I fished my pond for 45 minutes and caught three, taking me to 1,288 for the year and 212 from my 2025 goal. Nothing big, but so beautiful in the golden light:

 

My local watering hole was having their 10th anniversary today. The paddling outfitter I used to work for was offering a shuttle where they dropped us off about 4 miles upstream of the bar and you could paddle down. We were paddling way too fast for fishing but I did manage one tiny SMB downtown , missed a few more . They had live music at the takeout, one of my fishing buddies was playing bass 
 

Early morning fishing today.  Caught 5, all were up shallow next to weeds or wood.  3 with the wacky senko, 2 with the underspin.  
 

Best fish

Fished the home lake on my birthday. Decided to bust out the green pumpkin NED rig...had not used that technique in over a year on this lake. 

 

Was slow-rolling NED over the top of a submerged brush-pile...and this nice 18.5" | 3lb. LMB crushed it! 

 

I'm not great fishing off shore brush piles...this was a confidence builder!  

 

The lone soldier today

 

 

Well, the month of September has been pretty disappointing.

 

Mother Nature apparently didn't want me to fish much. Heat, storms, pea soup water, you name it.

 

The "highlight" of the month came on Friday.

 

Brought several combos to a lake and once again had to deal with pea soup water with maybe 6" of visibility. I wasn't expecting it to be this dirty.

 

I came expecting (hoping) to throw a lot of topwater but the conditions weren't ideal for it. But like a stubborn mule, I kept tossing my popper.

 

Was able to get this nice 17". Hate to admit, but the biggest of the month.

 

Don't make fun of me. It was really sunny and I just started growing my beard out in the morning.   

 

 

On 9/17/2025 at 3:01 PM, Swamp Girl said:

. I know several of you note the moon's position when fishing

This mornings major was a major major. 😁 The moon was directly under foot at 06:48. We boated four muskie and lost another between 06:30 and 07:30, then the bite shut off like a switch. We had another window between 09:30 and 10:30, boating two, losing two, and moving four more, then it shut off cold again. No big's. All between 32" and 35", but it was a busy boat this morning. 6 for 9 with four more follows in 5.5hrs is a fine morning of muskie fishing even if it was a dinkfest. 👍

Clear, calm, and cool when I started.  The cool didn't last.  The bass were salivatin' over a squarebill ( Ichikawa RC Flat Shad).  I'm not gonna tell you how many 'cause you wouldn't believe me.

I could hear the clatter of the combines as they chewed through the Iowa cornfields on the flat ground above the lake and see the dust clouds of their picking rising above the timbered lake bed.

It's a special time of year in Iowa!

Caught 'ol one eye!

1 hour ago, T-Billy said:

6 for 9 with four more follows in 5.5hrs is a fine morning of muskie fishing even if it was a dinkfest. 👍

 

Heck, yeah! It sounds like a blast to me. 

 

12 minutes ago, Lottabass said:

I'm not gonna tell you how many 'cause you wouldn't believe me.

 

I WILL BELIEVE YOU! I know you da man!!!!!!

 

Meanwhile, I'm still dog-sitting. I want to catch 212 more bass this year. I better get busy. The dog's owner fetches her pooch tonight, but the temp is about to plummet and that won't be good for fishing as my hands will be too cold to work well and the bass might not feel like eating. However, it gets warm again next week and I'll focus on fishing ponds with both high quantity/high quality potential then. I will fish my pond tomorrow morning and hope to catch another ten or so.

 

Did you catch 212 bass today, Al???

11 minutes ago, Lottabass said:

 

Caught 'ol one eye!

 

 

Thank goodness you didn't make this comment the other day with your fly down!   LOLOLOL

7 minutes ago, HawkeyeSmallie said:

 

 

Thank goodness you didn't make this comment the other day with your fly down!   LOLOLOL

You are too funny!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

Did you catch 212 bass today, Al??  No, I quit clickin' at 50, lotsa 14 inchers....

Looking forward to your report when it warms up!

Great day on the Saginaw bay.  Started out on the quinacassee river.  This river is literally the farthest south one can get on the Saginaw Bay.  I have been wanting to fish the  Coreyon Reef for a long time.  Just have been able to make it out there due to the wind.  Coreyon reef was built by the MiDNR roughly 6-8 years ago.  it was put in place to give the walleye a natural spawning reef in the southern 1/3 of the saginaw bay.  the reef comes out of 13-15 ft of water and tops off at about 7-9 feet.  Boulders and gravel were placed there by tug and drop barges.  I was hoping there would be smallies roaming around it.  

 

First i fished the quinacasse river and caught a 3.08 lbs bass on a canadian craw ned rig.  Caught a smaller bass on a wacky worm. Fished the river for about 3 hours before i headed out to the reef. 

 

my 17 ft sea nymph made the 10 mile trip with no problem.  I wanted it to be a bass trip However, take what your given.   I switched The ned rig up to a Berkly max scent goby and started railing walleye .  Nothing very big but, they would have been good eating size if I had a cooler.  

 

The catch of the day was a 33 inch 9.5 lbs northern pike.  The biggest Northern i have ever caught on a spro rock crawler 55 gobey .  She actually started pulling the boat around and I had to use the trolling motor to stop her from getting tangled around the motor.  I was able to get her in the boat, I weighed her, took a picture, measured,was able to revive her , and she swam off.  The girth of this pike  was so massive I couldn’t get 2 hands around her mid section 

 

I was snagging gobeys with the gobey maxx scent ned lime it was my job. Match the Hatch!!!

