Pat Brown

Yeah the slimy moss is the 'widow maker' of the southern marinas. Glad you made it out of that one okay.

When the water gets cleared out again it's gonna be tough to switch back slow and sneaky but not THAT tough since I'll be staring straight at them on bed 😍😍😍 I don't even know if I care if I always catch them when it's the spawn, I just know I walk around at my ponds going 😮😮😮😮😮 for about 2-3 months.

I fish often. I respool often. I've used lots of lines and rods and for me 15 lb big game is as close to a perfect line as you can get! I absolutely love hooksets with jigs and t rigs on 15 lb big game and I can feel everything with the stuff too.

Manns Baby -1 Strike King Hybrid Hunter S Strike King Wakebait Rat Bomber Shallow 2A Luk E Strike Cajun Wake Cordell Thin Fin Heddon Swimmin Image Norman Fat Boy 6th Sense Wakebait

You ain't lyin! 😂😂😂 Somebody prove to me that they aren't all jigs also!!!

Scored a lot of unopened Japanese Shad red eye shad on eBay for about 5$ a pop. I LOVE ghost lipless colors and these look like shiners and mosquito fish that you see loaded in the ponds here. Why does Strike King discontinue their best colors????

I'm going to try to catch fish on a Carolina rig this year....harder than I tried last year. Which wasn't very hard. Probably also gonna redouble my efforts with the free rig. So far it got one nibble back in the fall and that's it. 😂

I think for most days and conditions you get diminishing returns fairly quickly when up sizing or downsizing. Larger bass seem fairly particular about the size of the things they eat and it seems like it's usually in that 3-6" sweet spot around here for profile. Exceptions of course exist like the 10" worm bite that seems to happen every year but that's a very very thin and natural profile. It's not a 10" glide bait.

It's not so much that we're targeting big fish when we say that we're after big fish. Although sometimes we are targeting them, it's more so that we are hoping for a bigger fish because that's where the adventure lies for us as anglers sometimes. Like Woody is pointing out. There's a pretty big gap between the little guys and the big guys and there's a lot lot lot of little guys. And yeah you can catch them all day long around here but it's not very fun and you almost feel bad catching them when you do. Some people throw 2 inch swim baits and ned rigs routinely around here. It's not that those would not work here. It's that I would pretty much catch 8-in bass and panfish and that's not really my goal.

Lipless Crankbait Buzzbait Jig Soft plastic Jerkbait

Do I have range? Hard to say. I enjoy fishing new water and usually catch bass when I go new places. What do I do best? Understand how conditions tend to position baitfish and anticipate where bass are likely to be.

Go get em 😎😎😎

Big dance?

Yeah it's just a funny looking t rig that gets slightly larger average size fish and snags a little easier (for the purpose of this thread) Don't overthink it! Just tie one on and fish it exactly how you fish your worm. You'll catch one in no time. I do not recommend heavy wire hooks or overly large jigs or trailers to start out but I do recommend heavier tackle than you're planning to use. Maybe 10-12 lb big game at least on a 7' MHF bait casting rod? I'd go 15 lb personally but I like to set the hook.

Yeah I dunno, just been my observation. On ponds they're almost anywhere. The shallower the pond, I would think the more dramatic this would be and I fish very very shallow 5 acre ponds. On lakes they're usually in their spots. At least in my microcosm of the universe. Basically I think, as with many things, there's always different ways it can play out. I would think with perhaps more consistently clear ponds with some deeper spots, they'd be easier to locate..... sometimes. But yeah on this pond the fish are very very nomadic and the only 'pattern' to it is the bait fish.

I think small water fish are more nomadic ironically than bigger water fish. Maybe it's just because on a smaller playing field, they are more likely to make use of all of it every day kinda thing. But I also think the big fish are more efficient hunters and have learned to be where food is gonna be and eat it without chasing stuff around a ton, regardless of the size of the body of water - SO they can be patterned....they just bite less because well....they're smart. I have learned that when I see big fish in a spot, it may not always be THAT fish that's there, but I always make note of the spot. Spots are selected for the advantage they provide for larger bass and sometimes a spot where I caught *** lber will have a Wolfpack of 5-10 lbers there on another morning when there's more food because something subtle changes. I truly believe that food is just about the only thing that keeps bait in a shallow 'carnage area' for more than an hour or two at a time and when the food is in the area, you better be there too because it's your best chance at actually getting hit around these ambush spots that we target. The bait is aware of the threat and is only in an area because it has to be there. The bass are no different....we are the threat...and herons and otters and gar etc etc etc. they know they're being hunted too is my point. They're just as good at hiding and evasion as they are at locating food and ambush. I have also learned that when these spots are churning with bait, the bass will NOT vacate the area because of fishing pressure for more than a minute or two. They stay glued to the bait. You can spook a giant waiting to ambush bait while they're schooling and come back in 5 minutes and they'll be right back in that spot. Maybe a *little* wiser but really they will hit until the bait leaves / they're full. So maybe the patterns we look for are sort of feeding windows that we are calling patterns...which to some degree is true. They are usually happening in relation to things we can make ourselves aware of like sunlight angle/prevailing winds/water clarity/time of year etc etc etc. it's just not an exact thing...I mean they have to decide to bite your bait which is where we come in and learning the nuance of presentation is oh so important. I have seen enough underwater camera footage to know that if you catch a small one, you very likely might catch a big one also. They all eat the same stuff. Heck big fish have learned to let the little guys expend the energy and they just follow the madness around occasionally picking off weak or dying. If you catch a small fish in a spot, I'd go the opposite direction - keep fishing that area HARD and try different depths and speeds and profiles until you trick the big ones that are absolutely lurking in the area all while still being mindful of the most advantageous structure in your vicinity. Sometimes the pattern is that they are nowhere near advantageous structure in shallow water.....like when it's very very cold and very very clean water. Herons and us and their food can see them so that doesn't do them much good....and then there's the bait dying in water that cold thing. So yeah it's all kinda 'patterns' if you learn what you're looking at and how the food reacts to it...maybe. 😎

