Had to cut some grass after work but got done around 6 in time for some kayaking. Got 3 LM and a walleye right out in front of my dock. 2 of the fish on a pumpkin chartreuse worm and 2 on a Frittside

I spent the last four days at Table Rock Lake with my wife. We had some other activities going on, but I was still able to get in approximately 19 hours of fishing in the four days. I caught 28 total fish. Bites were consistent in the morning hours, but slowed to a crawl in the sunny afternoons. Yesterday, after Wednesday night storms, it was cool and cloudy until late in the day and the bite was pretty good up until 3 pm. The pattern was nothing but channel banks and it had to be the right mix of characteristics for biting fish to be there. The drop had to reach 15 to 20 feet within a boat length from the bank, and 35 to 40 feet of water had to be fairly close by. The Ned Rig was my main go-to. I caught a couple on a jig and craw, but nothing on a jerkbait, t-rigged senko, Zara Spook, and a Brush Hog. I was hoping to find some big fish but, unfortunately the best weight was 3 lbs. Below are a few pics.

I love Table Rock, I wish I got down there more often. It's unfortunate how busy that lake has gotten with pleasure boats anymore though. It's not much better than LOZ during the summer months around the dam.

Another warm windy day in Iowa. Surface temps are 74!!! Lake high and dirty after lotsa rain. Had fun rasselin' 23 fat chunkers out of flooded grass on snagless sally, poppin frog, and buzzbait. 30 mph wind ran me off at noon.

2 hours ago, Lottabass said:

30 mph wind

Wow, Al! Lotta wind for Lottabass and everyone else.

All is right in my world ~

A-Jay

@A-Jay d**n you beat me to it. Nice start to your season sir.

Fished Crystal Lake in Crystal Mi which, is 3 miles to the south east of where I fished Tuesday on Duck lake.

The day started extremely foggy on the lake and ended with blue bird sunny skies. It’s mid April and the fish are already pushing into the 10-8 Ft range. Water is warm at 58 degrees. Water is extremely high on crystal. This is also the most stained I’ve seen the water on the lake. Usually, bottom can be seen in 12-15 ft. I wasn’t able to see bottom in 3-4 ft. The water is over the skid piers at the Crystal Lake MiDNR boat launch.

Today was a jerk bait day. I caught 6-8 1lbs to 1 1/2 lbs bass which, is typical for Crystal in Montcalm county. I’ve had 15-20 fish days out of the lake but, I don’t believe I’ve ever caught any thing over 2-2.5 lbs here. The jerk bait in the first photo has probably landed 60-70 fish out of that lake. The jerk bait is a Lucky craft pointer 100 sp in (I think) cowboy gill

I landed one decent pike ( decent for Crystal) and 1 pike on crush city mayor electric shad.

Had a few hours this afternoon and since I’m 20 min at most from the lake, off I went. I brought two casting rods, M and MH, then the bfs. I started in the back end of a semi-protected spot. I warmed up with the bfs since I hadn’t caught any fish with it. I started with a ned head and ned bug. Got dinks and one keeper, losing two other keepers. I then decided to switch to a jerkbait, throwing the smallest husky and started hitting dinks, bluegill and a few crappie. I was a bit much at first, pulling hooks before chilling out. I also hooked a big gill on the ned bug but it flipped off in the kayak.

After that, I went bass fishing and got a handful of keepers with a couple decent fish. Fish were still relating to docks, but the deeper heads were barren and working the shallower sections paid off. I got a couple swim jig fish, but most on a black/blue bitsy bug with gp finesse trailer. I feel the big females have pulled back again with a slight cooldown and definitely will with 19, 20 and 23* nights coming up…man I sure love bass fishin!

On 4/14/2026 at 1:32 PM, Swamp Girl said:

I launched for the first time in 2026, but couldn't find the bass. I did catch four, all on a red spinnerbait with no trailer. I tried shallow, a couple ledges, even shallower, creek mouths, a rock flat, and a windbeaten shore. Two came from one laydown. i'm launching again tomorrow. They have to stir at some point. Two were 17-inchers:

And two were not, like this one:

I saw geese, an eagle, a loon, and Buffleheads.

