Suffering in this heat and humidity like a lot of the country. Kept it short from the bank yesterday afternoon. Caught one on my first cast; caught one on my last cast; and caught another half dozen in between those two. Midwest Finesse scores again!

 

I simply couldn't fight the heat, only lasted 2 hrs.

Was throwing drop-shot Roboworm, Aaron's magic, nothing.

Switched to morning Dawn and They started eating it.

Caught 8 before I started craving AC. Lol

 

With the major heat wave we have in TN I probably should stayed home but I took the kayak out for a few hours this morning anyways. I ended up catching four 10.5",13,25",13.5" and 15.5"   All caught on wacky rigged senkos and all were very shallow.  I also managed to lose 3.5 lbs of water weight too!

7 hours ago, hokiehunter373 said:

I hope I don't have a night like that again for a while.

 

 

sometimes you are king other times you are the bait.

6 hours ago, NYWayfarer said:

Match the hatch? Looks like the Smallies around here are eating Hellgrammites.

That's not a hellgrammite.

You can look up aquatic invertebrates: https://www.macroinvertebrates.org

 

Worked all day yesterday in oppressive heat at my big fish lake for one bite...but that one bite was a 5 pounder that hit a shad Jackhammer with Zako trailer on a woody flat. So much for matching the hatch: no shad in this lake but this isn't the first fish I got on that lure combination here ??

2 hours ago, BayouSlide said:

 

Worked all day yesterday in the heat at my big fish lake for one bite...but that one bite was a 5 pounder that hit a shad Jackhammer with Zako trailer on a woody flat. So much for matching the hatch: no shad in this lake but this isn't the first fish I got on that lure combination ??

I fish mainly ponds and I’ve been killing them this year on white or white/chartreuse. Never has been nor will there ever be a shad in those waters. 
 

 

14 hours ago, DinkDreams said:

I fish mainly ponds and I’ve been killing them this year on white or white/chartreuse. Never has been nor will there ever be a shad in those waters. 
 

 

Same down here in TN. Sometimes I think match the hatch is a myth.

On 6/16/2022 at 4:57 PM, throttleplate said:

 

 

sometimes you are king other times you are the bait.

Dead Ned rig?

Probably my biggest Ned fish.   I don't use it much at all on the water, but from the dock or bank, I'm more likely to go smaller and or slower.

2 minutes ago, Choporoz said:

Probably my biggest Ned fish.   I don't use it much at all on the water, but from the dock or bank, I'm more likely to go smaller and or slower.

Awesome! And good morning to ya! ?

On 6/16/2022 at 5:52 PM, BASS302 said:

That's not a hellgrammite.

You can look up aquatic invertebrates: https://www.macroinvertebrates.org

Looks like a carpenter ant. 

Was a tough morning got out of work, stopped by the store to grab some water and milk. I then decided to follow through with my plan and fish a jig some more. I got to the pond and fished for a hour and a half no bites, maybe six inches of visibility if lucky. Decided to swim the jig instead of using it like I was the pike we’re interested caught two smaller ones probably just under 23 inches. I then fished a while longer and decided to call it a day, just as I put my jig and craw on the hook keeper my wife calls. I talked to her and spotted one of the first bass that I had seen in the pond all day, probably 14 inches or less. I told my wife that I would be home in a few minutes and got off the phone with her. I then decided to take a few pitches at the location where I saw the small bass, nothing in five attempts. Make a tiny 20 foot pitch and being working it back slowly perpendicular to the bank, wham! I get a solid strike. I set the hook with the fish now 10 feet at best away from me, I am like this fish feels pretty good then I see it. I finally got to see big girl from last year once again, I was hopeful that she wasn’t dead or that someone took her home. My best previously out of this pond was 2.40lbs this year, she went for 4.02lbs not bad for a small pond. Bait was a dirty jigs canter berry compact flipping jig in hemotoma with a black and blue craw fatty trailer. It was a good day ?

