Not bass but caught 17 of these porgies and two sea bass yesterday on Long Island Sound.

12 minutes ago, David 7 said:

Not bass but caught 17 of these porgies and two sea bass yesterday on Long Island Sound.

That’s pretty cool, I’ve caught those jokers all the way down in FLA 

Well today we have a small bass, largest of the three I caught. I saw a decent one but it was definitely not interested in my offering. More sunfish and a bluegill also, on my lure of choice today. I used a 1/32 jig head with a tiny black and red beetle spin plastics for a trailer. Total weight less than a 1/16 of a ounce, rods only rated down to 3/16 so I didn’t have high expectations. The new curado bfs does really good, it would do better with the correct rod but nobody around here has any in the stores. I think today was a good day of fishing ?

9 minutes ago, Jmurphy87 said:

Well today we have a small bass, largest of the three I caught. I saw a decent one but it was definitely not interested in my offering. More sunfish and a bluegill also, on my lure of choice today. I used a 1/32 jig head with a tiny black and red beetle spin plastics for a trailer. Total weight less than a 1/16 of a ounce, rods only rated down to 3/16 so I didn’t have high expectations. The new curado bfs does really good, it would do better with the correct rod but nobody around here has any in the stores. I think today was a good day of fishing ?

Quit making me want one of those spools! Haha 

Fished Thursday 2am - 10:30 am at my local lake. Water is 86 degrees and slowly cooling. Caught 7 LM & 1 surprise catfish, fishing a Shakey Head in 18 - 25' on rocks and humps. Biggest LM was 4 lbs 10 oz

7 hours ago, David 7 said:

Not bass but caught 17 of these porgies and two sea bass yesterday on Long Island Sound.

Porgy & Bass. Wasn't that a Broadway play?

I ventured downstream a tad and got a decent one, dragging a worm deepish 

3 hours ago, The Bassman said:

Porgy & Bass. Wasn't that a Broadway play?

 

? Summertime, and the fishin' is easy.... ?

 

Got a couple in the church pond just after daybreak with the june bug speed worm… Lost the biggest one.

It’s Kind of a wierd little pond. Ive fished it off and on for 25 years and haven’t caught anything over 2.5 pounds. 

9 hours ago, N Florida Mike said:

Got a couple in the church pond just after daybreak with the june bug speed worm… Lost the biggest one.

It’s Kind of a wierd little pond. Ive fished it off and on for 25 years and haven’t caught anything over 2.5 pounds. 

Your pic tells me that your pond could stand some harvest. Too many fish?

Texas rigged TRD TicklerZ strikes again. They wanted it hopped along the bottom in the strongest current of my local river. Caught a bunch of Smallies under a pound before getting this stout girl.

 

1 hour ago, The Bassman said:

Your pic tells me that your pond could stand some harvest. Too many fish?

It would seem that way, but I dont ever catch many in numbers either. I catch 0-3 fish each time, never more than 3. Many of the fish are lean like that one, which points to overpopulation, or lack of forage, but the pond is full of small bream… I fish with various baits , but the only baits Ive caught fish on are speed worms and flukes.

Ive even live bait fished with small bream but the turtles interfere. Had a good run with a bream last week but whiffed with the hookset somehow. 
Had 4-5 other runs that Im reasonably sure were turtles…

Nothing special but a few bass on my bfs setup. I hate how the camera angle makes them look huge when they are not ☹️ I like catching big fish but when a smaller one looks big you need to admit that it’s still small and not play it off, enough of my rant lol. Biggest small fish of the day came on my first pitch after I got to the lake second and third came at my third spot. Not horrible for 45 minutes. Caught on a megabass 1/16 secret jig head with a 2.8 inch keitech in sungill weight of 5-5.5 grams.