 

So with the pike, 2 walleye couple mandatory sheep heads.  It was a good first trip out to the reef.

 

I waited around for The 630 ft lower laker/ bulk freighter Robert S Person  to come out of the Saginaw river mouth.  she had been unloading stone in Saginaw.  she passed to the west about 4-5 miles and i took off. 

 

I don’t know if it is the lower water levels or just coincidence but, I have destroyed the bass on Ned rigs this year.  I have not been fishing as much as i have in years past but, my average is way way up. Total fish is down.   I’m averaging at least a 3 lbs fish a trip.  Good trade off. 

It’s been a tough go for me lately with high sky, flat water and just super nice day after day. I’ve saw a good-good amount of really nice bass, but they’re wary and pretty moody. I had to resort to a 4” senko on 10lb with my M caster lol. Jigs were dead, which I thought was goofy. I got a real good fish, but d**n are there some big fish around right now. I got a few dinkers, but they’ve lessened significantly. Most fish are quite rounded right now. I took a pic of a 15” keeper, but a lean little thing 
 

last 3 photos from the above post. 1st photo match the hatch!!! snagging gobeys that apparently all over the reef. 2nd photo walleye.  Last photo is the Robert S Pierson passing 3-4 miles to the west of me in the Channel

JonB2, you don't seem to like Senkos. If this is so, then why?

Went paddling after work, the fish were surely hungry. Caught 3 small LM right next to the car on the exact same spot where a log was sticking up out off the bank a ways in deeper water.

 

A small diving duck was witness to those catches The mountains were really showing off, it was clear enough to see each little drain on the mountain sides 

 

 

once I made it out into the current , the smallies were chomping a finesse worm. The river channel makes an S turn and it’s 50+ feet deep and faster than the surrounding areas, perfect for SMB. Ended up with 7 fish in probably 1.5 hours, that’s a good bite for ‘round here (no sign of the invasive Alabama bass that were supposedly going to kill everything)

 

2 hours ago, Swamp Girl said:

JonB2, you don't seem to like Senkos. If this is so, then why?

I like senkos, I just tend to be mindful of being bait dependent. Even though they’re so ideal for where I fish, I don’t want to be a “I only get bit on one bait” guy, that’s all

54 minutes ago, JonB2 said:

 I don’t want to be a “I only get bit on one bait” guy, 

Hey watch it mister, I resemble that remark 😂 

I caught 19 this morning at my pond. The thing about fall mornings is that I'm fishing two hours less than I did in June because the Sun is rising that much later. I got off to a great start because these were my first five, all 17" to 18.25":

 

 

Then the bass shrimpified on me and my next 14 were this size:

 

 

I'm at 1,307 for the year, leaving me 193 short of my target 1,500 in 2025. Al(exander the Great) would call catching 193 bass "my Iowa weekend."

 

They were nearly all relating to the floppy grass and I caught all but two on a T-Rigged Rapala crawdad. 

Your ability to find and catch these fish amazes me. Great job. Lately I have been struggling to catch more than one or two in a 4 to 6 hour outing. The river has been had very low water level for the past two months, and the water is stained and still quite warm (76 degrees this last Sunday). The fish seem to have stopped feeding. Even the guys with boats are having a difficult time, and for us shore fishermen it has been miserable. Many of my favorite spots have been so shallow that they are impossible to fish. We had some rain lately but not enough locally to make much difference. However, I did notice this morning that the river has come up a bit....maybe 6 inches or so....and it has a lot of debris in it, so I guess it must have rained pretty hard somewhere upstream from us. Also, the air temperature at night has started dropping, so maybe those two things will get the fish motivated. I sure hope so, as I am tired of trying so hard and not catching much if anything.

1 hour ago, Kirtley Howe said:

Your ability to find and catch these fish amazes me. Great job.

 

Thank you. I do have two huge advantages over you:

 

1. A canoe.

 

2. I'm fishing my pond and at this point, I know it very well. For example, the bass are relating to limp grass right now. Well, I know where all the limp grass is. Earlier this year, they were relating to pond weed. I know where all the pond weed is. So, when a pattern develops, I can work that pattern with efficiency.

 

 

FWIW, I do strike out on things I try. I cast and trolled a couple Mepps spinners this morning because I've stopped catching bass while trolling. I paddle a lot looking for bass and I hate to not fish while moving from one spot to another. I had good luck all summer trolling crawdads and paddletails, but recently, I'm not even missing bites while trolling. Since bass are feeding on smaller baits in the fall, I tried my Mepps spinners, but I whiffed with those too. I keep changing my trolling lines and speeds, but nada. I'll keep trying though. 

 

Like you, we're in extreme drought. 

On 9/29/2025 at 11:01 AM, DaubsNU1 said:

Fished the home lake on my birthday

Happy birthday, @DaubsNU1!

This was my last trip in 2025.

A 58 acre remote lake in WV that is overpopulated with small bass but still a fun day.

They hit everything I threw.

Most were caught on spinnerbait, several on a RipStop, several on Ned and several on a Flickshake.

I believe I caught 25 in 3 hours.

Overcast, drizzle and no wind at all.

Water temp 72*.

Got several fish the last hour or so of the day. Cool, cloudy , low humidity. Feels great after a hot summer.

Gosh, those are some sweet bass, Mike!

 

Why are you done for 2025, Bird?