12 hours ago, Bluebasser86 said:

Late to get around posting, been really busy the last few days. Got out both days this past weekend. Saturday was the first warm day I've been able to fish in this year, so of course there was 30-35mph straight winds with gusts to 40-50mph. I fished 3 different lakes, hoping that somehow I'd be able to get out of it a little bit, but that wasn't ever really possible. I did manage to catch at least 1 good fish at each lake, including my first frog fish of the year, so that was nice. 

Big fish of the day and first one of the day on the Spro Wameku Shad in Electric Red Craw, it was one of my best producers of the day. The fish went 4 3/4.

Every bass I caught at that lake was on the lipless and each one crushed it,

but the weeds were so bad it was very difficult to fish it, so I moved to a little 30 acre lake nearby. Nothing around it to protect it, but I thought maybe the waves would be better. Never saw white caps on a lake that small before Saturday. Made the best of it though and caught several, mostly on a Strike King Hybrid Hunter Jr.

There's another little 100 acre lake across the road that runs east/west. Since the wind was out of the south, I thought it would be protected. It was, kind of, but it was still just rolling up the lake.

I went straight to the west end to try to get out of it. Very shallow and caught a couple dinks on a bladed jig before I got to some slop and caught my first frog fish of the year.

Followed shortly with a much nicer frog fish.

The Wameku shad caught several small ones here, and a bonus crappie.

Sunday was much calmer so I took my kayak out to a creek I'd never fished before. I've heard that the bass move into it in the spring, and the lake has a great crappie population, so I was prepared for both. Crappie won out, but I did catch one healthy largemouth out of log jam on a crappie jig. I also caught a channel cat in serious need of a good chiropractor. 

 

 

 

 

>begins nervously browsing SPRO's product page

 

Looks like a great weekend despite the wind. Wouldn't turn my nose up to a mess of crappie like that.

24 minutes ago, Aaron_H said:

 

>begins nervously browses SPRO's product page

It's a neat bait, 2 line ties so you adjust it to run either shallow or deeper. I actually switched mine depending on the depth and it worked as advertised. 

2 hours ago, hokiehunter373 said:

Water temps here should have been low 60s over the weekend after Sunday's 85 degree day but are back in the mid to upper 50s right now.  Doubtful on the lack of food.  The bluegills in this pond are plentiful and range from the size you'd like to live bait fish with for bass to ones that will fill a pan if you cook whole.  My pb last year in late June certainly thought there was enough to eat lol.  

 

 

LMAO. You look SO short in that pic! I’ve seen way too many deer hunting pics to know that’s just perspective, but dayum, it’s funny! 
 

I watch your weather daily as my daughters live there. A few days ago we were within 2° of each other. Now it’s 75° here and 54° there. I miss the crabs but I’ll take the 75°! 

Frog bite today on public waters. 21” x 6.0 lbs. Virginia ?

Slightly late post but got out monday about 9-2. Got 15 bass, 8 on a spinnerbait with the best at 5-12 and also 7 on a buzzbait including 3 that went 3-2, 3-12, and 3-15. Heres pics of the 3 largest of the day. 

Man we had some tough fishing after work this evening, tried for a while and got nothing but a skipjack. Used it as cut bait, got a few nibbles. After getting my cut bait and plastic worms stuck over and over and over and over, all I had left tied on was a spro rock crawler. The fish liked that! Got an 18” smallie


and then a 17” 

 

 
and also a white bass 

It was a cold one but I still managed to find a few.

Report & video later.

Might be several days if the fishing's good.

Fish Hard

A-Jay

Took the day off work to head out to chase some fish on a nice, quiet weekday and it did not disappoint. We caught a bunch of fish and Pops even picked up his PB spotted bass. 

