On 6/25/2021 at 7:39 AM, hokiehunter373 said:

First cast on the new PopMax.  pop pop POP slurrrrrp.  Little dink but still fun

Topwater is always fun! 

My son-in-law and I had a banner day on the water today. Between us, we boated 40-45 fish. Missed another 5+.  I caught 25 +/- fish, 4 on a bone Whopper Plopper, a couple of which were at the 2 lb range. My best 2 fish, both @ 3.25, came on a TR fire-n-ice culprit worm.  

My SIL took top honors for biggest fish nailing this 4.26 lb on a popper. 

 

 

My pitiful 3’s ?
 

 

55 minutes ago, gunsinger said:

My son-in-law and I had a banner day on the water today. Between us, we boated 40-45 fish. Missed another 5+.  I caught 25 +/- fish, 4 on a bone Whopper Plopper, a couple of which were at the 2 lb range. My best 2 fish, both @ 3.25, came on a TR fire-n-ice culprit worm.  

My SIL took top honors for biggest fish nailing this 4.26 lb on a popper. 

 

 

My pitiful 3’s ?
 

 

Wow, out fished by the SIL... Pitiful indeed, failing to show him who's boss! ?

Nice fish and great work!  Sounds like an awesome day!

55 minutes ago, HaydenS said:

Wow, out fished by the SIL... Pitiful indeed, failing to show him who's boss! ?

Nice fish and great work!  Sounds like an awesome day!

I’m a good host. ?

Caught a 3.98 lbber today

 

2 hours ago, Nelson Wormefeller said:

Caught a 3.98 lbber today

 

“The Headless Horseman caught a bass!” 
 

Where's the flaming jack o’lantern? ?

12 minutes ago, BrianMDTX said:

“The Headless Horseman caught a bass!” 
 

Where's the flaming jack o’lantern? ?

I was gonna say ain't that the dude that tried to kill Elizabeth Moss in that movie last year?

Fishing report. Hm let’s see. I spent this weekend doing other things. This does not happen often. Only have weekends available right now. My report is I haven’t caught anything and I regret it.

 

go fish!

Caught my first chatterbait fish today , four feisty smallmouths . The river was muddy from all the rain , I thought perfect for the bladed jig .

Full moon typically doesn't treat us real well and that reputation held up. Still caught 10+ before the heat, lack of action, and the emerging presence of lake lice warranted calling it a day well before lunch. Bite was good before the sun hit the water... pretty sure a night trip will be in the near future.

 

 

11 hours ago, Nelson Wormefeller said:

Caught a 3.98 lbber today

 

You’re taking “be one with the lake” a little too seriously man. ?

 

Congrats on the nice bass! 

Hasn't been great for size, but the numbers are fine.  T rig worm, frog, stroking a 3/4oz jig, swim jig, and 1oz scrounger head w/ stc pintail shad have been doing the damage....

 

scott

 

 

12 hours ago, TnRiver46 said:

Is this a largemouth/smallmouth hybrid?  The mouth is giant!

Got these fish and a few more today! Only had limited space to cast, so it was a good day!

We have had thundershowers on and off all day, tomorrow looks like a washout and chances of t-showers or storms through 7/5 range from 40%-60%. What a great week for vacation lol. But there was a brief respite this evening after 6:00 pm so I decided to fish from the bank for a few hours. I only brought three rigs: a H/F for jigs, a MH/MF for a squarebill and a MF spinning rig for a WR. 
 

I started with jigs on the HF. Tried a Strike King SG Toad as a trailer, then a Rage Tail Rage Craw, and finally a Strike King Rage Swimmer. In between using those trailers I casted a Senko WR on the finesse spinning rig and a 6th Sense squarebill on the MH/MF. Not. A. Bite. Started to get dark and saw lightning in the distance, so I took the squarebill off and tied on a 3/0 EWG and a 3/16 oz tungsten bullet weight with a Mann’s Jelly Worm in blackberry. I know the Dobyns Fury FR705CB is not designed as a Texas rig rod, but I tried it once before with a Fat IKA and it did fine, so I figured I’d try it again.

 

First two casts was more of the same. The third cast made it almost to the bank when it stopped. Didn’t feel like it got hung up on weeds or sunken limbs, so I twitched it slightly. I got rewarded with that tap-tap-tap we all love. A quick pop of the rod tip and the hook was set. 
 

