smaller package. I have caught well over thirty fish on a single shad launch frog and I have it tied on for a trip today. The last fish it caught was 6.5 lbs. Durability is not a problem with scum frogs.

Sorry for you and your families loss. That's a good reminder - thank you.

Inline spinner / small Jerkbait will catch everything that swims in a hurry. It doesn't take a lot of work to get a 2 acre pond on the right track and you may very well have some large fish hiding in there. You'll know for sure in the spring next year. 🙂🙂🙂🙂 Don't underestimate pop n' fly type rigs especially right now. Can be hours of fun with small sunfish and bass and really help culling.

Any company that makes a blue sapphire or flipping blue variation. Any PB&J variation Bama Craw ( GP/ orange) Bama Bug (GP/Junebug) Okeechobee Craw (GP/blue) Smoke purple neon black Black blue neon Black red neon Cali 420 Junebug Redbug Plum Blue fleck Motoroil I primarily fish a lot of gizzard shad/shad imitation colors like TN shad/Green Shad/Gizzard Shad/Sexy Shad/Arkansas Shiner/smoke pearl/white etc. this applies to hard and soft baits. White / shad is the deal around here for the really big fish a lot of the time.

I think there's a lot of times where subtlety wins and a lot of times where smashing the door open with guns blazing works. There are tons of factors that determine what kind of presentation is going to appeal to a population of fish and it's important to be in tune with all of them! Water temperature, water clarity, wind, flowing water, cover, forage, fishing pressure etc. etc.

I'd use a weightless plastic and a topwater. Grass really limits what I will throw a lot in a way that is both frustrating AND exciting! I enjoy casting / retrieving/ setting the hook. Don't enjoy cleaning my bait every cast and not catching much. For OVER submerged grass - TONS of stuff can work. Crankbaits that just tick the grass and chatterbaits reeled just over the tops can work but I bet they seen it a lot.

I've seen it go both ways in practice but overall if the angler lacks experience or skill with a given technique - it doesn't matter how good that bite has been at all - better off fishing something YOU'RE good at fishing and hoping the fish like it in that situation. I have also seen situations where it's basically a perfect opportunity to gain confidence in a technique because of how good that bite has been. I think if local knowledge gives you more confidence than your own logic - go with that because confidence is king.

I personally think you should always trust your gut because there's always a good chance you're doing something that nobody else is doing and the fish just might bite it. Your mileage may vary but that has been my experience everywhere I go!

I just run straight 25 lb 4 carrier braid to a screw lock 4/0 hook and skip all the fanfare. Works great.

I'd say that on the bank I'm pretty aware of the advantages/limitations that I'm gonna have and able to exploit the good parts and avoid falling into pits on a good day probably 80% of the time so we'll say 8/10 From a canoe or kayak I'm a healthy 2/10. I know how to do fishing but the boat mechanics stuff I'm a total novice and I know it - would be a struggle to fish all day from one without practicing. Small boat - I'd say that I'm pretty competent and aware of what the goal is and also another situation where I'm pretty versed in the advantage/pitfall relationship and how to exploit that knowledge. I'd say maybe 7/10 only because there are times of year where I struggle from the boat and do better on the bank.

Looks like a pretty incorrectly rigged c rig to me - I catch a lot of them every year and yes - they're stupid but surely catch starving bass just the same - as evidenced here.