Pat Brown

I’ve learned every season that bass are all different shapes and lengths and just like the “banana for scale” meme illustrated in a comical fashion - photos of organic life with other random organic non standardized objects in the photo for scale doesn’t really give us much of a sense of scale. My favorite is when people say “you can tell by the eyes - if it’s got the rings it’s a giant” - no. My fishing buddy this past weekend caught this fish with rings around its eyes - it’s a 5 lber. It’s not some mythical sized fish. I catch lots of fish over 8 lbs with no rings around their eyes and small mouths - there’s biology behind this - these are young fish that are feeding themselves well and outgrowing the pack by leaps and bounds. Not all bass have the same relative growth rates etc. I catch 9 lbers that can’t be more than 4 years old - they don’t have the length or the giant mouths or the cataracts of older fish. However I will catch old 3-5 lbers that have horrible relative growth rates. Too much competition or not the right genetics or forage during their main growth years etc. who knows. All this to say - I cannot guess a fishes weight from a photo - even a photo on a bump board (you don’t get a sense of the girth or depth or height of a fish accurately with a bump board, just length) - I can do okay in person holding and looking at a fish. Scale is the only way to know what fish weigh.

@RenzokukenFisher The males will take the bait off the bed and those uninterested females hovering 25 feet away might come investigate if the dude can’t stop the nuisance - wear polarized glasses and make note of where you need to cast and then get as far away as you can cast accurately and stay that distance away from the bed. You don’t really even have to catch the male - just let him take the bait off the bed over and over again and usually mama will come see what’s shaking. Not always though. Really big baits like glide baits and big swimbaits and heavy jigs and big creature baits and crankbaits and frogs and buzzbaits can sometimes get them to hit off the bed. Cast 30 - 40 feet past where you see them hovering and bring it through them at various speeds and depths and from different angles if possible (and different times of day!) don’t be afraid to go extremely fast and slow. Honestly intentionally sight fishing females is incredibly hard and I respect anyone who has success doing it. It’s just as hard as catching a big female bass any other time to be honest - I would know. Good luck.

There isn’t really a set time when all of them do one thing but pretty much when you start to see / catch fish up shallow a lot - they’re already spawning somewhere on that body of water. Also worth noting: perfectly paired off male and female bass guarding beds in a very susceptible manner is the exception not the rule and you actually don’t really get to actually see bass doing the pair thing very often during the spawn. Females drop eggs and leave and a lot of times they do that at night when you can’t see em. Strong chance that wolfpack of females hovering nearby is a group that has already laid eggs and the males you see are now just guarding the eggs. Also also worth noting - been doing this a long time and fishing a lot of spawns - contrary to popular belief - females almost always show up and clear the area they like to spawn long before males follow shad/shiners/sunfish out of deeper water. Those males being locked on only happens when there’s already eggs to protect.

I also swim free rigs and t rigs - same exact thing as swimming a jig or worm or small soft swim bait. Bass will sometimes attack a thing moving horizontally better than something falling and rising or sitting still.

I like to swim a jig in the spring. It works year round but it works really well in the spring and the fall when they’re feeding up shallow. I think of swim jig and lipless and square bill and spinnerbait and bladed jig and even buzzbait to some degree as interchangeable horizontal approaches that appeal to fish at different times / during different conditions. A swim jig to me is sort of the finesse version of a buzzbait or a bladed jig or a spinnerbait - as such - I fish it accordingly. I will throw a swim jig when conditions or the cover they’re holding in are pointing to one of those more aggressive and flashy baits - but for whatever reason - maybe water is too clear, maybe they seen too many spinnerbaits, maybe they want something bulging but not breaking the surface etc - I will pick a swim jig and start throwing it in the areas those other baits should be working and often times it will work. I actually throw a swim jig more than any of those other baits and it’s mainly because I can also flip and drag a swim jig and get bites. It’s just another way to fish any jig - you don’t need to worry about the design of the jig.

Chronic Lyme disease/alpha gal allergy sufferer here - if a tick latches on - you’re at risk. Always go to the doctor if your tick bite doesn’t heal fast or if it gets progressively more irritated - these are indicators. A simple course of antibiotics is all it takes to prevent a lot of future medical trauma - for alpha gal - if you start feeling funny 4-6 hours after consuming meat regularly - get the blood test - potentially life threatening meat allergy. Not fun. Layer up and tuck stuff into stuff and immediately take clothes off and wash them and immediately check yourself over buck naked when you get home. That’s about all you can do an it’s still not fool proof

I love music and I love fishing so I keep them separate and pay them each their due respect. I’m not saying I wouldn’t wet a line with someone who insisted on having the radio playing in their boat - but for me personally, when you’re in my boat - we fishin’. We can listen to music in the car on the way to and from the lake - but on the lake I want to bask in the stillness and bathe in the sounds of nature.