Not a big bass, but always nice to beat the skunk. I have to say, that FR705CB does a good job at something it’s not designed to do. Granted, I really have no clue how much of a difference there truly is between a fast and moderate fast action in the real world. I know on paper what the difference is, but empirical evidence so far shows me it does a pretty good job of driving home EWG hooks. Maybe not so much on a big bass, but that remains to be seen. It’s pretty sensitive, too. That bass did not hit that worm hard, but the bite was unmistakable. 
 

Busy weekend of fishing this week. Friday morning I had to wait for the shop to open to take my truck in, so I took the kayak out for a few hours after work. A locally made swimbait, Berkley J-Walker, and wacky rigged X-Zone Center Stick did most of the damage.

Saturday was supposed to be stormy, so I stayed closer to home and fished a park lake. I was hoping for a good bite with the clouds and wind, but I had a feeling with the downpours and lots of lightning over night would probably make them a little tough and unfortunately that was the case. The same swimbait, J-Walker, as well as a T-rigged X-Zone Adrenaline Bug and Berkley Maxscent Creature Hog caught most of my fish. 

 

Sunday morning, the boys were at my parents house, and it was supposed to be cloudy with light winds and much cooler, so Mrs. Blue and I loaded up the pups and headed to the lake for a few hours. Water was pretty stained and we probably needed a little more wind, but still we caught some fish, and she caught her big smallmouth she told me she was going to catch. I had an accidental double when I caught one on a Ned, unhooked it and tossed my bait over the side. As I went to set my rod down, the line took off and I caught a second fish. 

I got broke off on the pillar behind us and she plucked the fish of the day off of it before I could even get a new jighead out. 

 

8 hours ago, HaydenS said:

Is this a largemouth/smallmouth hybrid?  The mouth is giant!

I don’t think so, it was sure a weird shape though and fought like the devil 

Got out last night for an hour and a half.  Did most of my damage in the first 45 mins and ended up with 9 or 10 on the evening.  Had a little 6-7" bass eat my 10" ribbon tail worm along with 4 or 5 more.  Best of the night was probably a 2.5 pounder.  Few high 1s and low 2s mixed in.  Ribbontail and a white buzzbait did all the work for the evening.

 

Saw a ~4 pounder with the fish above but of course I couldn't get that one to bite.  That's when the little one did lol.  They're always up under those limbs and eventually I'll figure out how to get in there better.  Pretty much surrounded by limbs in the spot I'm standing so it'd be really hard to pitch or skip for a skilled angler let alone myself.

 

If blowing hooksets were an Olympic sport, I'd be a god. With the exception of a few Lilliputian basslings, I just couldn't convert during yesterday's trip, but my son in law had a great day. He broke his PB twice within 15 minutes catching a 6.06 and then a 7.8. on jigs. I tried to find redemption later during a dusk thru dark wade, but it was more of the same for me as I went full Chuck Knoblauch yet again. Eventually I reset, and got one cocktail bass and a feisty pickerel on the Miyagi, thank Jehovah, and my buddy landed a nice 4.12 and a 3.13 throwing a Jackhammer. A good day for the dudes.

 

 

Based on the posts from the past few days, it sounds like it's a good time to go fishing with your father in law. My FIL doesn't fish, but I may have to ask if he'll go with me anyway. ?

This fish, caught at the very end of the day on the wakebait saved my fishing trip! Also caught a small bass. Missed a few, and had a big one wrap me around a branch so I snapped off, but the big fish made up for it!

10 hours ago, Fishlegs said:

Based on the posts from the past few days, it sounds like it's a good time to go fishing with your father in law.

Either I'm a good luck charm for him, or he's a bad luck charm for me! We seem to swap those roles as we've never both had a great day on the same day. It's either him or me up to this point. He's hard headed, slow to change, and was strictly a finesse fisherman forever. The issue here was that he'd motor right past, or give short shrift to, many prime spots which were unfishable for him, but heaven for me. Very frustrating, and I really didn't want to go with him because of it. Got him to take the baitcaster plunge last season, finally, and now he loves how things have opened up for him. Both of those fish came on a 5/8oz heavy cover football jig I turned him on to, which wasn't an option on his ML spinning noodle. I'm sharpening all of my hooks, and we're going back next week.