First time out this year. A balmy 31* when we launched, 41* water. Only managed 1 smallie. Nothing to write home about. My first lake smallie though. Added fuel to this brown bass fire too! 
 

14 hours ago, TnRiver46 said:

A day that shall never be forgotten! We were fishing a river with roaring current about 4-5 mph, 12,000 cubic feet/second. So the main channel seemed fairly hopeless unless there was some kind of current break. We decided to make our first stop a creek mouth with a little warmer water. I started off by losing what I believe to be a nice smallmouth. Then we catch a few drum And white bass with tube jigs. I try a shakey head and I saw a skipjack herring chase after it as I was reeling it in. I tell Rachel skipjack and we both start reeling in the tubes as fast as possible and she hooks one. It was hooked in the gills so I put it on a 6/0 stainless and hurl it out there. A striper takes off with the dead bait twice and I missed it twice. Lucky for me a smallmouth threw me a bone and got himself hooked right in the roof of the mouth with my tube, I never even felt a hit but it was hooked very well. The fish only went 4 on my scale but it sure seemed bigger. After releasing that fish, the dead bait goes off like a rocket. Since I failed the first two times i asked Rachel if she wanted to try it. The fish Took the bait from the somewhat calm water out into the torrent and line was just melting off the baitcaster. Worried she would run out I put the minn Kota on 100 and took of after it. Quite some time and distance later, she gets the fish to the net and it’s 36 lbs and 45 inches! She beat my 4 lber by just a tad....

 

just added a video too, warning loud screams hAha

 

Two long sleeve shirts and a sweatshirt here! Good catch in’! 

Finally got to get back at it after the weather really threw a wrench in the fishing plans on Friday and Saturday. Picked up right where I left off and put together a new PB 5 fish limit. Not by much, but I beat my 18-1 with an 18-4 today. Five best were 4-3, 4-2, 3-11, 3-6 & 2-14. All pictured except the 2-14. Let it go without a picture and then caught the 3-11 and realized I beat my 5 from the other day. Oh well.

Today I caught my first good fish of the year, 4.89lbs! Michigan waters are still cold, didn't even see males up scoping out bed spots yet.

 

1 hour ago, jbsoonerfan said:

Finally got to get back at it after the weather really threw a wrench in the fishing plans on Friday and Saturday. Picked up right where I left off and put together a new PB 5 fish limit. Not by much, but I beat my 18-1 with an 18-4 today. Five best were 4-3, 4-2, 3-11, 3-6 & 2-14. All pictured except the 2-14. Let it go without a picture and then caught the 3-11 and realized I beat my 5 from the other day. Oh well.

Definitely looks like you’re pittin’ those Bantams to work! Way to sack ‘em up

Thanks! Yep, all of those came on a spinnerbait using a Bantam 

Waited for the rain to stop and didn’t get out to 430 or so . Cloudy and calm. It was an afternoon of contrasts. Started out fishing various worms , caught 2 dinks and lost 5 or 6, then had a bad birds nest on my finesse reel. Didn’t even pick it out , so I...Went to a deep point with an eel grass edge, switched to a watermelon seed super fluke , and immediately caught one. Next cast , caught another. Then I crossed the 100 foot wide channel to the south end of our island.

First cast- boom! 20 inch fish.( scale had quit working). Next cast, it had just hit bottom, and the line started peeling out. This one was 21 1/2, skinny though. Third cast, a smaller fish. Then had a fish pick it up but dropped it.  I decided to go a little above where I caught the 20 incher- first cast, another decent fish.

I then went around 200 feet away, cast along another eel grass line, and caught another 20 incher.
Then I missed the last 5 out of 6, had got overconfident I reckon,  and the last one I lost might have been the best fish of the day.

 

As a side note, this was my best 5 fish bag of the year ( I think ) and it was also probably my worst hook up percentage for the year. Go figure.??‍♂️

 

 

 

 

 

2 hours ago, Michigander said:

Today I caught my first good fish of the year, 4.89lbs! Michigan waters are still cold, didn't even see males up scoping out bed spots yet.

 

Congrats.  Yes I fished sleepy hollow Friday.  I left at 3pm and water was barely getting to 49 degrees.  Most of the water I found was 47.5 degrees +- a degree 

Thanks! That is where I caught that one. The side of the lake where I got her was 4 degrees warmer than the rest of the lake. If I knew that before someone told me I wouldn't have wasted most of the day fishing the colder side.

Pre-spawn or just a glutton?
 

 

Doubtless loaded with eggs. Nice bass.

Caught everything shallow today on this.

@Dirtyeggroll, both! A pre spawn glutton. Nice catch 

Another beautiful day on the water! Around 50 smallies to finish the day! Going out again tomorrow before the storm rolls in! Hoping to get about 6-8 hours in before hand.. god I love me some brown bass! 

