Pat Brown

No frogs!?!? That's horrible. I'm so sorry Crick - frogs coming back every year is something I always deeply enjoy and look forward to for the excitement of seeing them and the peaceful drone they provide. Hoping they make a come back soon.

This thread is just a reminder that I am not wrong for fishing hard baits almost exclusively during the cold months in North Carolina 🤣🤣🤣👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼

@The Baron - sounds like you're running into the wall I tend to hit in the winter and in the summer - the wall has writing on it - large red letters - all caps - KEEP MOVING. Summer and Winter are very different from 'good seasons' and require a more deliberate and Methodical approach for me generally speaking. The fish are on the move. So must we be. Spring and fall i find there's pretty much a fish every where I cast and it's angry but summer and winter are 'feed months' and not 'breed months' so they're less angry and more hungry and mobile. Scout out the bream beds. Scout out the grass where the shiners make their home. Feeder creeks are huge when it's summer. These are great areas to make a milk run out of and yes like @ol'crickety says - LONG casts in clear water. If you can see em already - game over.

Shearon Harris is super super cool and definitely a place we are itching to check out. May wait til the winter when there's less people out - but it is very very cool. Congratulations!

Absolute smash fest!!!!

Allow me to add to the story of this weekends adventures...... Day before yesterday we took @IcatchDinks to our favorite summer lake this year (been great to us this year for some reason) and had a really fun and sweaty 2 hour boat session. We started out hitting some spots that have produced giants but not many bites - and got not many bites 😂 and then moved on to places where we tend to get bit more consistently but the quality is inconsistent. Stuck two on near back to back casts out of the same pocket off of what looked like a bedding area - hard to say if it was the bream or the bass that were on bed - but it was going down back there. Two NICE bass: Sadly it was at the very last second for our guest and we had to take him home right after we found em! Bummer! Then it absolutely dumped rain on all my tackle 😂👍🏼 It needed washing it's fine. WELL - yesterday was quite a epic day to be sure! The Plan : @IcatchDinks + @LrgmouthShad + @Pat Brown + Jake @ sneaky lil spot @ 0500 hours. We arrived and it was still dark - no breeze. Tough conditions but I knew because of the cool rain the previous night - we'd be getting some action. I tied on my black scum frog and went to work. Jake tied on a weightless plastic and went the other direction. He catches one almost instantly and a nice one! First few casts I nail this squeaker who informs me promptly to keep the frog tied on! I obliged and was treated to number 2 very shortly after: The sun starts to come up a bit more so I tie on a little popping trophy scum frog to see what kinda action it gets at this spot. End up with the biggest of the trip with a nice one just shy of 4 lbs. Healthy girl - great fighter. @LrgmouthShad makes his entry and I point him to some areas that have yielded bigger fish and offer him a few strategic points that have helped me at this particular spot and away we go! We are both fishing a grassy point with a big tree hanging over it from opposite sides of the tree on the bank - he's tossing a swim jig and I'm throwing the scum frog popper and he got to see me water ski a nice 2 lber! Always fun when I get an audience - even more fun when it's part of the BR fam! At this point @IcatchDinks sees a flurry of action on a crankbait and catches a nicer one! Jake then manages #2 for the day along the same shade line! At this point we are all sort of on top of each other in the shade as it is getting VERY hot VERY quickly with zero breeze. I bomb my frog parallel to a long PVC pipe that acts as insulation for the feed line for the fountain at the center of the pond. I walk ol scummy pop a couple times and all of us see her take it. I actually got a really nice hookset on her and had her on for a second but she was a jumpe and launched her near 6 lb frame about 3 feet out of the water and returned my bait to me before going on a diet til we leave 😂👍🏼 It was a heartbreaker to be sure. I don't miss a lot of fish at all when they are hooked on the frog but when I do it's humbling and it reminds me to be super thankful for the fish I get to hold and release. The action slowed considerably at this point. @LrgmouthShad kept us in the game with a healthy fish on a megabass pop max (gonna need a couple of those!!!!) @IcatchDinks stuck a nice sunfish and a bass on the crankbait! Jake got one more I think I couldn't find a picture of and I lost a 2 lber in private. 4/6 on the frog is not bad for me and I feel like letting them get that bait established in their mouths is pretty darn good stuff. I missed a lot swinging too soon earlier this spring and I'll be ready next year / this fall 👍🏼😎 The coolest part of meeting these guys and fishing with them is that they're all great people I'd feel comfortable leaving my kid with. They are the salt of the earth and kind and good natured as people can be and we all had such a fun time given the AWFUL conditions for bass fishing! AND we caught the snot out of em!?!?! That's a win. Looking forward to our next adventure - and the next time we get visits from faraway bass friends.

I've seen the largest bass at a small pond I fish but only ever caught her sisters.

Toads grim! Looks like pup wasn't too impressed but mine are only impressed by snuggles and food so I get that! 😂😂😂

I've recently shifted over towards someone who finds things that work and gets lots of that kinda stuff and less the experimental angler for the most part. Or I should say - I experiment laterally within a bait category and less all over the place. I do have fun with my creature baits and worms sometimes though.

On em'!!! 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼😎😎😎🎣🎣🎣

Aw crick your the best!!! 🙂🙂🙂 Happy 4th!!!

