Saturday we had a kids fishing derby at the lake by our house. Got both the boys set up with small baitholder hooks, a bobber and piece of crawler and we were off to the races. Good thing I have a big livewell in the boat because the gills are on beds and they were pounding them. I took Lake's bobber and split shot off and let him fish a weightless piece of worm, getting him some practice feeling and seeing bites. I think he did better like that than with the bobber. 2 hours of fishing, they both ended up with 17 fish, a mix of bluegill, a warmouth, a green sunfish, and a bass each. Both won biggest, smallest, and most fish for the boats division in each of their respective age groups.

 

Sunday, I drove 25 minutes to a park lake just to find the whole park closed until noon for a race ? Something really irritating about buying a boat and fishing permit to be able to fish a lake just for them to restrict access to it. So I ended up driving almost an hour to end up 5 minutes from my house. Bite was slow at first, but then I put it together a little bit and caught some better quality ones. Got a new phone and haven't found a good floating case, so I have one of those cheap ones from Academy with the strap and it was apparently foggy for my biggest fish, which was just over 18". Caught both my biggest fish skipping a wacky rigged Berkley Maxscent The General under dock walkways.

Grass everywhere, but they wouldn't come through it to eat a frog. Had one little guy decide to play, that was it other than a couple halfhearted swirls.

I'd forgotten my sunblock and I could feel the heat on my legs, then some fools that were fishing off their dock threw a 1/4 stick in the lake 50 yards away from me, figured it was about time for me to leave at that point before they blew a hole in my kayak.  

while bass fishig the bluegill and sunnies were hittin my jerkbait, the wife was catching gils, sunnies, and crappie all day on 3 inch gulp minnows.

 

wife catches em,cleans em, cooks them, i just supply the gulp minnows.

 

5 hours ago, Bluebasser86 said:

Saturday we had a kids fishing derby at the lake by our house. Got both the boys set up with small baitholder hooks, a bobber and piece of crawler and we were off to the races. Good thing I have a big livewell in the boat because the gills are on beds and they were pounding them. I took Lake's bobber and split shot off and let him fish a weightless piece of worm, getting him some practice feeling and seeing bites. I think he did better like that than with the bobber. 2 hours of fishing, they both ended up with 17 fish, a mix of bluegill, a warmouth, a green sunfish, and a bass each. Both won biggest, smallest, and most fish for the boats division in each of their respective age groups.

 

Sunday, I drove 25 minutes to a park lake just to find the whole park closed until noon for a race ? Something really irritating about buying a boat and fishing permit to be able to fish a lake just for them to restrict access to it. So I ended up driving almost an hour to end up 5 minutes from my house. Bite was slow at first, but then I put it together a little bit and caught some better quality ones. Got a new phone and haven't found a good floating case, so I have one of those cheap ones from Academy with the strap and it was apparently foggy for my biggest fish, which was just over 18". Caught both my biggest fish skipping a wacky rigged Berkley Maxscent The General under dock walkways.

Grass everywhere, but they wouldn't come through it to eat a frog. Had one little guy decide to play, that was it other than a couple halfhearted swirls.

I'd forgotten my sunblock and I could feel the heat on my legs, then some fools that were fishing off their dock threw a 1/4 stick in the lake 50 yards away from me, figured it was about time for me to leave at that point before they blew a hole in my kayak.  

Love that..."Cops n Bobbers"  

14 hours ago, Bluebasser86 said:

Saturday we had a kids fishing derby at the lake by our house. Got both the boys set up with small baitholder hooks, a bobber and piece of crawler and we were off to the races. Good thing I have a big livewell in the boat because the gills are on beds and they were pounding them. I took Lake's bobber and split shot off and let him fish a weightless piece of worm, getting him some practice feeling and seeing bites. I think he did better like that than with the bobber. 2 hours of fishing, they both ended up with 17 fish, a mix of bluegill, a warmouth, a green sunfish, and a bass each. Both won biggest, smallest, and most fish for the boats division in each of their respective age groups.