 

This fella hit the magdraft like a freight train

 

I've been a senko loyalist for many years, but since there's been so much hype around maxscent I decided to pick up a jumbo pack during a sale. The baby bass color I picked up was "dull" looking compared to the senko version, but holy smokes did the fish love it. This one fought hard for a good 15-20 seconds (6# line), spit the hook right by the boat, and then made an immediate 180 to hammer it again. Spots are known for hitting a bait twice, but I've never seen this. Needless to say, that won't be my last pack of maxscent generals.

 

Pops has been in a bit of a drought for 15"+ bass, so it was extra awesome to see him get his PB spot that weighed in at just under 4 pounds. 

 

On 4/27/2022 at 2:16 PM, BrianMDTX said:

LMAO. You look SO short in that pic! I’ve seen way too many deer hunting pics to know that’s just perspective, but dayum, it’s funny! 
 

I watch your weather daily as my daughters live there. A few days ago we were within 2° of each other. Now it’s 75° here and 54° there. I miss the crabs but I’ll take the 75°! 

I must be doing something right in the hunting pics cause this one is truly representative lol

Caught two 3 pounders back to back casts in a grass filled pond. Only ever caught them on topwater here but I guess today was the day.

Jackhammer strikes again !

A-Jay

9 minutes ago, A-Jay said:

Jackhammer strikes again !

A-Jay

What a fish. Incredibly jealous.

 

"This is not the biggest bass in the world, no. This is just a tribute."

 

Almost kicked this cold, made a 4 mile hike this evening at a spot close to the house I don't hit often. Did decent, ended up with 14 with chatterbait doing the heavy lifting and whopper plopper scoring a handful. That little pipsqueak nipped at the Whopper Plopper 110 right at the bank and caught the front treble. Not the caliber of fish I was after here, there are a few real big mommas swimming in here but I wasn't able to find them this time.

 

Aside from a couple of dinks, catches were all pretty cookie-cutter 2-ish pounders. Fun little fights and some good topwater blowups and hard eats on the chatterbait.

 

 

Sadly that was the last photo I took with that chatterbait before I lost it. Line wrapped the tip on the backswing of a roll cast without me noticing, and POP! Saw it land only ~18" from the bank but it gets deep quick and it's chock full of muck and vegetation. I dug down shoulder deep for about twenty minutes before I called it and tied on a backup.

 

Only a few bucks, no great financial loss, but I had that one perfectly tuned. Instant start up and it thumped hard. Been throwing that one since 2018, so I can't say I didn't get my money's worth out of it. I have the startup speed tuned about 99% on the new one already, but it doesn't feel like it thumps quite as hard, hopefully it will break in a little. Still caught a couple more on it after the switch.

 

Might have to hit the spot with a magnet in the next few days and see if I can get it back before it rusts.

 

Side-note: I decided to try throwing the Whopper Plopper 110 on the 7'2" medium SLX rod to see if it could handle the 1oz bait. I was talking with another member a few weeks ago about the medium SLXs being stouter than their rating as I'd seen some guys throwing 1/2 oz chatterbaits on them with ease and was curious. Rod took it like a champ, even harder overhead casts it never felt the least bit overloaded. Bent deep on those fish and kept them pinned well, I think this is my new favorite WP rod.

Got out for 2 brief bank trips, after work yesterday and before work this morning. About 4 dinks yesterday, one with a lot of heart. 

 

Then a last cast before I had to leave for work this morning. 

Got back out again last night for a little 1 hour long session.  I was curious how the last 2 days of cold temps and freeze warnings were going to effect the fish that had moved up shallow.  Appeared most of the bigger ones had sunk back a bit while the smaller males were still holding shallow.  Caught 5 again but a much smaller bag.  Caught this pretty looking fish on the wacky rig. 

 

 

Everything else was caught via the ned and boy were they munching it!  I kept getting short striked on the wacky rig.  Figured they were just trying to move the bait instead of eating it.  Well the ned rig had me sticking my whole hand in their mouth to unhook.  I plan to get after them for a little longer on Saturday but the kids will be in tow so we'll see how productive that is lol.  Did see a couple 3-4 pounders up shallow still and now I'm wondering if @casts_by_fly was correct about my fish the other day being a male.  