We were gonna not fish but then we did. Glad we did. Got a 6.5 on the frog to start the day: Ole Scummy came through for us on the 4th! As you can see she wasn't shy at all about the shad color Launch Frog (full size) - this exact frog has now caught over 30 fish with quite a few large fish under its belt and is still as good as new: scum frogs rule - walked gently in place under a shady tree line during the hottest sunniest part of the day with the wind blowing. Horrible conditions for a frog 😎😎😎🐸🐸🐸 Or maybe not: Maybe a frog is a pretty solid bait for catching a bass - in any conditions. Jake got into a real nice one on a GYS on his spinning rod. Caught a few more decent ones and missed an absolute giant on a point on the buzzbait coming in during a big storm that hit. I mean this bass came up and surfaced ready to eat and we all saw her - she saw us - I slowed the bait down - she swerved hard. The big girls were out to play. Jake missed a giant under a shady tree on his mouse - swung too early - probably a bit keyed up from all the frog action I was getting! 😂🐸 We had a great 4th - time for dinner and fireworks! 🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲🎆🎆🎆🎣🎣🎣

🎶🎶🎶I looked over Jordan - what did I see? A plane about to land at Raleigh Durham International Airport flying over me.🎶🎶🎶 Glad you had a good time and happy you're exploring some of my home waters from my childhood. That's so neat!

Happy 4th to everyone! 🎆🎆🎆🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲🦅🦅🦅🎣🎣🎣♥️♥️♥️

That sounds good to me! I like the rage craw when I want it to look more craw-y and a menace or a bug when I want it looking more sun fishy and then I use a swimbait or a soft plastic jerk bait to do a shad-y thing. Definitely a profile thing more than anything else for me.

I've never noticed it before - just read about it here - but it's probably happened to me before - I just think in general - for me - the rocks and branches get them long before the sun does! 😂😂😂👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼 I agree that maybe you could see if Strike King will send you a new one.

Motoroil Red Flake/Junebug/Plum are my favorites but I also like chartreuse pepper, watermelon neon, redbug, junebug neon, and smoke purple neon black.

Can't leave baits on the deck in the summer. Happens to all hard baits. Not fun!

Early morning session was super fun - conditions were not good - zero wind and it warmed back up a lot. Saw osprey and big snappers everywhere. Not quite what we saw two days ago during a summer cold front 🙂 Didn't stop us from getting some good bites and even catching a couple nice fish! @IcatchDinks almost nailed two on a live target mouse - but the hooks on that bait are turned very far inward stock and neither fish was able to get a hook in spite of Josh doing everything right - bummer. Seeing this action made me ditch my fluke plan and go get my frog. Caught my first one of the day on the second or third cast with it. @FishTax arrived and started tossing his swim jig - Jake went and got his frog. Jake got this nice one frogging: I start working my way down the East Bank and stick a really good one - 3 lb 11 oz @FishTax nailed a good one on the swim jig Things slowed down considerably at this point. I got my drop shot out and broke off on the hookset near the rip rap using a big ribbon tail worm. Probably a big snapping turtle. Maybe not though. Made my way back to the car and got my frog back out and nailed a 2 lber that ate the Frog more subtly than I've ever had it eaten and it hopped 3 feet into the air and came off 🥲 Jake managed one more on the fluke: Sadly no new PBs or giants - but a nice bit of action to start the day and a good time had by all! 🙂🙂🙂🎣🎣🎣

I can assure you that bass not being aware that people are around is vastly favorable when trying to catch them - YMMV etc Happy for anyone who can sit on fish and make noise and catch the heck out of em but that ain't my situation at all. I'm always trying to make as long a cast as I can and still set the hook. I move slow. I turn things off. Y'all know I catch good fish on small bodies of pressured water. Stealth is a huge deal.

I think with lure categories where the angler imparts the action - they're all pretty interchangeable most of the time and it's more about which ones you like etc With lure categories where the lure 'does something on its own' when we reel it in - I feel like certain makes and models get more bites - even individual crankbaits sometimes have something special. Finding fish is more important than bait selection. Fishing pressure in the US is a HUGE part of why subtle changes MIGHT actually add up to a bite or two more sometimes.

We are ready 😎🌄🎣 Good luck to you @ol'crickety

Last night was super fun times! Jake nailed two more bass at the spillway before we met up with @FishTax and @IcatchDinks for some night fishin' Sun started to get low and I told @IcatchDinksI wanted to let him do one of my 'big fish casts' that has produced many solid fish and a few big ones over the years from the bank - he did not disappoint! He got this 2.6 lber in as though he might even occasionally catch not dinks! Like a true NC bass angler! We made our way down to the marina to dodge the bat attacks and get some lights over head and see if we could find another fish. I nailed this one off a long laydown on a weightless speed worm. Unfortunately we mostly got bites and lost baits after that and called it a night after a fun group photo/proof of life photo: Had to do real work today and didn't fish til the evening but had a really fun boat trip out with Meagan and Jake. Wind was blowing into a pocket really nicely - saw lots of bream beds and some mayfly action happening along the shady wind blown bank and decided to get to work there and caught some dinks on a fluke. I figured we had the right area and bait - just needed to keep at it and was rewarded with a 5.5 just before we left: Going out super early to sneaky spot with the boys to see if we can get Josh a new PB before he heads back to Michigan this weekend - fingers crossed!

I'm not calling you a tightwad and I don't think you are one - just pointing out that correlation does not equal causality and you have a very small sample size to deal with, even if you've got a few hundred fish biting. I would just fish the plastics that the fish are biting the best and not worry so much about the durability because that sort of thing is kind of a chaos element. Maybe if they're nibbling the claws and biting them off before you get a chance to set the hook - Play around with dyes and markers or try different colors to see if you can find one that they will choke all at once. I do not believe that there is any difference in durability between a speed craw and a brush hog. I have had every plastic get destroyed instantly at least one or two times and I've had plenty of them last for multiple fishing trips. I don't think we can control this kind of stuff is all I'm saying bud! Fish on!

@The Baron - Out of likes at the moment, but that looks like one for the memory banks and a beautiful day to boot! Congrats! 🎣🎣🎣🎣🎣