Working the spinnerbait is paying off.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Been trying to get some fish with jerkbaits, trying to learn them and get some confidence with them. I can tell I was force feeding them, but they took it by golly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Got a couple down at the river today. Plus 2 that came unbuttoned.

 

 

 

 

I also had a new experience today at the river.

 

I was talking to a guy there, and he had a spinning rod with a roostertail hooked on the guide. As he was trying to unhook it, the rod tip shot the hook in his palm past the barb. I asked him if he'd like me to remove it and he said yes. The leatherman and a jerk and he was fine.

 

I have been hooked once, in the back. With that my buddy had to unhook me, but this was my first time helping someone else.

6 hours ago, Swamp Girl said:

I hooked a giant pickerel. It completely inhaled my 4.25" walking bait.

 

"Uh-oh, I'm in trouble," I thought.

 

And I was, as it cut the line.

Funny you say this, I’ve saw a marked increase in northerns on my river in recent weeks. Saw a good one the last trip. I’m gonna try the lake for a change next trip and it’s pike city. There’s also lots of dying pads and vegetation. I rigged my two longer rods with Knot2Kinky bite wire to guard against pike. Since there are good numbers of bass, I went with 12lb to keep action good 

My lone swimbait bass from yesterday. Water temp is down to 78 and it's going to get better as it cools.

12 more this morning, giving me 1,348 for the year. 152 more to reach my goal of 1,500 bass in 2025. My effort would be greatly helped by getting hot one morning or evening.

 

They all hit a white spinnerbait with a Keitech trailer, which is how I caught so many of my biggest bass in the spring. This was the biggest, a 19-incher:

 

 

As I fished, I thought about Brian's lost giant. I've never met Brian and I likely never will, but angler to angler, I still smart with him. His great bass jumped once. She jumped again. And then...she jumped a third time and broke free. I wasn't there, but I can see it.  

 

Three of my bass were smallmouth. I photographed this one for Russ:

 

 

And a few others were solid lmb:

 

 

This was long and thick, but the photograph is terrible. I bought a new camera for 2025, but the flash is malfunctioning:

 

 

I photographed this smallie because it jumped into my canoe:

 

 

I'll be fishing my pond tomorrow morning, hoping to catch the ten or so bass I've been averaging each trip.

Couple hours out this morning practice for upcoming kayak derby.

Best i understand it, today was the last day for the year on my local 120 acre state PFL(public fishing lake) before they shut down to do improvements on the existing docks, build 2 more, and add some riprap with limestone rocks so I was glad to take an impromptu Sunday morning trip.

 

Little bit slower bite to start than Friday, but an hour in they picked it up. Had a couple blowups, a couple missed hooksets, then I managed to get a nice 3lb 10z bass, a 2 lb 8 Oz bass, and a little finger bass when I transitioned to pan fishing on the UL.

 

Got a new rod to replace the one that got drug in the water while taking my medicine Friday. Always nice to cash in right away with a new rig. Waited till almost 11pm last night to spool it up, but im glad I did.

 

Im not a good lure fisherman at all, at least not with the bigger worms, spinnerbaits, poppers, frogs, buzzbaits, crankbaits etc, but I know of a place I can go over the winter for some Ultralight fun with crappie jigs to catch some bass they won't be mammoths, but ultralight bass of any size are really fun, and sometimes you may catch a surprise larger size fish.

 

Overall at the lake this year, id give it an 8/10. Fishing was productive pretty much all year long, save for that stretch from mid May through all of June that had legit had me questioning my desire to keep doing it- glad I stuck through it, or else I never would have caught that near 7 lber 3 weeks ago.

BTL, you catch fine bass. Even more impressive that you're fishing from the shore. Way to stick with it!

New pond today. Caught 32 all smaller fish.  Might have picked a pond that was too remote and probably overpopulated as a result.  

Oh well, did find a derelict boat also.

2 minutes ago, bp_fowler said:

Caught 32

 

Where exactly is this pond? I'm worried I won't meet my goal. I can't keep catching ten-ish fish per morning and make it. 

