Pat Brown

Yeah hit your lil ponds when they thaw and use a small lipless. Fun stuff if the big girls are feeding.

The crappie on our clear shallow rocky pond are so black and very chartreuse.

I think you're describing 'defensive strategy' in the sport of professional tournament bass fishing! 😂😂😂😂 Please DM Randy Blaukut somewhere and give him this idea. It's funny that something as far fetched as 'decoys' COULD actually be defensive strategy in 2024, when years ago, the idea of doing this to increase your odds of winning would be laughable.

Okay specific to make it fun? 1/2 oz strike King Red eye shad in green gizzard shad. 3/8 oz jig in a gizzard color with a watermelon Zoom super chunk with chartreuse spike it on the tips on the back. 1/2 oz Nichols impulse buzzbait in black with a black blue swirl rage menace and a trailer hook. 5/16 oz tungsten weight pegged with a 3/0 offset round bend worm hook and a blue fleck Berkley power worm Owner Flashy Swimmer with a gold willow and a Tennessee Shad largo shad on it. But like this isn't real because I use what the conditions call for which changes throughout the day. Sometimes I need smaller or bigger or more action or less action or whatever! There are no best baits, only best baits for the fish you're looking at right now.

That crappie is looking ready to explode! 3.15 is completely insane! Your lake has to have some giant bass in it too with crappie that size! Sheesh!

I really wish we had more small public ponds because yesterday mine was pretty darn full when I got there after work being 72° and sunny. That's the main reason I like cold water. Usually means cold air which means I get the pond mostly to myself for two months. 🥹

Y'all are welcome to rub my head. It's mostly bald and probably sweaty this time of year 😂😂😂 I'd love to meet y'all and go fishing! Alex take me and Katy out on your boat and y'all can rub my head and I'll show you what your lake has in it! 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼

Alex makes it look easy and it ain't! He's a dangerous man when it comes to catching bass 😎. I agree that focusing in on one body of water at a time is huge. I have basically a few now but I know what bodies of water I'm the most intimate with and it's because I committed to them. I think learning one makes learning the next easier and learning many at once can be overwhelming and confusing. It's wild how lakes that literally feed into each other that I fish hold populations of bass that favor completely different lures and water and cover and structure and are on entirely different clocks as far as seasonal movements. I will say that my biggest obstacle in breaking down my first couple bodies of water was my assumptions. I assumed a lot of things about the forage and the depth of the water I was fishing and over time I was able to observe a LOT of things that I was missing that were critical to my success. This kind of observation only happens when you get intimate with a single body of water and are always there. It definitely has helped me read new bodies of water much more quickly. I know people say a lot on here that ponds are easy and lakes are hard but my experience has been the opposite. What ponds ARE, is smaller, so you can pick them apart and see how they function mechanically as ecosystems a little more quickly perhaps. Find you a good pressured public pond where it's impossible to catch fish and learn how to catch those fish and I bet you could catch a bass out of a puddle on the side of the road too!

Thank goodness @PBBrandon! I guess you can stay on Bass Resource for a little bit longer but don't let it happen again, ya hear? 😉😂 (Seriously that's awesome! Glad you got through the slump, they're the worst!)

Dang that sounds scary. The world needs more folks willing and eager to do the right thing when it's called for. Over the summer this past year I fished the extremely large local lake a bit more than the previous year and I was out on this deep point on a super windy day (I wouldn't be out on a kayak) and we saw this dude fishing from a kayak and I must have looked over at him at the exact right (or wrong?) moment because it *looked* like he fell off his kayak right into the lake. Over 30 feet of water. In the wind. Turns out he was just a lil hot and needed to cool off 😅😅😅😅 My heroics were not necessary that day but I was ready! LOL

This is beautiful and I agree 1000%. Thanks for some morning affirmations.

Tank @thediscochef!!!! Good info @AlabamaSpothunter!!! Oddly enough I do great with chatterbait and crankbaits when I see them busting shad randomly out in the open water! Give it a try! Jerkbait is probably my favorite when they're pushing shad into shallow structure in the fall and post spawn.