Got up about 5:15, got to the pond around 6am. Topwater wasn’t working, I managed to catch one or two on a shaky head and one on a white chatterbait. Walked over to another pond, again topwater not working but since nothing else was working, I threw on a swim jig with a rage swimmer trailer and cast right to the middle of the pond. A solid 2 lber took it on the way down. Next cast, it hit bottom and I reeled about one or two turns and another solid 2 lber hit it. Managed to pick up one or two more on a spinner bait, a couple on a Ned rig with a trd Craw and a Texas rig with a full size rage craw. 
 

caught probably 15 or so total but a handful of really small ones and most probably being around a pound to 1.25lb.

 

Was hoping to have more luck on the chatterbait, as I’ve been putting time into learning it but when I first got to the pond, it was pretty windy. As it got later the sun came out with no clouds and the wind mostly died. Not the best moving lure conditions.

 

On the water at 6:30 AM. Hot and humid today, bright sun, stained water, and water levels about 3-4' lower than normal. I figured what the heck. 

 

Turned out to be one of my best days fishing in Nebraska! Spinnerbait and jig-n-craw all day long.

 

Three LMB's under 13"

3 @ 14"

2 @ 15"

2 @ 16"

1 @ 17" 

1 @ 18" 

1 @ 19"

And a 24" catfish caught on my spinnerbait : ) 

 

The four biggest fish caught pitching the jig next to docks between 11:00-Noon. 

 

13 hours ago, BrianMDTX said:

Looks like a carpenter ant. 

I really thought it was a Hellgrammite bit in half. Might be piece of a damselflies upper body according to the chart of macro invertebrates linked above.

Caught maybe 8 fish, three or 4 on a jig once again with the biggest being 4.40lbs

Last 2 Days been out. One time in the Morning catching bait for Catfishing for the next night. Caught 2 good sized Cats at once in my net. Then went out over night and caught everything but a Catfish...lol A nice LMB, Longnose Gar, 2 Turtles?, a Big Crappie and a  Carp. Oh and a first for me. Caught a Spoonbill by hand...It was swimming up shallow spot right by me. He kept getting stuck. So I caught him and moved him back to a deeper area.

 

Only pic's I got from last night.

I caught my biggest smallmouth from the Kalamazoo River yesterday! I also caught some other Smallmouth and some pike as well.

Not much fishing last year, and a late start this year. But today was good. First bass in 10 long months.

 

Bass opened up yesterday in Zone 18 Ontario.  Conditions were cool and very windy, so the canoe stayed dry and we just shore fished a bit yesterday with very little luck. We went on a family Father’s Day picnic this afternoon and fished a windward point.  Zero luck on plastic worms and drop shot, so I decided I might as well fish in a way I really enjoy and out came the Heddon One Knocker Spook.  4th cast way out there (I love the way a spook casts!) and I got an almost immediate swat from what I thought was a small one.  I kept on trucking and about 4 twitches later she sucked it under.  As soon as the rod loaded up, I knew it wasn’t small.  No scale, but she was 21” - a bit thin after spawning, but I’ve estimated 4.5# which would be my new PB.

 

Caught this long, skinny fish on a june bug swimming fluke, on the fall. Fish aren’t biting moving baits AT ALL here lately. 

It's been a really tough week, one of my oldest and closest friends passed away suddenly on Wednesday. So I fish, like I always do. Managed a 5.2, 3.5, a couple 1-2, and a couple tiny 6-8" fish including a smallmouth. Hands are all bit and cut up from hooks and bass lips. That 3.5 was maybe the angriest bass I can remember catching in a while. The 5.2 was extremely well behaved by contrast.