A pond pic:

2026 total: 11

Total 19-inchers: 2

You are a true angler if you fish all day and catch little or nothing and you can't wait to do it again. I'm proud of you, Katie! Thank you for a great report!

@Mbirdsley I was really hoping I’d scroll down and see a brown bass out of Crystal. I haven’t fished it much and I’ve yet to get a brown bass out of there but was hoping someone would have better luck at it.

20 hours ago, Bluebasser86 said:

I love Table Rock, I wish I got down there more often. It's unfortunate how busy that lake has gotten with pleasure boats anymore though. It's not much better than LOZ during the summer months around the dam.

It has become more busy for sure. This trip, I stayed at a location quite a few miles up the James River Arm. With it being mid-April there weren't that many boats except in the area between the Cape Fair Marina and the 76 highway bridge. I was looking for fish around spawning areas but every cove I checked had no fish, though they could have been a bit deeper and not visible in the stained water on that arm. Surface water temperatures were 62 to 65 degrees. On the main lake I suspect the temperatures are closer to 58 to 60 degrees. The last report I had read from last week stated that fish were in all three phases of the spawn.

Got one to start the day …

I fished my pond for 2.5 hours this morning. It was 43 degrees and foggy when I launched. I caught 10 total: 2 on a trolled underspin with an orange Zako, 4 on a cast underspin with an orange craw, and 4 on a black Whopper Plopper. I heard cows and owls and saw two turtles mating. I had to avoid nesting geese lest I agitate them. My pond is down to its last two Buffleheads. This past week, I saw up to two dozen a day. I didn't catch anything big. This was the smallest:

This was the biggest:

The other eight were this size, more or less:

This was the shoreline where I caught most of them:

And this was my gray pond:

It was a fun, but chilly morning. I won't fish for a few days now. It'll just be too cold!

55 bass for 2026

2 at least 19"

I maybe had a bit of a morning. Yesterday I was resigned that I wanted to throw topwaters for smallies so picked my lake accordingly. The water was just a little colder than I needed for that but it was close enough. The wind was 2-3 from 5-6 AM and then was going to kick up to 5-7 so I had a very short window of calm water that is perfect for a walking bait. I knew where I wanted to start so I ran to a spot about 150 yards short of that. As I shut down I looked up on the hill and there was a bobcat marking! You far for a pic but it was nice to see one in the wild. I started down the bank and had one slash at a dawg, but didn’t eat it which was a clue. I fished the 150 yards, rounded the corner, and rough you believe another boat had cut me off? He was sitting on the 50 yards stretch I wanted to fish so I fired up and went across the lake. Of course by the time I got there the wind had kicked up. I stuck with the dawg for a little bit but quickly realized it wasn’t the right answer. In hindsight, the guy cutting me off was probably the best thing to happen to me because it pushed me elsewhere and making that change was the answer today.

With a 5 mph wind blowing into the bank and tons of wood around, I went for the old Jason Christie special for clearwater smallies- 3/4 screaming eagle on the Cara swim jig rod. I was telling @Joedodge about this combo just yesterday saying it’s the only spinnerbait combo I fish on this rod and why.

The first couple hundred yards gave up 6 angry smallies, all 2# fish. After having a 2’ lake trout follow me to the boat but not take, I had run out of shoreline so made a jump. The next spot gave up another 6 bass in 30 minutes including a 3# smallie, a 3lb largemouth, and a 4-03 largemouth. All on the same rig/bait/presentation. Cast it up on shore and burn it over their heads. And then just like that the sun popped up high and they stopped. So 12 bass in 3 hours of fishing including a 4+, all throwing a spinnerbait, and seeing a bobcat. I’ll take that any day of the week.

@casts_by_fly: Heckuva morning, but look at your shorelines compared to mine. Yours are green on green on green. Mine are brown on brown on gray on brown. What a difference a few hundred miles make!

@Swamp Girl - it’s amazing what just 10-15 miles can do. This lake is 12 miles south (and a few west). The area it is in is consistently 5-10 degrees warmer and a week to two more advanced whether it is greenery, snow cover, air temps, etc. I have far less green on the trees and bushes at the house and going another 10 miles north there is even less.

