Hitting the big lake first thing in the morning @LrgmouthShad

 

Hoping the water is nice and cool and the bass are nice and shallow.  Might have to hit it in Monday since Jr. is out of school! 

Good luck, @Pat Brown, but your skill trumps luck.

Just caught this one out back…

35 minutes ago, N Florida Mike said:

Just caught this one out back…

 

Another big one? Mike's on fire!

 

 

Well today was a wash because my phone hanging slightly out of my pocket caught on something in the kayak as I was moving and plummeted into the depths. 
 

I did catch one at the new lake prior to this happening, but no pic of course

 

Some days are like this, nothing I can do. I got the phone replaced already

fished on the titabawassee for a couple of hours today. did alright.  water dropped almost 1.5 -2 feet in the last week.  probably my last trip on the river as i bent my prop pretty good on 2 of the 3 blades.  I have an extra prop for this reason.  it’s just a matter of time when running a river like that. I did hit 2 things both on the way back to the saginaw river where the launch was located.  luckily i wasn’t on plane when i hit the objects ( thinking dead heads) .  so i’ll get this prop rebuilt this winter. 

 

did catch some smallies and a walleye though.  i’m sure i’ll get back out but, i’m starting look forward to hunting season.  i feel fall is going to come quick this year.  water temp is 68 degrees already.  

 

i also snagged this crazy rig out of the titabawassee river. there’s a lot going on here.  first some sort of bass jig connected by a steel leader to a barrel swivel, snap, and another barrrl swivel.  than it’s 50 lbs braid to a bobber stop than 3/4 oz lead worm wieght. 

 

 

it looked like a nice jig.  probably some kid who stole it out of the old man’s tackle box and rigged it up

 

 

It was tough sledding under a crystal-clear big-moon sky for 3 hours. Zero wind didn't help our cause either. This place is super clear down to its 7' max-depth, so it was easy to see bluegill frozen in place between the stands of lily pads and unwilling to even sniff a Hot Snakes NED rig. Everything was on lock down, but this being the last Jon boat trip of the summer for the Phish brothers we carried on.

 

Pulled the trolling motor and paddled through heavily choked out water way up to the super shallow north end where we found a few open gaps in 1' -18" of water and much smaller baitfish darting over sparse weeds and mud bottoms. Just as we made it to this zone the universe intervened by blowing in light cloud cover to dim the moonlight nicely. With clouds came wind, and for the next 45 minutes they were willing to chase. Knocked off some cookie cutters first, then we each landed a decent fish right before the clouds passed by and the wind quit. I landed a nice trout right at the end of the frenzy. Conditions looked perfect for a soft jerk bait, slow rolled finesse swimmer, or a popper, but they were feeding up for something different. The Livingston Bullnose and Legal Dope Tum Tum wakes got the bites, even the trout.

 

5 hours ago, PhishLI said:

the last Jon boat trip of the summer

 

6 hours ago, Mbirdsley said:

i feel fall is going to come quick this year.  water temp is 68 degrees already.  

 

Yeah, I feel it too. Even when it's still hot (high seventies to low eighties in Maine), it's not summer still. 

 

Beautiful fish, Phish. Ouch, Mbirdsley.  

Yeah my home lake is fully turned over.  No thermocline.  There was brown stringy stuff floating EVERYWHERE yesterday.

 

We still caught 10 + all on jigs and lizards with one at the end on the buzzbait.  If my lake didn't close at 7 pm I could have caught fish on the shallow point we located them on at the end til the sun went down.  Biggest fish was caught by my wife on a @Siebert Outdoors swim jig.

 

My son sadly broke off on almost certainly his new PB but we found where a school of very large bass likes to feed at sunset and we may have another shot at her or one of her sisters soon.

 

I will be so happy if your son catches a DD, @Pat Brown! 

He would love to.  It's been hard for him to get a bigger one than he got last year on Halloween (trick or treating got rained out. We fished the front end of the front that hit right before sunset. ???) 7 lb 7 oz. Main lake point on a Siebert jig with a menace grub.  I said cast there and work it down the drop real slow.

 

The smile tells me he was okay with missing out on the costumes and candy maybe just one year!

 

Golly, I LOVE that smile. And then there's the drama of the big bass and the dark sky. Great photo. Blow it up and frame it. 

Back home again with my inlaws. My dad was away this weekend so I went on my own to the same lake we fished a couple weeks ago. Managed 7 bass for the morning.  Not bad, but I was hoping for a few more.  All on wire baits except this biggest one which inhaled a frog like it owed the bass some money. 
 

Got to fish all morning in the home lake. I decided to depart from my normal morning pattern, and started fishing the north end . I caught 3 quickly in the first clear circle, throwing a yum dinger to the edge of the slop and reeling in slowly. Got to a deep hole and caught the biggest fish of the day ( 20 inch ) on the dinger. Best fight Ive ever had on a fish that size. Got 2 more at that end of the lake, still moving south. 
I decided to go down to the south end , but not much going on there. Got 1 on a fluke, and a couple on the UV Speed worm. Spent the rest of the morning fishing in the shade around the island, catching more on the speed worm, and the 2nd biggest fish of the day.

I divided my lake into zones. Today I caught:

6 in the North zone

1 in the central zone. 
5 in the island zone

3 in the south zone.