 

Sunday, I drove 25 minutes to a park lake just to find the whole park closed until noon for a race ? Something really irritating about buying a boat and fishing permit to be able to fish a lake just for them to restrict access to it. So I ended up driving almost an hour to end up 5 minutes from my house. Bite was slow at first, but then I put it together a little bit and caught some better quality ones. Got a new phone and haven't found a good floating case, so I have one of those cheap ones from Academy with the strap and it was apparently foggy for my biggest fish, which was just over 18". Caught both my biggest fish skipping a wacky rigged Berkley Maxscent The General under dock walkways.

Grass everywhere, but they wouldn't come through it to eat a frog. Had one little guy decide to play, that was it other than a couple halfhearted swirls.

I'd forgotten my sunblock and I could feel the heat on my legs, then some fools that were fishing off their dock threw a 1/4 stick in the lake 50 yards away from me, figured it was about time for me to leave at that point before they blew a hole in my kayak.  

Nice fish!

If your boys ever join the Kansas Youth Bass tourneys, the other kids are gonna have some stiff competition!

Water temp is 70º and I'm more than ready for topwater action on a favorite spot on my home water. It's a bit after 7:00 a.m. and the water is choppy so I tie on a Super Spook Jr. and cast and cast and cast.  I'll tell ya, that dog must have been tired after all that walking. Could not coax anything up off the bottom. The water calmed a bit but no matter how I splashed and gurgled Duo Realis' Popper 64, I could not get so much as a swirl from a smallie.

 

I had fished this location for well over 25 years and knew there were smallies here at this time of the season. What to do next? Send Ned down to investigate. A TRD TicklerZ on a 1/16 oz. mushroom head was intercepted before it hit the bottom.

 

 

Below is one of four smallmouth that picked up a Tiny Child this day. This was my second outing with this tail- weighted Z-Man Big TRD, and I understand it was designed to extract a walleye from a woodpile, but while I was dragging, hopping and bouncing it off some serious rocks and it didn't hang up once! 

 

 

When putting this rig together, I used a Zappu 1/16 oz. tungsten nail weight glued in with Loctite Super Glue Gel and, not having any Neko hooks on hand, used an old favorite, a Gamakatsu 2/0 EWG hook which gave me no problems hooking and holding. 

 

The rest of the day was spent in the company of  Ned, Tiny Children and smallmouth bass. I'll leave you with photos of the better bass:

 

 

 

On a fishing trip with dad, grandpa and grandpas friend to Michigan’s upper peninsula and south manistique lake in Curtis mi.  Technically this is a walleye trip and I’ve been sneaking away to bass fish.  This is the first full day and the walleyes have been slow so I’ve been getting the looks for not keeping the bass.  
 

fished the last 45 minutes of light and nailed four large mouths on a berkly green pumkin general t-rigged with 1/4 oz tungsten weight.  Biggest was only 15 inches.  Fished the afternoon for 2-3 hours and only caught sub legal fish.  The bigger fish started to moved in shallower as the sun set. From what I’ve been hearing and seeing there are not a lot of big bass here but, a lot of legal-18 inchers 

Went to a little pond a couple hours before dark.  Caught about a dozen fish, all on topwater.  On a buzzbait, and one on a frog.  The frog fish ate right of the bank, and the hook set launched him onto the bank without the frog in his mouth.  Fun evening of dinks.  Got my first bite on freddy the frog too, but the fish only bumped it, so he didn't get landed.  

  

another good day on the water began around 6:30 with bright sun and no breeze. but the clouds rolled in and the winds kicked up a bit, making for pleasant conditions. we caught 21 spots on Zoom plastics and were off the water by 10:30.

 

Some recent adventures. Caught some chubby fish last week at the ponds and also caught some huge bluegill and my first bass on my new boat over the weekend!

From June 4th:  Second bass on a fly rod.

went pan fishing with dad in Da U.P. on south manistique lake in Curtis.  Caught about a dozen hand sized pumkin seeds and crappie. The bonus was nailing a 16 inch and 15 inch bass with a worm and bobber.  It’s been almost ten years since I’ve caught a bass on live bait.  Put the bass back kept the panfish .

 

well appear you dad made a movie out of the 16 incher so I can’t post that one 

10 hours ago, HaydenS said:

From June 4th:  Second bass on a fly rod.

 

Atta boy.