Sometimes you want bait balls around - sometimes it doesn’t matter. It changes day to day and depending on the section of the lake you’re in. People offering you nuanced advice are people who aren’t trying to get your money or sell you a bait and you’d do well to listen. Nobody here is just typing to hear themselves talk. My help is voluntary and I enjoy helping others catch fish. It’s just not always black and white the way we want it to be.

It depends is the best answer I can give - there’s times when you want to be doing more of one or the other on every lake etc. Also not all fish on a lake are prespawn/spawn/post spawn at the same time. In the spring especially areas on the main lake - I might just check the points and move on - but up a muddy creek arm or on a shallow flat - I might slow down and pick apart for fish that are active around their beds in that warmer water. And then there’s the conditions leading up to the day I go out which can change everything in a heartbeat. I wouldn’t say I pick a starting location - I’d say I show up and fish the conditions and start with the closest points/flats/ledges etc and start checking things out - I try not to have a plan or make too many assumptions ever - learned that for the most part - whatever I figure out one day is gone the next more often than not. The major exception being when fish start to spawn and then you can typically find them up shallow around cover until they stop. Some of those fish around their beds are Prespawn and some are spawning and some are post spawn. Same is true for fish on points and ledges and in ditches etc etc. I’d just try to figure out what the fish are doing that you can capitalize on given the conditions you face on the day you go out.

Yeah I just pick the one with the best reviews that’s running a deal and hope for the best - it’s cheap enough that even if I get one dud in my lifetime the net savings and affordability make it worth it and so far no issues.

I like my LiFe Po4 batteries that I’ve gotten for cheap. They last forever and seem like even grinding my trolling motor into the mud and fighting wind they chug along for hours and hours. I’m never going back to lead acid which has resulted in me being stranded in the middle of the lake as storms approached because I ran it into a little too much mud on a windy day back before I had the luxury of an outboard motor. For weight - never been a problem for me - I feel like if anything - I try to bring less stuff in general - i also have anchors in my boat storage etc - I just like having consistent power that performs like it’s full for a whole 8 hours. LiFe Po4 ends up being about the same cost as lead acid from Walmart for me just shopping for a good deal on a 100 aH battery on Amazon. I can usually find one on sale for around 120$ or so and they have never caused me any problems.

Catt always said go quiet and sneaky first and then hit em with the loud stuff before you leave. I think there’s wisdom there. I think you can really combine both power and finesse a variety of ways - I fish a lot of finesse power presentations like big worms and jigs and frogs and soft swimbaits etc

Great to see the Northern anglers getting bit again! Only a matter of time afore them old lady bass show up and then it’s game time!

I really liked @GRiver saying he uses some fiberglass gardening stakes in lieu of anchors and power poles! Great thinking!

It depends! Sometimes I need to not move. Sometimes I need to move. I might go with a slightly heavier weight if the boat is moving just so I can be more efficient.

I love the 35$ ozark trail rods from Walmart and buy those for when I really don’t want to care - never broken one. I fish with my dog and wife and son - I don’t baby my gear at all - I tend to pay attention to the stuff that survives - and buy it again!

I feel like for me - I only shelve an old standby for a while if I feel like it’s actively scaring my fish for whatever reason. Any lure that is as good as a clanky boat full of talking friends to a group of bass - is a lure I’m not eager to throw. I think over time - one of the tells that a bait is a bad idea for me - I see fish gorging and run that old standby that I know should work through the madness, and they don’t flinch - THEN the final nail in the coffin is when I pick up a different bait that seems right and catch a few right away. Sometimes this is just a mood thing and I don’t pay it much mind. But if this happens again and again and again with that specific bait that I know should be working easily on multiple bodies of water over the course of multiple seasons - that’s when a lure will get put on the bench until whatever happened to condition all the fish wears off. The only one I can think of off the bat that I really had tons of success with and then put it down for a number of years is the bladed jig - at first it was a bait that really caught big fish and numbers for me in a wide variety of conditions across multiple seasons and bodies of water - I had utmost confidence throwing it and retrieving it a multitude of ways that worked well for me. Then it just stopped. I know I didn’t stop being good at fishing - other baits kept plugging along for me and even blowing my mind with the results they were having and every time I picked up the old chatter wagon - nada. I didn’t even bring a bladed jig with me to a pond or lake for 3 years - this past fall I was really committed to some locations with a lot of grass and lo and behold - the chatter horse made it’s triumphant return with a couple big fish on tough days in cold water. I still had 20 : 1 success fishing a lipless instead but it was nice to see the bladed jig can still trick big smart fish around here in the right circumstances. Now I keep a few around again but it’s still at best D tier bait for me - I’ll reach for it in very specifics situations at certain times of year but almost always fish something else like a swim jig or lipless instead.