 

The ole chartreuse and white spinnerbait strikes again. 

Only caught 5-6 in the 5 hours I was out. Did catch a decent one on the S Waver though. 
 

I’ll admit, I was skeptical about using Glidebaits in these small ponds but the S Waver produces. 

Didn't have a lot of time and the weather was meh but I still got a nice little spotted bass. I'm jonesing for a big fish again, even after the big longnose gar I posted in the other species thread...

4 hours ago, thediscochef said:

I'm jonesing for a big fish again

 

That is a craving that never goes away.

No pics ‘cause they were all 1 lb. dinks lol. Caught 10 and lost two. One of those was a dink. The other wasn’t. I’d say at least 4 lbs. I lost it on a wacky rig. That’s rare. It came out of the water facing me. I saw the gaping maw, the Senko went airborne and the line went limp. Lost the bass and the Senko! 
 

All-in-all, a good day. No topwater action. Everything was on soft plastics (90% on Senkos as WR or TR). Tried a chatterbait, a lipless and a spinnerbait with no bites. They were hitting slow baits today. 

Today was the walleye opener for the lower peninsula.  So I went bass fishing hoping to catch a bonus walleye.  Well didn’t catch any walleye but, did catch some bass.  2 3 lbers and 2 smaller bass on a black war eagle spinner bait with rattles  and a single gold blad.  Been a while since I’ve been on a good spinner bait bite 
 

launched from lee st in Saginaw.  I actually caught these in the preserve on the Shiawassee river.  
 

brother was fishing for walleye on the titabawassee with his buddies so I buzzed up there.  What a cluster.  So many boats on the water what should have been a 30 minut run turned into a hour and fifteen minute boat ride.  They caught walleye I struck out and lost some cranks in the process. 
 

brothers buddy did take a pic of me fishing out of my boat. 

Made the same 4 mile hike today as Thurs, brought a magnet to try and get that chatterbait back but no dice, gave up after about 30 minutes or so. The new chatterbait officially gets my stamp of approval, though. Numbers weren't as good today, only managed 7, but did better in size. Biggest two were 6lb 2oz and 4lb 12oz.

6lb 2oz:

4lb 12oz had a pretty decent sore on its tail:

Got one on a small bream. The fish did a tremendous blow up on the bream .  

Had a few hours to fish this evening. And again, same as last weekend, it took me a bit to figure out the fish. Started with a mixture of a frog, swimming worm, spinnerbait, and swim jig. One bass finally clued me in by chasing down a swimming worm that I was burning back in. Threw the swimming worm and missed a couple and generally got hung up in the lily pads more than a swim jig. I decided to see if the fish would bite a swim jig basically waked under the surface. This worked, and got me a 1.8lber. Then a couple fish later, caught a 2.8lber on the same technique. Little better size than last weekend, but only caught 4. The bite was a little odd today but glad I figured out that they wanted something moving a little faster. Tomorrow I'll be fishing for a good while, hope to find some big girls :). 

 

Last year I couldn't crack the 6lb mark at my favorite local spot, but came close with two confirmed 5-15s. Rang the bell tonight with a 7-6 chunk and my new PB for this place on a Zman Freedom chatter bait in Threadfin with a 5" Diesel Minnow Bad Shad trailer. My camera got soaked from splashing, headlamps were blaring, pictures are a mess, but I did my best to salvage one with color editing. My brother ran back to get his phone, but couldn't get his flash to work until right before I needed to release her. It took a minute but she bolted off. He was way late for a date and needed to tear out of there. I'll get a look at his tomorrow as long as his phone doesn't spontaneously combust before he hits "send". Hopefully I'll get at least one solid picture from his roll. Aside from all of  that fun, 4 more fish came on medium sized wakes! Good times.

 

P.S. Added normal pics