8 minutes ago, Swamp Girl said:

 

Where exactly is this pond? I'm worried I won't meet my goal. I can't keep catching ten-ish fish per morning and make it. 

It’s in the AEP, so it’s possible you may have fished it before.  

11 minutes ago, bp_fowler said:

It’s in the AEP, so it’s possible you may have fished it before.

 

I might have as I've fished some of those waybackintheboonies ponds.

Bycatch from the first striper trip of the year

On 10/4/2025 at 12:13 AM, IcatchDinks said:

Haven't been able to do much fishing since September, and thus haven't been on the forums much. But it sure has been a joy scrolling through and seeing all y'all's awesome fish. There's some really beautiful bass in this thread. Thanks everyone for sharing. 

 

Same, and echoed.  

Did a quick float and in the near week since I last fished, it was pretty crappy. Very few bites and not a whole lot of fish sighted. River is low now and probably warmed some during this two week plus heat spell. I’ll see how next trip goes which will be during a steady cooldown. As you can see the bright, lush green is quickly fading to yellow-brown 

I  had a mentally off day as I had three fish solidly bite, then fairly quickly drop it. After the third one did it, I was like “you dumba$$…why are we waiting with 4” senkos!?” It happens, but on tough days it’s that much worse. I also got a glamour fish revered on this site and one I hadn’t caught since late May lol

 

I had such a beautiful morning. It was my fourth straight morning of fishing and it felt good to be able to do that. I ran aground on a ridge. We're in extreme drought according to the US Drought Monitor and that's why I hit it, but when I did, smallmouth spooked and I realized that they were relating to the ridge comprised of bowling ball-sized rocks, likely hunting crawdads. I could even see white crawdad pinchers. So, I'll fish that ridge going forward, likely with a little surface lure cast from a good distance. 

 

And I had a weird thing happen. I frequently sneak up on bass, but I think a beaver didn't hear me coming because something smacked my canoe hard and then swirled underwater. It was bigger than any bass and it really thumped my canoe. 

 

I only caught ten, but nine were good-sized, all between 17" and 18." I didn't photograph my first one, which was a nice one, because I caught it in the dark and my nighttime photos have been terrible. All were caught on a white spinnerbait with a shad-colored Keitech. There was no pattern. I caught them by covering ground. My landing percentage with a spinnerbait is high...for me. I think I lost two.

 

I'm at 1,375 for the year. Again, I don't think I'll reach 1,500 in 2025 unless I somehow manage to fish a bog or two. However, I secured permission to fish a new pond and it might be loaded with bass. We'll see. I'm not fishing again until Saturday morning because it's going to turn windy and cool.

 

I put my last bass on the bump board in case some of you prefer to see them that way. Here:

 

 

And here's that same bass in a lip and grip:

 

 

The bump board does do a better job of showing their girth. Speaking of girth, here are some more girthy bass, all except for the skinny one at the end:

 

 

And here are two pretty pics! Because of our drought, the colors are muted, but they're still pretty. See the gap in the treeline in the second photo? That's the only gap on the pond and it's a pumpkin farm. I love that my pond has a pumpkin farm!:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Awesome post Swamp Girl! You really make this forum worth reading!

 

I am amazed at how many fish you catch. I wish Florida bass were as cooperative.

 

I went out yesterday with a guitarist in the middle of new album recording process, so it was part fishing, and part album review and discussion while fishing. Kind of cool listening to the new unreleased music before final mastering of album. And discussion on album cover graphics and marketing plans as usual. It was kind of a working fishing trip to some degree.

 

So we were not really in "stealth" mode yesterday and did not really have to be as the bass were busting up all around on schools of baitfish and did not even seem to notice we were even there which was good thing to our advantage. Besides that, it was lightly raining which with all those drops of water hitting surface of lake creates a noise of its own underwater that kind of hides our surface noise which helped a lot.