A quick trip before supper and I got my March buzzbait fish knocked out. And THAT is why you use a trailer hook friends. 😎😎😎😉😉😉 And another one buzzing a swim jig over some random bank: Proof that jigs and buzzbaits are big fish baits. 😆😆😆🥵🥵🥵🎣🎣🎣

Thank you @king fisher Trey is a friggin real deal monster who just beat everyone that has mattered for the past 10 years heavy handedly. It didn't look like he was playing video games. It looked like he was dialed in and doing it better than anyone else in the competition. YMMV Congratulations are indeed in order and it is his time right now.

I was shaking a jig under the surface on some nondescript banks and some GIANT bass were waking on it but I instinctively slow down and they swerved. I adjusted my presentation and *sped up* after seeing the wakes and got these bass. 1/4 oz @Siebert Outdoors shot caller in 'Pats Gizzard' with an Arkansas glow largo shad on the back.

If you listen to Trey speak on stage at any event, he's very very quick to mention his mentor and teacher and how he wouldn't be anything without guidance.

One thing I will say is jigs ARE great for flats.....just not my favorite when presenting them vertically or dragging em around on a flat. Just cast it out and burn it/reel it fairly quickly while shaking your rod tip and varying your retrieve. If you can get the jig to subtly bulge the surface, even better. Kinda like a finesse buzzbait/spinnerbait being waked. When you see a giant wake engulf your little wake and feel that tell tale tug, thank me in your heart and set that hook!

Yeah these are always really helpful and fun. Thanks, Glenn! I've really been enjoying all of the pros that you've been featuring as well!

I think that if MLF changed their format and banned livescope and future electronics they would have a competitive product and their brand would be markedly different from BASS and it would create some interesting competition and some valid outlets for people with issues. But I don't think that MLF is intelligent or going to do that lol

Bama strolling right 😉😉😉? I can't wait for your fish to fire back up and a vintage lure trip sounds incredibly fun! I wanna do more fun trips like that this summer when they're biting really well! Thanks for the kind words. Can I wear the headset and cast to a see through swimming pool from 5 ft above it to show everybody what I'm doing???? I've always wanted to do that! 😆 @AlabamaSpothunter maybe you can cut those straight tails with some scissors and salvage the bags!

Duuuuuuude let's GO Alex! Absolute gorgeous tank you got there. Really need to start playing around with the drift fry.

@TnRiver46 Sometimes I can't even do that 😂😂😂 The amount some of you guys catch astounds me and leads me to think I have so much to learn!!! I mean for crying out loud. A bassmaster elite series champion learned everything he knew from Alex this past winter and won on Toledo Bend. All I did was start a thread about Bama Strolling which led to a measly fourth place finish for Tyler Williams this week.🥲

And to see Tyler Williams get so far with Bama Strolling. It really warms the heart. 🥹♥️🎣

Jake got a real nice one too. 🎣😎♥️

Wellllll.....I went back out today. Being my 37th birthday and all I really wanted to catch a special fish. Also my wife made me enter the 'Big Bass Bash' which is a local annual tournament for our 3 major lakes where the 12 anglers who submit and certify at marina scales the biggest bass on any of the three lakes for each of the 12 months of the year get to compete the following spring for a cash prize. Today, I got to submit one. Currently in the lead for March for the tri city piedmont NC big bass bash and may compete next spring! At around 2:30 pm I found a culvert where fresh water was dumping into the lake near some lilly pads. They weren't in the pads today so I decided to fish some wood on the adjacent channel swing banks thinking they'd be excellent staging areas (and seeing some big herons sneaking around figured plenty of bait). Well she smoked my @Siebert Outdoors 3/4 oz blue bug brush jig with a rage craw on the back on the fall next to a long lay down towards the end where it ended. Meagan netted her and I kept her alive boatside all the way back to the marina for the submission and I revived and released her personally. She swam away with vigor. Bass are tough fish. What a birthday. One I'll never ever forget! (And yes I got the whole thing on camera!)