Last day of the week and went a little south for largemouth with my bro and we had a fine day. We didn’t keep any real track, but probably got 40-45 or so from the bank. Not a hot and heavy day, but a steady grind. Jigs ruled the day and caught most by far, but we(he) also got several fish on squarebills, two on bladed jigs(my first), one on a swim jig. Paddle tails never had a bite.

My brother put together a solid crankbait bite as one color seemed hot and he soundly smoked me cranking. I did have the exact same crank, but competition and male stubbornness kept me at bay. Nothing huge at all, just good 16-20” prespawn largies. We also got two pike and three bowfin. Last pic heavy post lol

Great day.

Went looking for a big one today and I found one, twice. First one was my heaviest of the year so far at 6.02 and the first I’ve seen with signs of spawning activity.

10 hours ago, ATA said:

@RenzokukenFisher what was that glide bait?

It's the Hiroshima Customs Shad Glide, that one was in a hatchery trout colorway. It is one of the custom glidebaits so it retails around $180 which is steep I'll admit, especially when a fish steals it lol. I know folks have different opinions on that with these expensive of baits, but this is honestly one of the best glide baits I've ever fished and completely find it worth the price.

It's the cadillac of glides, it stays suuuuper level and stable in the water, and has a really tight and natural glide but can also swing wide when you kill it. 7 inches long so its the perfect snack and still has drawing power. My favorite part about it though is how thick of a bait it is, it puts alot of resistance through the water on the retrieve so you can feel every little thing its doing and I think for a nightbite or dirty water it helps the fish feel it more. Some glides are just real thin and its hard to really track the cadence without seeing the bait but this one you can feel suuuuper well. Imo the thicker frame also dual purpose matches a chunky trout or a bluegill so I like that about it.

The bait monkey is whispering for me to get another one, we will see 🤣

More of a sob story than a report here. I missed the biggest bite I’ve had in probably two years . The conditions and setup were perfect. I was fishing a prominent main lake point with a row of trees sticking out over the drop off into 30’. A storm was just about to roll in. I was casting a 9.25” Nate’s trout parallel to the drop over the tips of the trees when I felt the telltale THUMP. I swung and had her on for maybe a second before the hook pulled.

Teeth marks running from nose to tail, meaning the fish was big enough to suck it in with one gulp. The only time I’ve seen something similar was two years ago when I caught my pb… and this was an even bigger bait.

I did catch a few that day but they really didn’t take away that sting.

Water was clesr and shallow between the bank and inside weedline. Throwing a compact popping frog up on the bank and slipping it into the water would get it sharked. Too big a splash would spook them away from it.

Got hung on a bush and when I went in to get it I spotted the mushrooms!

One last pic from the St Larry. The river smallies carry a lot of weight for the length compared to typical river fish. @TnRiver46 right?

I launched at my pond at seven and quit at ten. I should have launched at 8:30 because I caught one bass in the first hour and a half, but a dozen in the last hour and a half. It's still too cold in Maine for morning fishing and my canoe's gunnels glittered with ice for the first half hour. Still, I loved that first hour and a half. When the bass aren't biting, I can really focus on the Red Wing Blackbirds, geese, loons, and the light. I even stopped to photograph one of the pond's Wood Duck houses:

Here's the only bass I caught in the first half of the morning, right on the edge of the bog:

Not even my lucky laydown produced a bass, but when I reached a shaded shoreline, I caught this beauty:

Right away, I caught another who made me so happy because she was so healthy. Thick with muscles:

I put her on the bump board so that you could really see how thick she was. For those of you who don't ever photograph bass on bump boards, it's a great way to showcase a thick fish:

Then I settled into a pattern of casting to the edge of the bog. My casting was spot on this morning, which is always gratifying:

This one was skinny!

Back to thicker ones!

This one was brown and a real beauty!

One more to end the morning:

I've caught 91 bass in 2026. I might fish again tomorrow morning. We'll see. I'm a little tuckered just now. Then I won't fish for a week or so because it'll be wet, rainy, and in the forties.