 

Some of the schools of bass hitting baitfish were right next to the boat. I did not even have to cast to them. Just dip lure in water and hang on. Schoolies hit anything that moves that even remotely mimics the baitfish they were chasing. Color not important. The baitfish were silver, and I took a 7'4" KVD Quantum medium spinning rod with a Shimano Stradic 1000FH on it and 6lb braid my son rigged up with a small 2 inch swimbait in the dark green color completely opposite of the baitfish and the bass could not have cared less and still slammed it hard. And that is in crystal clear water too where they could easily see it.

 

We also were experiencing extreme low water conditions with new islands appearing in the lake.

 

But we both noticed we were not getting any bites in water deeper than 6 feet. Almost exclusively our bites and catches were mostly happening right along the grass line closest to shore. So we followed the shoreline around the lake staying just far enough offshore so our casts could reach shore and bump into the water and work the edges really well was our best way to put fish in the boat rather than chasing the schoolies across the lake, we just worked the shoreline and were ready and waiting on the schoolies to come within range which they did numerous times.

 

I did better on the schoolies than my buddy did. He was working the rubber worm really hard and was not always quick enough to switch over to a schoolie ready rod to make the cast in time as those schoolies move out really fast. I get a laugh out of watching his disappointment at missing the schoolies again. I guess I kind of "pressure" him to get in on the schoolies because I am the one usually alerting him to their presence. He does not scan the water like I do. He stays focused on what he is doing and completely misses the schooling action. So by the time I holler at him "schoolies" and he gets a rod read to cast, they are gone. Speed matters here. I've gotten pretty good at it over the years and would say schoolies are one of my specialities.

 

My 12 year old son is learning it from me.

 

While I was fishing in one part of Florida, my son was saltwater fishing in another part of Florida texting me photo after photo of the fish he was catching from sea trout, to redfish, and even said he hooked into a small tarpon that jumped as his reel screamed and it threw the hook on him.

 

After that trip he starts texting telling me he wants ALL of my rapala type of minnow lures saying the fish were blowing up on them yesterday. All I could say was I told you so! But you are NOT getting ALL of them!

 

I told my guitarist fishing buddy that you know as a kid I plundered my father's fishing tackle. I suppose its only fair for my sons to plunder mine! I don't care really. That's what its all about.

 

Looks like I may be giving him some of his Christmas presents a little earlier this year. It just does not seem right to make him wait until just one day on the calendar to get the fishing tools he needs right now. His largest reel is a 4000 size spinning. I now have several in the 6000 and 6500 and even one 8000 and rods ready to go for him. Just waiting on line to come in the mail for them. So I may be an early Santa this year. I really don't see any reason to make him wait several months for what he needs right now.

 

It would be interesting to fish with you on the same lake at the same time. You do your thing your way, and I do my thing my way and see how it turns out. I'd like to see if your adherence to stealth would make a noticeable difference in the catch results and or bite results. I used to worry about being stealthy, but over the years noticed the bass just don't seem to care too much. Besides I can cast far enough to places the bass don't even know I am there really. So honestly I just don't put much effort into stealthy any longer.

 

Thanks for your posts! Really enjoyable to read lots of words well used!

On 10/4/2025 at 2:41 PM, BrianMDTX said:

Went back to the bladed jig. I was bringing it from close to shore out to deep water when it stopped dead. A snag. Then the rod completely bent. No snag! A bass! And what a bass. It jumped and my heart almost stopped. It was a tank. Easily 7-8 lbs. It dove and jumped again. I got it 6’ from the boat when it jumped the third time and my bladed jig went north and the bass went south. All I could muster was a “No No No No No No!!!!” Definitely would have been my PB. That’s the ugly. 

 

 

Oh boy, what a bummer.

 

An experience you'll never forget though.

 

Get her next time.  

F3, thanks and send those schoolies my way. If I had some schoolies, I might still reach my goal instead of catching a bass every quarter mile of paddling! Schoolies bass coming to you is like Door Dash bass. 

 

4 hours ago, FloridaFishinFool said:

He does not scan the water like I do.

 

That's how I fish too.

 

4 hours ago, FloridaFishinFool said:

I'd like to see if your adherence to stealth would make a noticeable difference in the catch results and or bite results.