Went out last night with a primary goal to catch a small bluegill.  I've never purposely fished for bass with live bait and thought I'd give it a try at this pond.  Caught 12 in about 10 minutes without a single one smaller than my hand lol so gave up on that and landed a few 2 pounders instead.  Fun night with a heckuva backdrop.

 

 

 

 

The blazing temps we had here have been gone for over a week now, and it's June again, but while they were here they supercharged the weed growth. The chilly air sent the flying insects packing along with any surface activity whatsoever, and the fishing's been slow.

 

Lots of short strikes using small plastics once again made me give in to treble baits, which meant picking off gobs of weeds after every single cast. They wanted small swim baits though, so that's what they got, and I ended the night with a few tugs.

 

 

The bite for anything over dinky has been tough the last few days, but I managed to haul in a couple on jigs and chatterbait.

The worms came out again today after more horizontal presentations --a rage swimmer and a pop max-- did not generate any interest.  The key, as usual in most waters I fish, was to find the bluegill...and when I did, they were suspended a few feet deep in the cabbage that clings to the slope of a drop from 4 to about 20 feet, that winds its way irregularly around the lake (You can sort of see both the break and the vegetation in the Garmin SideVu image in the background of the first pic below).  Working a t-rigged ribbontail and a weighted wacky worm mostly vertically down that drop, I was able to coax bites from 10 modestly-sized green bass, the best of which were a couple in the 15-16 inch range:

A friend invited me out on his boat to catch the morning bite at first light. We fished around islands on the incoming tide when this 4.12lb drag stripping girl ate my bladed jig…

Not done fishing yet today, but I got this big bass at a new spot on a beaver pond off my grandma’s lake! I’d say around 4 pounds, but I had no scale because I only brought 2 poles and my pliers because I was wading. The pic makes it look small!
Update: I caught some more today! And my first chatterbait fish ever!

11 hours ago, galyonj said:

 

Atta boy.

5 hours ago, J._Bricker said:

A friend invited me out on his boat to catch the morning bite at first light. We fished around islands on the incoming tide when this 4.12lb drag stripping girl ate my bladed jig…

Nice plump fish!

Crossing the mighty Mack as I am writing this. Last night was the last day in DA U.P. finally found some decent bass numbers in reeds on the south side of the lake.  Also, caught my first bass on a top water frog, a booyah pad crashed.  Same as before fish came on a Berkly general worm T-rigged.  When I ran out of those ( reeds tear those suckers up). I switched to a green and neon green strike king shimmee stick t-rigged.  
 

it’s been a great trip fishing could have been better.  I think if we had been a week later fishing would have improved.  Still good to be in gods country though ( upper Michigan ) 

 

I think I’m converting my lighting rod to a top water rod.  I was using flouro just because that’s what I had.  I’m either putting mono or braid on it now. If I get more into it I’ll buy a better set up 

1 hour ago, Mbirdsley said:

Crossing the mighty Mack as I am writing this.

I've been over that thing twice - once going south, once going north...NEVER AGAIN! That thing scares the crap out of me...and not much does that.

 

1 hour ago, Mbirdsley said:

Last night was the last day in DA U.P. finally found some decent bass numbers in reeds on the south side of the lake.  Also, caught my first bass on a top water frog, a booyah pad crashed.  

Always nice to have good fishing on a trip....

29 minutes ago, MN Fisher said:

I've been over that thing twice - once going south, once going north...NEVER AGAIN! That thing scares the crap out of me...and not much does that.

 

Always nice to have good fishing on a trip....

I don’t feel weirded out untill you hit the grated road in the middle.  Than it’s look out into the lake or ahead never down. Actually the bridge authority was replacing some grates.  How would you like to be welding a section of grate with that big hole or nothing below except a 500-700 for drop into Lake Michigan/Lake Huron 

30 minutes ago, MN Fisher said:

I've been over that thing twice - once going south, once going north...NEVER AGAIN! That thing scares the crap out of me...and not much does that.

I have been over it a couple of times, and it doesn’t scare me too much unless I’m in the very middle looking down. Then I realize how big the drop is. Normally I’m fine though! 

7 hours ago, Mbirdsley said:

Crossing the mighty Mack

This thing sounds scary, tell me what it is so I know to never go on it!