We stayed down at the lake this weekend. I didn’t get to do a ton of fishing but I did have some success. 
 

my buddy came down Friday night after work and we fished til dark, maybe got 1.5 or so hours in. Caught only dinks, lost a couple hits. Baby flathead on a shakey head…………

then my wife calls and says did y’all not see the deer? Apparently we walked right by a fawn to get down from the house to the boat

 

Saturday morning we fished til breakfast, couple more dinks. Then we had some more friends come down for a day of swimming and boating. My wife wanted to drive the boat all over and look at the mountains. We did make an interesting find………

 

so Sunday morning, I fish for a while with no luck. After breakfast Rachel wants to go on the boat for a bit and I start trying to catch gar. The first one I hook is pretty big and the battle is on. She captured the event on video, but we forgot to take pics so it’s all just screen shots from the video. The fish was 46” and put on quite the aerial display. The 40 lb seaguar smack down wrapped around his snout a hundred different ways and it didn’t shred, it took me a while to cut him all loose 

 

On 6/16/2022 at 9:08 AM, hokiehunter373 said:

Got served some humble pie last night.  Wanted to try some stuff besides what's been working for me this year so I started off with the frog.  No dice.  Threw a swim jig around.  Nothing doing on that either.  So got the drop shot out and caught one.  Had a couple short strikes but the evening was looking bleak.  Switched back to the frog and was working the edge.  Of course I had a good blow up right as I paused to itch my face.  Clumsily tried to set the hook while the rod came out of my hand and I missed the fish.  Continued with the frog with no other luck.  Had a hard runner on the drop shot but it must not have ever had the hook.  Hour in and only half an hour of light left.  I figured I should try the wacky rig which I haven't thrown in a while.  Got 2 pretty quick but they were just little ones.  Made a frustrated chuck to the middle of the pond and was waiting for it to sink.  Reeled up my line and there wasn't a tick, wasn't movement, but it just seemed tense.  Made a weird hookset because I wasn't sure what was going on and didn't expect anything because of how the night had gone and felt a pull like I'd never felt before.  I had the rod bowed over hard, 6# line so I'm just trying to keep it tight and let the fish work.  She's running to my left and peeling drag.  2 or 3 seconds in and the fish makes a hard turn to head straight away from me to the center of the pond and the reel is just screaming.  Half a second after that she's gone.  My hook and senko came back to me.  I didn't snap off, hook wasn't bent out, worm was passed over the hook an additional time, and I'm wanting to snap a rod in disbelief of what happened.  My guess is I basically hit the fish when I cast and it picked it up right after impact on the water.  My only mistake was my half-a$$ed hookset and I guess when the fish redirected whatever bit of skin I had was able to come free.  There are no catfish in this pond that I'm aware of; there are snappers, which I've never caught so I don't know how they feel when you hook one.  I didn't get a single look at whatever it was and I guess part of me is hoping it was a snapper to avoid the heartbreak lol but I'll never know.  If it was a bass it was an absolute giant that would have destroyed my PB, I'm sure of that.  So I fished the senko a bit more with no luck and decided to break out the dark sleeper which I haven't fished in a while either.  First cast and 3 or 4 pounder crushed it.  I've got it 3/4 of the way back to me, it jumps and spits the lure.  I'm boiling.  Cast again and a dink hits it, that one comes off too.  At this point, all I can do is laugh.  That seemed to help as the next 2 casts resulted in fish which means the dark sleeper got hit on 4 consecutive casts.  So I ended the night on a positive note but man I hope I don't have a night like that again for a while.

 

Went out Friday night looking for a little bit of redemption.  Figured I'd start out with what was working for me on Wednesday and go from there.  First cast was a fish.  First 5 mins were 3 fish and they were all decent.

 

 

Worked my way around the pond catching 8 or 9 fish on the dark sleeper before the bite cooled off.  After that I switched to the wacky worm.  Had one fish steal my senko twice before I stuck him with the 3rd one.  That felt good.  Caught a couple more after him.

 

 

With a gigantic improvement from the last outing and no lost fish I was feeling good and figured I'd cut my outing a little short and get home to the wife.  Just one more cast.

 

 

Love it when that happens.  Mid 2 pounder to end the evening.