5 hours ago, 12poundbass said:

@Mbirdsley I was really hoping I’d scroll down and see a brown bass out of Crystal. I haven’t fished it much and I’ve yet to get a brown bass out of there but was hoping someone would have better luck at it.

I have caught 2 or 3 of them over the years but, they also have been on the small side. I know there is decent bass in the lake but, I can’t seem to find them. The smallies that I have caught always seems to be running with the largemouths or at least in the same general area/ depth.

I have been looking at the MiDNR abstract/essay’s on the lake the last couple of days. Basically, to some up the reports; perch, walleye, and sunfish grow faster then the state average. Which, I have caught and seen some monster perch, walleye, and sunfish. However, the Bass and pike grow slower than the state average. The States report matches the eye test.

The last 5 years they have been doing a winter ice fishing pike tournament on the lake. The tournament takes out around 100 hammer handle pike a winter. Between ice fishing and this last trip I am seeing bigger pike in the lake. Those pike I caught were about normal legal size. Usually about a dozen hammer handles would have been caught.

2 hours ago, casts_by_fly said:

@Swamp Girl - it’s amazing what just 10-15 miles can do. This lake is 12 miles south (and a few west). The area it is in is consistently 5-10 degrees warmer and a week to two more advanced whether it is greenery, snow cover, air temps, etc. I have far less green on the trees and bushes at the house and going another 10 miles north there is even less.

That's crazy. Basically, you're experiencing a different climate in just twelve miles.

Gray, overcast, low 70°s and nary a breeze. No rain forecasted until 4:00 pm. Figured I’d start with a popper on top. Caught one. A 4” bluegill lol. Tried a spinnerbait, bladed jig, A-Jay Special, a squarebill and a Mann’s Jelly Worm T-rig. Nada on all those. Had a bite on the Bitsy jig with Easy Shiner (sungill) trailer. Had one about 1.5 lbs. on the hook but it threw it halfway to the boat. A few minutes later had something bite it, but after reeling it in, I saw the paddletail was ripped off. Decided to try one of the new ones in electric shad.

Remember I said no rain until 4:00? Never trust the weatherman lol. A slight drizzle turned into a hard rain. The second cast after the rain started the jig got hammered. Nice 2.5 lb. bass. No pic as it was pouring. Then as it stopped, it got hit again. But it wasn’t a bass— it was a 3 lb. catfish. On a jig lol. That was it. There were some kids fishing that hammered cats on live bait. One was five lbs. They had no hook removers or pliers, so I removed the hook and weighed it for them. Dang kids outfished me lol.

I’ve spent my last few days off exploring some of the more remote ponds that I yet been to. Unfortunately the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze as 4 out of the 5 ended up being total dink fests.

I did add to my abandoned water craft count for the year.

Today being my last day off I decided to fish a tried and true spot.

77 degrees and cloudy, winds 10-15 with gusts up to 27 wsw. Water clarity was about 6’. Started things off with the white/chartreuse jack hammer which caught 3 for me before I straightened the hook out on a snag.

I then switched to an Evo elite in blue gill and caught another 4. Tried a jig, crankbait, and even the choppo but they would only eat the vibrating jigs.

Here’s the best of the bunch:

On another note I also lost three. I’ve always used fast action rods for vibrating jigs even though I know lots of folks prefer a moderate. Never been a problem for me before today and if this turns out to be anything other than a fluke I may have to reconsider my approach.

A few from today

I'm coming out of my winter hibernation, and loving all the fish pics! Went out to my local pond for the first time in 2026 yesterday, but everything is so overflooded by our non-stop thunderstorms and rain that I couldn't get so much as a nibble.

Spent all day yesterday on Guntersville. Didn’t catch squat except a wicked sunburn on my legs. Went to a local river today and caught a few white bass - this being the biggest…

First fish on the karashi 80. Watching them react to this bait in clear water was pretty crazy. Some would come from 10ft away and veer off at the last second and a few others absolutely crushed it. I'll be having one tied on for the foreseeable future.

When the reaction bite slowed down, the fuzzy bugz dragged or hopped along the bottom caught a ridiculous amount of fish.

No big fish today, but a few in that 17" class made for a heck of a trip.