Nothing big but these fish were a blast. Got 8 dragging an ol’ monster on rock piles in 10’. They fight so hard this time of year that it’s kinda hard to tell their size. Had two that dug down into the rocks and broke me off.

@Fried Lemons: I love 18 and 19-inch bass!

Got back yesterday from a 4 night trip up to the Catskills. This is more of a trip to meet up with friends to hang out and eat a lot and have some adult beverages with some fishing.

We hit a small lake on Friday with 2 friends and my son, it was mostly really small largemouth close to shore, I did get some better fish off shore but as has been my luck lost a couple on the jump but did manage one that was better than what we'd be catching.

Saturday was a 5 hr drift down the Delaware, we had 15 people on this where most of them just drifting down in kayaks and not fishing.

The couple that did fish had a few fish but was really slow. I caught a small Walleye and a small Smallmouth.

Afterwards back at camp we had a pot luck dinner with everyone and had a great time with many laughs and some great food.

Sunday everyone left except me an my son, we hit another small lake and I managed to land 6 decent Largemouths and lost a couple on the jump after I switched to a 5" weightless fluke.

Got home on Monday and was greeted by a downed tree in the backyard.

I caught 30 at my pond this morning, giving me 1,097 for 2026. I was so happy to catch many beefy bass. I only bump boarded my first bass. I caught her on a T-rigged Robowom, which was my main bass catcher:

Then I got busy with a buzzbait, catching eight in mid-pond weedbeds. Here are five of them:

This one came from a tree:

A couple more from mid-pond weedbeds:

Here's a river fish:

A rare (for this morning) shoreline bass:

Then back to mid-pond weedbeds. One particular weedbed gave up about half a dozen bass. It was a paltry-looking weedbed, the least visually promising of the pond's weedbeds, but the bass sure loved it:

The heatwave arrives tomorrow and stays two days, so I don't fish during that UNLESS the Kid arrives and just has to go fishing.

At the pace I'm catching bass, I expect I'll reach my goal of 1,800 in 2026. I'll fish until November 1st or thereabouts, giving me four months to catch another 700. My bass catching rate will slow through July and August, but pick up again in September.

I tried a chatter bait this morning at various spots, but couldn't elicit a single hit. It might have been user error.

Photo dump from the past month on Shasta Lake in Northern CA. Caught on a variety of baits from T-rigged lizards, to top water and spinnerbaits.

Caught and released a few footballs on the Ottawa River earlier today using a 5-gram jig and grub with light baitcasting tackle. There was a massive caddis hatch going on.

Love your pics, @AlgonquinFan!

I finally got out on the home lake this morning. Conditions were warm an calm. Mostly cloudy.

The lake is 2 feet down, which very significant in a shallow lake line mine. I haven’t seen it this low in 20 years. The weeds and algae are approaching the worst ever…

Anyway, I caught a few going south down the lake. All in pockets between eel grass beds . At the southeast end of the lake I fished a clear spot between the eel grass and bank and got 3 successively bigger fish on a few casts. # 3 there was the biggest fish of the day. I caught several more along the same shoreline. Started back and caught the rest of the fish on the east side of our island.

I ended up with 16. 15 were caught on the watermelon red speed worm, 1 on a fluke. Not a bad outing for july.

Wow, Mike, that's more green than blue behind you!

That's some nasty water. 🤢