FishUSAEze-Lap Diamond Hook SharpenerThe Eze-Lap Diamond Hook Sharpener is perfect for touching up hook points while on the water. Available at FishUSA- America's Tackle Shop! https://www.basspro.com/p/bass-pro-shops-hook-hone?hvarAID=shopping_googleproductextensions&ds_e=GOOGLE&ds_c=BPS%7CShopping%7CPMax%7CProprietary%7CGeneral%7CNAud%7CGoogle%7CNMT&gclsrc=aw.ds&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=19584928290&gbraid=0AAAAAD1TgtcOFXFbcE1sKQKZcF2vpQbw0&gclid=CjwKCAiAqprNBhB6EiwAMe3yhsJvwmajSkiCHYzhG5HN2AJFibuzY4eCvmmgu9o_wNQAPxWa0fyxohoCGiAQAvD_BwE Used both of these ones and like them both. The pen one I think l liked a little better for how easy it was to do hooks with the smaller sharpening surface. The bigger surface ones work too but you can over sharpen it (take the point off by accident more easily) and the angles become more precarious the bigger the sharpener is.

I really like gamakatsu/trokar/owner/mustad any of the nice coated hooks with sharp tips out there. It’s really more about matching the hook size and style to the application and if you do that right , they’re all pretty fantastic now days. Everyone else’s mileage may vary - but that’s my 2 cents having used most of the top rated bass fishing hooks and cheap crap - it’s all pretty much fine if it’s sharp. I learned to use a hook sharpener and any hook I use is gonna be sharp and that’s been a huge deal for me!

6.15/15.87 = 0.3875 x 100 = 38.75 This fish won me a free year of fishing and got me another ticket to the big fish battle in spring 2027! Big fish battle for last years submission is 19 days from now. I’m excited!

Well done, Joe! Big girls are around - dip your rod every cast lol

Alabama rig is always a hoot to lose. Swimbaits - jig heads - umbrella rig - time spend preparing it - all gone in a cast. I just skip Alabama rigs now lol I have had some bad jig days on local ponds. Sometimes when the 50 lb braid cats cradle spider webs get exceptionally dense and frequent I can lose over 100$ worth of tackle in a couple hours walking the bank. People who bank fish with heavy braid and just cut their lines and leave it are my pet peeve. Im pretty live and let live / do as ye will when it comes to unorthodox fishing choices - but ruining a fishing spot because you used line that’s too heavy for you to manage properly - let’s not please. Any day on the boat I knocked a whole rod reel line and bait over the side was a sad day! 😭😭😭😂😂😂

I throw the 1/2 oz red eye shad the most and it’s caught me a pile of giant fish. I also throw the 1/4 oz and 3/8 oz a lot. I throw the silent damiki tremor and thunderhawk Sgt. quite a bit. Suspending bill lewis trap and 6th sense quake are useful at times. I have caught some fish on other lipless baits but those ones are probably my favorites.

I feel more often it’s the opposite. I get off the water and wonder how much better of a day or bigger fish I could have caught if I could have dialed in the soft plastic bite and not wasted so much time trying x, y, or z.

Try it - I find it kills the action I want and more importantly the fish want - I have tried it during hot free rig bites and never caught a fish doing it. Just sharing what seems to be important nuance based on my personal experiments with the rig fishing for purty tough to catch fish. It’s entirely possible that your fish won’t care about a bead and a bobber stop or how much slack you have in your line etc. These are merely my observations based on a lot of testing. If I had to guess : objectively I think the bead and the stopper do what too heavy wire of a hook does and kinda creates uneven amounts of drag and also I find the free slider gets suck around the stopper or the bead does and it just doesn’t work properly at all - most importantly you lose the feel. When it’s totally free and the knot is buried and the line is the next thing the water sees - the rig operates correctly. Some kinda physics at play.