 

As Mister T nearly said, I pity the FloridaFishinFool who isn't stealthy on my lakes. Make noise and the bass swirl and scoot. You can even see the lines in the water as they scatter in shallow water. 

 

4 hours ago, FloridaFishinFool said:

it was lightly raining which with all those drops of water hitting surface of lake creates a noise of its own underwater that kind of hides our surface noise which helped a lot.

 

That's why I love fishing rainy days. I can even bump the boat here and there without penalty.

 

4 hours ago, FloridaFishinFool said:

I wish Florida bass were as cooperative.

 

Florida bass are harder to catch. NLMB are more aggressive. If Maine sounds like Heaven, just remember that a Florida bass CAN reach four pounds in one year with optimal conditions. It takes a Maine bass 20 years to reach the same weight.

 

4 hours ago, FloridaFishinFool said:

It would be interesting to fish with you on the same lake at the same time. You do your thing your way, and I do my thing my way and see how it turns out.

 

If we were fishing in Maine and you weren't stealthy, I'd bet against you. Our bass aren't acclimated to noise. Same with bass in the Ontario wilderness. In other places, stealth wouldn't matter much.

 

 

This past weekend was the championship tournament for the Kansas Kayak Anglers on Wilson Lake in western Kansas. Wilson and I have never got along very well, and reports of a very difficult bite and very low water didn't boost my confidence any. The lake is very odd in my opinion. It's mostly rock and sand but it all looks very similar, so figuring out where to fish has always been very difficult for me. I have a couple spots on the lake I've been able to get bit in the past, but knowing that the lake was so low, I tried not to put much weight in past experience and spent a lot of time looking at the maps and trying to find new areas to fish that I thought might be productive. Another huge issues I have with the lake, is poor access. It's a 9,000 acre lake, but there's only 8 ramps on the whole thing. 3 of them are very near each other, one is in a portion of the lake that is basically devoid of anything but catfish and carp, so you end up with functionally, 5 ramps on a 9,000 acre lake and only 1 is on the north side of the lake. There's also very little shoreline access, so even with a kayak, there are very few areas that you can bank launch from.  I scanned around on maps as much as I could, and found one spot on the bank that was sort of close to an area I hadn't fished before that I wanted to check out, so on Thursday, that's where I set out to look at. 

 

After some minor issues with leaving in the morning, I got to the lake about 6 hours later than I planned. Trying to be positive, but it seemed like the universe just kept throwing signs at me.

Still, I found my launch spot and decided it fit the description of a legal launch, so that's what I did. My whole truck would have normally been about under water if the water level was at full pool.

The run was a little further to the area I wanted to fish than it looked on the map, a potential problem for the forcasted 20-40 mph winds they were calling for during the tournament, but I'd cross that bridge when I came to it. Everything looked good in the area I'd picked. I scoped around and found some deeper rocks that couldn't been seen from above water and that's where I got my first bites, one that I lost was a really nice one. Then I caught a couple decent ones.

And one that I'm not really sure what happened other than he must have swam through my line.

I ended up getting a smallish limit and felt pretty good about it since the All American on the same lake a few weeks ago only had a few limits caught. 

 

Friday was the start of the wind that never stopped. I launched on the south side with everyone else that had shown up to try to avoid it a little bit but it was unavoidable. This was the part of the lake I normally fish though, so I felt like I should be able to catch fish, and I did, but they were mostly really small, unless they were the wrong species.

I had a 5 bass limit that was probably about 57", when I finally caught a good one. Just a completely random fish on a sand bank, nothing I felt like I could duplicate.

I reached the end of where I wanted to fish and headed all the way back towards the ramp I launched from (no access points so I had to cover as much ground in each direction from the one ramp as possible). On the way back, I hit a almost unnoticeable rock vein on a sand point with a jerkbait and caught another nice one.