Well I got out this morning at 8-11 am trying to beat the heat. First place I stopped wasn’t very good two of my three prime spots were taken, tried for a hour or less. I was going to use a Ned rig today and this place is fairly weedy so you have to choose the right spots. Well onto the next spot my old favorite little pond, maybe six inches of visibility in the water if you are lucky. My plan was still stick to the Ned rig. The first 40 minutes not much happened. I started wading around checking the bottom composition with my feet lol, if I had to guess maybe 8-9 feet deep at the max. There are nice weed less soft bottom banks from 1-5 feet deep around the perimeter one lay down that I mapped with my feet to check for branches to the side that I might snag on, none of those. My first fish was a black bullhead, not too big but still a fish. Next was two tiny bass. Then the last one was the biggest of the day I am guessing in the 13-15 inch range used my rod as a ruler when I got home. Bait was a 1/20oz z man finesse Ned head in green pumpkin, trailer was a finesse TRD in smelt color. Rod zodias 7’2 ml bfs, reel curado bfs xg spooled with 8lb red label. Lure weight around 5-5.5 grams, the plastic is 4 grams on its own lol. No problem casting it where I wanted to. The last bass felt nice on the rod had to steer him away from the lay down but it handed it flawlessly. I think today was a good day caught fish and get to spend time with my son who is going to be 4 months old this week ?

Had another good weekend. Lost track of numbers. Two right around the 3lb mark and another slightly less. Buzzbait and frog pretty much the whole weekend. High water levels and cloudy. By the way, the rage tail menace is a killer buzzbait trailer. It does the one thing the z craw jrs cannot on the back of a buzzbait: allow it to track perfectly straight at all speeds. This means I can throw it more confidently in heavy cover since the hook is not running sideways.

 

5 hours ago, Jmurphy87 said:

I was going to use a Ned rig today and this place is fairly weedy so you have to choose the right spots.

If there are weeds, swim it... Give it a try.

Jerkbaits and Pop-R's were the ticket today, they wanted nothing to do with squarebill or lipless cranks, tubes or shakeyhead presentations, I did grab a small fish on a Whopper Plopper 90 in bone, first one of those this year and hopefully not the last 

This weekend was epic. Plenty of big fish including this 4.5LBS hog. Made my weekend and most fish were caught on a mixture of black ribbontails by Berkley and swimjigs. 

Nothing special from me today I caught 3 in three hours, I started out at one place with nothing happening there pretty busy only got to hit one of my normal spots. Headed to a pond that has been good to me most of the year, it has changed a lot. Very very slow, signs of other people fishing it I am wondering if they kept fish when they caught them or if they escaped back into the river when it flooded quite badly earlier this year. The fish were exactly where they should have been near the shade lines next to the heaviest cover. Started with a weightless d bomb in el Diablo color no hits, I thought I grabbed my South African creature hogs but nope green pumpkin instead. Either way saved me from a skunk lol biggest one of the day 15 inches or so not huge but a ok little fish. First one came from the branches in the water, last two near a lay down and shade line on the point. It was a good day, caught some fish at least. It has been hot here lately so a little slower than normal.

Went wading in the burnt out dissapearing pads and dying grass in a algae bloom and caught a dink and a couple pike on the frog.

 

Determined to get a bigger fish i went back in 1 hour later and tried again with the frog and no blowups so i called it, i got out of the water, crawled up the short but steep bank onto the road and started walking the 1/4 mile to my staging point.

 

As i was walking i just casted out the frog and was reeling and walking, not caring if i caught a fish because i was going to pack up and go home as it was 8:30pm.

 

As i kept walking and reeling the frog got blasted, i gave it a few seconds because i didnt even know where my frog was but the bass was allready pulling hard so i set the hook with the mhfs 7' 2" fuego rod and was not going to lose this fish. 

 

I set the hook hard 2 more times, so hard the drag sang out and it was allready pinched tight as it could be. Sometimes that last i dont care cast im goin home type of deal can make your day, it did mine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My last regular season tournament for my kayak club was this past Saturday. I was sitting in first for the AOY race and was hoping to stay there. I prefished the lake Friday and did not do well. I'd caught nothing much bigger than 15" and it was a struggle to get the few bites I was getting, so when guys started guessing it would take mid to high 80 inches to win, I was pretty concerned. From what I could tell about the lake, there was a lot of "dead water", and only a few areas that seemed to have signs of life. Not a great thing on a 400 acre lake when there was going to be 20 kayaks fishing but it told me I needed to pick a spot and milk it for all it was worth. I had one cove that was the size of about half a football field that was the only place I'd had multiple bites, so that's where I opted to start.