Sharing this one from the lake.

Someday I might need to go live.

But this will do for now

A-Jay

3 hours ago, Dwight Hottle said:

One last pic from the St Larry. The river smallies carry a lot of weight for the length compared to typical river fish. @TnRiver46 right?

Sure won’t find any like that around here !

14 hours ago, GreenPig said:

Great day.

Thanks man, it certainly was…don’t get them often on shore.

1 hour ago, A-Jay said:

Sharing this one from the lake.

Someday I might need to go live.

But this will do for now

A-Jay

You’re as alive as you’re ever gonna be setting the hook into those bronze bombers bro…we live for this stuff 💯

@RenzokukenFisher I have the Hiroshima trout. They are very high quality.

Thanks for the info, Definitely going to buy one.

We expected to lose the weekend to rain as it was forecasted, but it ended a little earlier than predicted. The big lake we wanted to hit is impossible with the wind which was cranking, so we opted for a smaller, better wind-protected spot. It was still brutal to deal with, and the cold front had us dressed in multiple layers to cope.

Threw the kitchen sink at every submerged bush, laydown, and any juicy looking spot worth hitting. Not a whiff!

Spotted two swans out in the middle azzes up. This place is way behind in growth. During the warmer months it's nearly topped out shore-to-shore. Very few emerging pads and next to zero emerging weeds so far. I yak'd its sister lake only ¼ mile away on Thursday and it already had explosive weed growth in places. Strange.

The swans told me fresh grass must be in that zone, so we hit it. Threw the kitchen sink at them again. Underspins, Cranks, which snagged fresh 6" chutes of milfoil. Lipless. Spinners. Swim jigs, chatters, etc. Zilch! Tied on the trusty Zedman 6" Swag LT and hooked up on my second cast. Go figure. My brother followed suite with the Swag and got his shortly thereafter. A few more hits but misses for both of us but we cashed out. Wind was really whipping at that point anyway and it started white capping. Anchors are basically useless with 2" of compressed muck on the bottom, and we were freezing.

Bonus roadsdide-pond swimbait eater for my brother.

I launched again this evening and caught 19. I also caught my third 2026 19-incher from my pond:

I never stop feeling lucky that I own pond-front property five minutes from my house. I haven't had success trolling any soft plastics recently, so I trolled this, which one of you suggested for casting over submerged weeds:

My pond is too weedy for this lure to work in the summer, but it caught three bass trolling this evening!

Most of my bass were caught again casting a T-rigged blue craw at the edge of the bog. Three of the 19 bass were smallies. I was so cold. It was 49 when I quit and my feet were wet, plus I forgot to bring my fleece top and only had a thin nylon top. Brrrrrr!

Here are a few more pics, the usual array of 17 to 18-inchers:

I'm at 110 bass for 2026. The first hundred came pretty slow and my fishing is going to slow even more, as wind, rain, and more cold are coming and I likely won't fish for the next week.

Not too bad tonight. Chilly with no wind and a big moon overhead is usually bad news but not this time. Lost a real jumbo trying to get the grippers on its lip. Would've been my best fish in years. Could've probably lipped it by hand, but with a Bucca Bull Shad flailing around in the dark I just couldn't risk catching a treble or two in a finger or two. Those days of cowboying it is over for me after the last impaling which was just brutal.

Anyway, got some action on a type of night where I typically struggle. In order: The unmentionable by name too expensive Bladed Jig/Deisel Minnow that I proceeded to lose to a log the very next cast. G2 Shellcracker. 5" RI Skinny Dipper. 6" Little Creeper Trash Fish.

2 hours ago, PhishLI said:

Lost a real jumbo trying to get the grippers on its lip. Would've been my best fish in years.

So impressive that you almost caught it. Last night was COLD! Impressive too that you caught all those other bass.