I was starting to notice that almost all my good fish seemed to be coming off of banks that looked like almost nothing. A little bit of rock mixed with sand seemed to be best. I went as far to the opposite direction as I wanted to go and never found anything similar, and never caught another fish. Not feeling like being exhausted, I put it on the trailer around 4 and told my buddy Deric that I was going to drive to my bank launch and see how it looked with the wind blowing into it to decide if it was going to be an option in the morning. He had an area near there he'd fished the year before he wanted to fish but didn't know about that launch, so we both checked it out together. It was rough, but I felt like I could make it if I was careful. 

 

Deric went back to his B&B for the night, and I checked out one more spot before heading back to my tent, it turned out to be another good mix of sand with a little rock, and wouldn't you know.

There wasn't enough there for a whole day of fishing I didn't feel like, but something to keep in mind if I needed to make a move and get one more bite. 

 

Saturday, the wind was blowing as soon as I got to my launch, even more than the night before. I could hear the waves crashing in the dark, and I started reconsidering. I didn't want to fish in the crowd. I knew most all our guys, plus the 2 boat tournaments were all going to be hiding on the south side, and I didn't want to do that. It was probably the smarter choice, but by the time I was turned down the bank, it was too late and I was committed. The wind was supposed to be straight out of the south, but when I finally arrived into what I expected to be my fairly protected cove, it was piping in straight from the west almost. 

This is where I thought I'd be "protected".

I didn't get to my spot until about 10 minutes after lines in because of the wind, and I didn't catch my first fish until 30 minutes in, a whopping 10.25" smallmouth. I think it was the combination of being soaked from the run, and the constant wind, but I could feel my confidence draining quickly. I moved to my best spot from prefishing and worked it over as best I could, but it was in the teeth of the wind. I finally got a bite on a Ned rig, a tiny keeper, but then lost it at the kayak. After what felt like forever, I was going to move over a little to a different part of the cove, but then decided to run a small paddletail over the rocks. First cast was nothing, but the second cast got absolutely hammered. The slow, heavy headshakes had me thinking for sure it was a big walleye, but then the bruiser smallie rolled on the surface and stayed there for me to quickly scoop it with the net. I worked that same little rock pile for over 30 minutes to finally coax this 19.75" into inhaling my swim-n-shiner.

 

I fished those rocks for about 10 more minutes before moving to the little rock point I'd thought about moving to before catching the big one. I quickly got bit on a Ned rig, and lost another small keeper. I could have had 4 fish, but instead only had 2. Next cast back, and 15" range fish went airborne and launched my Ned rig back at me. An angry growl left me because I hadn't hardly lost a fish in practice but now I couldn't keep a fish hooked?! Next cast back, another bite. This time I landed a 13.75" fish. 8:56AM and I only needed 2 more bites for a limit. Next cast back, another "tap, tap", and then a slow pull down. The fish didn't move at all when I set the hook, then rocketed out of the water, another big fish! She pulled for what felt like forever before finally slipping into the net, another 19" smallmouth.

 

I kept working that point and after about 10 minutes, finally got another bite, this time a 14.25" largemouth to round out my limit.

Less than 2 hours into the tournament and I already had 77". I felt like if I could get 75" both days, I'd be doing really good, so I was already ahead of schedule. Now I started considering fish management and my run back to the launch since it was just supposed to get windier as the day went on. It was 9:11AM, I decided to give myself until 10AM, then I was heading back and I'd go somewhere else for the remainder of the day. I had really just 1 more small rockpile I hadn't fished yet, so I cut across and started heading down the bank towards it. I lobbed a random cast at a nothing sand bank, and my line pulled tight as I quickly drifted backwards and a big fish surged for the surface. This one got a big hectic because I had the motor moving towards it and had to try to control the boat in the wind and the fish at the same time, but it ended up working out and I put a 17.50" fish on the board, a 7.25" cull!