 

Tournament morning, I was launching and talking with the other anglers and one of the other guys said he was starting in the same cove, which I assumed I wouldn't be alone on such a small lake. So we sat in the dark and swapped our strategies, what we were using, and told some fishing stories waiting for it to be time to start fishing. No other kayakers showed up in the cove and we agreed on where we were each going to start and wished each other luck when 6:15 came around. My first fish of the morning was a catfish on a Berkley J Walker, not a good start. As we were crossing paths in the back of the cove, I caught my first bass of the morning on a homemade EWG Ned head and a Mister Twister Poc It Phenom worm. Not big but on the board.

Right when I started fishing behind where the other guy had been, I caught an 11.5" bass on a dropshot Zoom Z Drop. Then I broke one off on a deep tree on the drop shot, something I hadn't done the rest of the time. A few minutes later I caught a 12 incher on a Rage Bug. Right about that time, I got cut off about 20 yards in front of me by a bass boat that parked and started fishing a rock drop off. I watched them catch 2 nice ones while I was working a group of stumps. I caught a tiny 10" bass on the Phenom worm, and then an even tinier 9" bass on a Berkley Frittside. I had a limit, albeit a tiny one, it had me in 5th that early in the morning and I felt like the fishing was going to be as tough for everyone as it had been for me. I worked back through the cove, missed a couple on a jig, lost one on the jig, before the boat left so I went to try the rocks. Nothing on the drop, but I fired the J Walker across them and caught a 13.25" bass.

There was a major point with some big stumps and a drop that fish kept blowing up on at the mouth of the cove. I was near them once when it happened and fired the J Walker through them. Had a very solid fish explode on the bait and just knock it way up in the air. The ramp wasn't far from the cove I was fishing and I wanted to make some changes to my gear so I pedaled over. I noticed one patch of weeds off the bank a ways and cast my J Walker at them but the wind pushed my bait over into the weeds. When I ripped it through, a big boil came up under it but the fish didn't hook up. After seeing that, one of the changes I made was tying on a spinnerbait. After I swapped out some rods and baits, I went back to the patch of grass and caught a 15.75" fish on the spinnerbait that looked like a 5 pounder compared to all the dinks I'd been catching. 

I pedaled back to the cove and started catching dink after dink, like 10-11 inchers. I'd switched from the Rage Bug to a Menace to get more bites. It was working, but I wasn't getting any size still. With 3 other kayaks and 2 boats in that little cove, I finally hit my breaking point and wandered around the point towards the ramp again. Flipping a shallow laydown that had been fished dozens of times already, I stuck another 15.75" fish on the Menace.

With an hour to go, that fish pulled me into 6th place, but just 1.5" from first and a small fish of 12.75" to cull, I felt I had a real shot. I decided to make the short run to the bigger wood filled cove that I'd had some bites in during prefishing. I quickly missed one on the spinnerbait in some grass, then lost 2 in a row on the Menace. It didn't look like it was going to happen for me. I fished one side of the cove and was coming down the other side when I almost bumped into another competitor I didn't know was there, so I went back across and fished the same side I'd already fished. 20 minutes left, I switched from the Menace back to the tiny Phenom worm, cast next to a tree and a fish was on it instantly. It had me around the tree, with 8lb leader, jumping like crazy, never thought I'd touch that fish. I got so lucky, one to get the bite and two for that fish to ever hit the net, but in the waning moments of the tournament, I put a 17.75" fish on the board, the second largest of the day.

Another fisherman made a good run and ended up with 80.25", I had 77", but my second place was good enough to claim the AOY for the club in my first season and if felt really good to do it in such a dramatic way on a tough lake. 

WTG, r. AOY..and a hearty Congratz. 

Congrats!!

Congrats!

Congrats ????? great job.