Couple little guys at the pond yesterday morning for y'all before I head out to the pond this morning. Got chilly last night. Wonder how it may affect the bite this morning. Red eye shad continues to get it done and I got my first little guy on the Bill Lewis Hammer Trap. Get a load of how pale these LMB are!!! I lost a really big one that ate my trap and swam towards me. I didn't feel the bite - I watched it - I saw her wake out of nowhere on it and then I stopped feeling my bait vibrating. I felt her on for maybe two seconds before she lunged towards me while surfacing enough for me to see her mouth as she spit the lipless. Giant. Oh well. I also had a duck dive-bomb my lipless in the early morning twilight, hook itself, land in the pond and free itself in the water thankfully. 🥴🥴🥴 At the in flow I hooked either a carp, a gar or a catfish that was probably 30+ lbs. It was peeling drag on my trap rig which is heavy duty 7'6 high speed Daiwa reel and spooled with 15 lb big game. I don't set my drag very light. It was just swimming where it wanted I couldn't move it. It pulled me into what felt like a beaver dam under water after waking all over the place like a underwater bull rodeo. Literally looked like an overslot drum out there 😂😂😂😂 Thankfully....it came free and I got my trap back. Would have been interesting to see that fish. It hit the trap like a freight train so it definitely wasn't foul hooked. I'm thinking big big catfish.

Inline spinner/Jerkbait/crankbait have caught me piles of smallies up North. My dad and uncle never gave me finesse lures to fish for the smallmouth up North, but fast forward 20 years, thanks to YouTube and pro bass fishing tournaments, I'm aware NOW, that would have worked really well. I'd bring a couple spinning rods for small swimbaits, Ned rig and a dropshot if I was you!

I caught a fish on a lipless today where I just stopped the bait and let it sit in muddy shallow water on a flat. Dang fish hit it on a ten second pause! Nice lil chunk as pale as could be.

When I'm lucky enough to catch a fish or two it's usually a dink and occasionally I catch a bunch of fish and occasionally more still I catch a big fish or two so getting a 5 fish limit is not a regular enough thing during my sparse outings to my lil pressured public spots to even have a gauge of the average. All the respect to folks who catch 5 or more fish every time they go fishing but that just ain't in the cards around here and I tend to smile from ear to ear if I get to see one wake on my bait or even if I feel a thump or catch a single dink during a two hour bank fishing session. I have had some days on the boat during my strong seasons where I'll catch 5 + good fish and I'm fiercely proud of those days however difficult it is to consistently do that for me. I catch *enough* bigger fish every year to make the sting of not getting limits every trip bearable. 🥹🥹🥹

This summer my frog got stuck up in a tree and knocked a bunch a little red bugs down and then a giant bass suddenly reveals itself snarfing those red dudes right where they fell. I freed my frog and made some casts and the bass sharked hard on it but didn't commit. After a few casts they cooled off and I got bored but I remembered that moment and when I saw those red bugs falling on the lake later that week...well I tied on a big worm with red flake and caught my first DD. I'm always watching what they're eating as close as I can. It's not necessarily about matching the hatch exactly as knowing a few presentations that can get them to react when they're keyed on something. Learning what they're keyed on helps me dial it in (dropping red stuff under tree lines/fluttering little white things flying through the water column/little black things crawling slow around rocks and stumps/shiners meandering around lily pads eating moss and little krill/bluegill popping on bugs)

I honestly love when I hook something they're eating. It's like a day where the universe smiles and gives me a big clue. AND it's a skunk beater for sure.

Got a tank on the Jimmy Houston spinnerbait. Rain prevented us from doing the boat but single Colorado in cold muddy water getting it done. Jake also got a nice one on the old red eye shad 😎😎😎🫡🫡🫡🎣🎣🎣

It's post pre post spawn today for some poor fish out somewhere. 🥹🫡

Yeah the conditions are super weird, I'm excited kinda. I feel like sometimes on weird days the big ones bite better. Not always but sometimes. My plan is to go check out the main creek first since after big rains that warm water pushes a lot of water through there and I believe that area tends to get cleaner first. Probably fish around the marina tight to the rip rap for a bit too. Generally on the lake you find them deep on structure or very very shallow on structure on days where it's very blown out with mud. Sometimes if you can get them to bite, it makes them very easy to pattern. But we know what happens with plans and bass fishing. Probably just gonna fish a little bit of everything until I run into a fish or two. As always. LOL You might think I'm crazy but I'll be checking spawning bays for bed fish 100%. Saw some beds at a pond yesterday so.....