At the last little rockpile, I worked the Ned rig through it several times, and I could see fish on the scope, but nobody would bite. I'd caught a nice largemouth off it in practice, so I pulled out a shakyhead trick worm and tossed that at it. As soon as I picked it up, the line was moving and a strong fish surged off on the hookset. I thought it was a largemouth, maybe even the same fish from Thursday, but it turned out to be a light colored 16.75" smallmouth, putting me all the way to 87.25" on the day at only 9:33AM

That was it, I didn't even make it to 10AM, I was pulling the plug. I could only cull a few more inches without catching an absolute giant, and I wanted to make sure I made it back. I beached my kayak, strapped down everything the best I could, and set my nose into the swells. It wasn't the worst I've ever been in, but it was top 3, and probably wasn't 3rd. The waves slamming into the rock bluffs and bouncing back were causing a washing maching effect, it was pretty wild. When I made it around the big point and turned into the next big cove, I had a wave grab the back side of my kayak and shove me hard forward, I thought I was going over. 

 

I made it to the swim beach area and into the most protected part of my whole run. I thought about just backing down the swim beach, but technically that's against the rules and didn't want to get DQ'd over it. I knew the last stretch was shallow, so the worst part was having to be off the bank further than I wanted to be to keep from hitting bottom with the motor. I decided to take a break from the run and made a few cast in the cove while I was protected. There was just 2 little areas that had some sand and mud mixed with a couple rocks. I got bit on one spot and missed it, then caught a 16" smallmouth on the other, culling out the 14.25" largemouth, giving me 89" for the day.

The last part of the run was bad. Only about 100 yards, but I hadn't thought about the hatch under my seat letting in water. The waves were so big and coming in so fast and high over the side, I actually started to take on water and sink. I noticed I was bogging down and my kayak was sitting lower, but there was nothing I could do by then but keep going and hoping I made it. Luck was on my side and the excellent quality of my Old Town keeping my on the right side of the water's surface and I finally made the turn into the little cut where my truck was parked. I forgot to turn my camera off before I made the last part of the run, there was some wicked action shots to be had from it.

 

After spending a considerable amount of time bailing my kayak's interior out and loading everything up, I moved to a different ramp. I wanted to try and find something more protected that I could hopefully launch from Sunday and avoid the madness. I fished the remainder of the day catching 1 drum, 1 catfish, 1 follow from a micro smallmouth barely bigger than my Ned rig, and one really hard thump on a T-rig that immediately dropped it. 

We had a potluck after day one and it didn't sound like anyone wanted to do it over again the next day, but the directors didn't sound like they had any plans to cancel, despite it supposed to be even windier the next day.

I was torn whether to try and fight the wind again, or go to the south side and fight the crowd and stay realitively safer since I had a decent lead going into day 2. After blanking for 3 hours Saturday afternoon, I knew what I had to do though. Sunday morning, I told Deric I was doing it again. The wind was at least supposed to start to calm down a little before the end of the tournament, so hopefully it would be a little easier run back in. We were heading for the ramp, when the message came out.

 

I know it wasn't an easy choice, but it was the right choice for sure. Deric was disappointed because he wanted the chance to get into the money, but the wind was brutal on Sunday. We ate breakfast at the local diner with everyone and did awards in the parking lot. 

 

 

 

I also won AOY, 399 out of a possible 400 points, but they customize that trophy with your name so I have to wait for it. That's 3 years in a row winning AOY. A week from now I'll be back out west trying to qualify to fish the Bassmaster Kayak Classic for the third year in a row. 

 

 

What an angler. What an adventure. Bass Resource is lucky to have you, Clayton. 

Congratulations Clayton!!! Awesome write up on a dominating performance!!! Heck of a year!!!

1 hour ago, T-Billy said:

Congratulations Clayton!!! Awesome write up on a dominating performance!!! Heck of a year!!!

 

Clayton did do a great job of telling his tale. Clear and riveting. He doesn't just wrangle bad guys, waves, and bass. He wrangles words too.

25 minutes ago, Swamp Girl said:

 

Clayton did do a great job of telling his tale. Clear and riveting. He doesn't just wrangle bad guys, waves, and bass. He wrangles words too.

Recalling and telling a clear story and painting a picture for an audience is a big part of my work too 😄

Awesome job! It’s got to be the shoes!!