I just visited a Maine fishing forum and lots of posters, including some who live on ponds, stated that they haven't caught a single bass in 2026 due to the cold. My total of 32 yesterday has me feeling grateful.

Last night when I was paddling back, I was trolling and both rods snapped back. I landed one and almost landed the other. Then I cast behind my canoe and caught the 19-incher. Then I cast again, got a hit on my falling craw, set the hook, and the line snapped. I was so cold that I quit. Yeah, I quit when you were just getting started. So, your cowboying days are far from done.

With rain starting tonight, I launched one more time this evening even though it was white-capping. White-capping doesn't rattle me. I'm at home on cool, dark northern lakes, but the wind did multiply the challenge of catching bass as it kept pushing me into the shore. Even without the wind, catching bass in cool water with soft plastics is tough. You have to detect the hit and watch the line too, since there isn't always a hit you can feel.

Anglers in Maine have been reporting tough fishing in 2026. Some haven't even caught a single bass yet. So, catching 21 this evening felt like real success, even though it doesn't reach some of my past numbers. Just like last night, my last bass was my best:

But I caught plenty of other healthy fish, all on a T-rigged blue craw, mostly cast to the edges of a bog, but three were caught trolling to the beginning of my run and two were pulled from a laydown. Even though I wore three layers, I was still cold coming off the water. It's 43 degrees I write this report. At one point, I lost four out of five fish, but also managed to land my last five bass. Here are some of my other fish:

I've caught 131 bass in 2026.

FINALLY got out for some fishing. We've had a rough start to 2026 so it was a blessing to get back in the boat. I caught 18 LM but none over 2.5lbs and none worthy of pics. The pic I've attached is just to show the water color. I was fishing some private water that is usually very clear with 8+ feet of visibility. Yesterday we had 3.5 inches of rain and high winds. The water went up 2 feet in less than 24 hours. Stained is an understatment.

I assumed, incorrectly, that loud and proud was the way to fish so I started throwing all dark colored moving baits. Vibrating jig, topwater, spinnerbait with Colorado blades. I caught nothing. I finally decided I had nothing to lose by slowing down so I went with something "flappy" in Junebug. I immediately caught some dinks on a pegged Rage Craw.

I found almost all of my fish at pinch points with current going through them and it turned out that any plastic in Junebug was the deal. Very fun to keep switching out plastics and getting bites just because of the color. It was just the relaxing day that I needed. Truly a blessing.

On some of these vast, deep clear northern Michigan lakes,

being at the right place, at the right time & doing the right thing can be a daunting task.

But this morning, I nailed it ~

A-Jay

Our prespawn bite is hitting a fever pitch and today was the best bass day I’ve ever had, from shore too! I normally fish Wednesday and am d**n glad I went today. Gloomy, rainy and a steady NE wind most of the day. The water pushed back in, rose and murked up overnight.

We did just fine on jigs per usual, but conditions screamed a crank bite and oh it was. Squarebills were absolutely on fire and we had 3-4 straight casts with fish, fish blasting them at our feet at shore, fish hitting while stopping to pull them out, several doubles. I even had a nice walleye choke one. No idea how many we got for sure, but 60+ is very likely. Sorry so many pics again, but this is only my second full bass season and hard not to share a day like this!

Awesome! I've caught them like that, but never on a squarebill.

5 hours ago, GreenPig said:

Awesome! I've caught them like that, but never on a squarebill.

We decided to “get some jig fish” for a bit after we started with a dozen right off the bat on cranks. We could’ve walked around with one rod all day easily. Jigs did get smoked and caught plenty. I really enjoyed putting it on the far bank and barely turning the reel before getting stopped cold! I will also say, there is something about laying into a fish on a plug with a softer rod…feels good

Spots were schooling hard and mixed in with a school of hybrids. I caught fish till my arm wore out. I caught this one on a Berkley magic swimmer but everything else (including all the mean hybrids) on a BFS. What a day! Probably caught about 40 fish or so. These are the two biggest of the day.