I haven't needed to defrost my feet after the last few wades, and yesterday was the first time this season that I saw bluegill in the shallows. It's about to get real. Last night's Jackhammer eaters weren't bigs, but were very, very energetic.

 

My parents are retired and living down in S.C. Dad's on the mend after a heart attack and quintuple bypass, but he's finally hitting the banks again. He just sent some glory pics. He was very proud, and made a point of mentioning that he got her on 6 lb test. Seems to be a badge of honor for the old timers. I was gonna bust his onions and tell  him that some guy caught a giant great white shark on 6 lb Stren in '72, or some such nonsense,  but held back and let him have his moment. Happy for him.

 

 

Bite was TOUGH today and it was WINDY!!! I can't wait to get the power poles in and put on. I did manage to get this big girl to take a spinnerbait. I didn't measure her but she was short and fat. Weighed 4-15, should have put a couple weights in her LOL

Last Saturday I got to fish for the first time in a long time…for about a half hour. Found an empty boat ramp down at the base of the dragon, and managed to catch a couple fish. Didn't get pics of one of them because it was gill-hooked (it choked the lipless I was throwing) and I wanted to get it back in the water quick.

 

The one I got a picture of was 2lb 9oz. Wasn't much but I'll take it.

 

Then we left to do other stuff. I didn't get to play on the dragon because we were in the woman's car instead of mine.

 

Got my new pb this weekend on a highly pressured clear mountain lake- 6.6 on a neko rigged watermelon red trick worm. Tough fight on the Orochi XX Whipsnake with a tiny mosquito hook, she was just barely hooked on the outside of her bottom lip. I saw her in two feet of water just cruising around and backed off in the kayak. I made a long cast and after a couple hops I felt her, set the hook and my drag started screaming. She high tailed it for deep water and got into some submerged trees, and I thought I lost her for a bit, but I just kept pressure and eventually worked her out. With how my years been so far (in terms of fishing) I'm stoked for the rest of 2020!

 

 

Congrats @Looking for the big one on your new PB, very well done!

This was it today, yep just ONE. Pretty embarrassed that I couldn't figure them out. This one was 3 even.

Things were setting up nearly perfectly last night. Low pressure, dense cloud cover removing the huge spotlight in the sky from the equation, and rain coming in at 3:00 am were all good omens. The lack of any wind whatsoever was the only fly in the ointment. That didn't matter though because things started off nicely right away, for my brother anyway. A nice little scrapper bit his G2, so he was on the board. About a half hour later a tank smashed his Matt Lures Hard Gill. Joy! Up to that point, and for the next 2 hours, I was in the weeds. Not a sniff. It was 2:00 am at that point, and the catching streak I've been on looked like it was done. I was being hard-heading throwing just 3 baits; A Jackhammer, an IMA Shallow crank, and a Gantarel. The Berkely Champ Swimmer in Perch has been money lately, but I really wanted to hookup on something different. With my gameplan in tatters I capitulated, tied it on, and within 5 minutes I had my first. Over the next 20 minutes I had multiple hits and bagged two more. The last one blasted the Champ and stripped drag off my Fuego CT like nothing. They're really fired up now. Heart pounding. I was sparked up after that one, but the rain came in hard so I cashed out. OK night for the Phish brothers.

Despite being mostly Ice covered just yesterday, Local Lake Menderchuck was open water this morning.

Big rains overnight did the trick.

I am very happy to have been able to spend the afternoon floating.

And as always, can’t wait to do it again.

A-Jay

I decided I would try to prove to myself the definition of insanity for the 500th time by trying to catch a black bass with a spinnerbait. It still rings true! It never ceases to amaze me how I can throw one for hours, days, weeks and not catch a bass. And the very SECOND that I pick up a plastic worm I start catching. I guess that means, by definition, I am insane. Anywho, back to the fishing. I started way down the river from where I typically go and tried the spinnerbait on a shallow flat loaded with logs that dropped off steep under the boat. Everytime I would let the spinnerbait flutter down the drop a white bass would railroad it. It was more of the big 2 lb “blue tail” males and they were hitting and fighting incredibly hard. At one point I decided to fire the bait down current, parallel to the drop and something hits hard and starts head shaking, big wide shakes. And I can see it way down there, looks olive/brown and slightly over 2 feet long. It takes off into the fast swirling deep current and takes lots of line off a baitcaster. I’m thinking I have a 6-7 lb smallmouth and I start nervously freaking out trying to decide when to reach down and ready the net. Well my olive brown fish slightly over 2 feet was a channel catfish, and a really fast one at that! Of course I fished a plastic worm and caught 3 black bass and missed more. There were some crazy cloud formations on the way in