Not a bad outing…

@Pat Brown Great pic of your son. 

On 8/31/2023 at 8:59 AM, Blue Raider Bob said:

I'm still happy about getting hot dogs!

We had a cook-out at the lumberyard Friday for Labor Day and served grilled hamburgers and hotdogs for drivers, yard workers, customers, ect.

 

I went through the line twice! Nothin' beats grilled dogs!

23 minutes ago, Blue Raider Bob said:

We had a cook-out at the lumberyard Friday for Labor Day and served grilled hamburgers and hotdogs

Hard to beat a summertime BBQ.  We had a work picnic about 2 weeks ago at an offsite park with the same type of offerings.  Lucked out with a glorious day in the mid 70's too.  About 40 people in attendance.

12 minutes ago, gimruis said:

Hard to beat a summertime BBQ.  We had a work picnic about 2 weeks ago at an offsite park with the same type of offerings.  Lucked out with a glorious day in the mid 70's too.  About 40 people in attendance.

You are correct! I stand corrected. Summertime BBQ does beat grilled hotdogs....don't know what I was thinking! I am on a "Mediterranean Diet", because of age, cholesterol, and the fact that my cook says it's so! But I slipped off that diet Friday! We are seriously looking for some mid 70's. It was low 90's all weekend and my Blue Raiders let one slip away against Alabama Saturday. It was close until right after kick-off!?

     Set out a minnow trap in the Harpeth River in the mid-state and this is my catch. Used a commercial crayfish bait I bought from (where else), Louisiana. I do not live bait fish but I can imaging what would happen if I floated one of these down the banks of the Tennessee River! These little fellas now live in my pond. I caught a couple dozen crayfish as well out of the Stones River yesterday.

     Hoping gimrius doesn't notice that there aren't any Bass in the picture. I'd like to avoid a citation if possible, although I did get my hair cut!

Didn’t take my last trip too serious because I had some problems going on but figured I’d share that I got a smallmouth. Also found an underwater bridge and discovered that walking a spook ain’t too hard 

Got out today about 7-12, caught 11 bass ,1 on a frog and 10 on a double wide beaver with the best of those weighing 5-1. Oh and let's see, face; check, fish;check, shirt;check,OK this post should be @LrgmouthShad approved?

Had a fun day with the family on the water on Sunday. My oldest son was the only other one that wanted to fish. I took both kayaks and shoved his off while I was rigging mine up still. I don't think I'd even got mine off the trailer yet and he was already yelling.

It was quite a struggle for him to get the fish in the kayak, but he finally got it landed.

I was about ready to shove off when he hooked up again.

And as soon as I shoved off, he was coming back with another one.

The boat was in the water then and he chased them to go swim. I caught a couple little fish before hooking one that was not little, but also for sure not a bass.

Monday, I went back out to the river with better bait and more time than last time. I wasn't there 30 minutes before my first rod took off.

 

I had just released that fish when I heard a thump, one of my other rods was folded over.

100lbs of fish in 10 minutes is a workout. 

 

I got the rods baited back up and 20 minutes later, one started going off again.

I only had 1 more bite I think was a catfish the next few hours, despite moving spots and constantly refreshing my baits.

 

Heading back in, I had my UL with a 2" grub I'd brought to try and catch bait with, so I was making cast with that. In the creek, there was several trees dropping some kinds of berries and the grass carp were thick. I've never sight fished one with a grub before, but I ended up hooking 4 and landing 2 on 4lb test with a 5' UL ugly stick.

Right before the ramp, there's some small rapids that I wanted to cast the grub at, hoping for a white bass or wiper. Right as I went to lift it out of the water, I caught a tiny sauger.

Not a big deal a lot of places, but a river sauger in Kansas is extremely rare. I had some crawlers so I swapped my grub for half of one, and a few cast later, caught a baby walleye.

Fish like these give me hope that some day there will actually be a population of them in the river.

1 hour ago, Blue Raider Bob said:

Hoping gimrius doesn't notice that there aren't any Bass in the picture. I'd like to avoid a citation if possible, although I did get my hair cut!

I'll let you off with a verbal warning, first offense.  Nice work on the haircut.

6 minutes ago, keagbassr said:

Got out today about 7-12, caught 11 bass ,1 on a frog and 10 on a double wide beaver with the best of those weighing 5-1. Oh and let's see, face; check, fish;check, shirt;check,OK this post should be @LrgmouthShad approved?

 

There are consistent quantity bassers. There are consistent quality bassers. You are both.

 

HUGE cats, @Bluebasser86!

 

A warning? Johnny Law aka @gimruis is softening in his advancing age.

1 hour ago, Bluebasser86 said:

Had a fun day with the family on the water on Sunday. My oldest son was the only other one that wanted to fish. I took both kayaks and shoved his off while I was rigging mine up still. I don't think I'd even got mine off the trailer yet and he was already yelling.

It was quite a struggle for him to get the fish in the kayak, but he finally got it landed.

I was about ready to shove off when he hooked up again.

And as soon as I shoved off, he was coming back with another one.

The boat was in the water then and he chased them to go swim. I caught a couple little fish before hooking one that was not little, but also for sure not a bass.

Monday, I went back out to the river with better bait and more time than last time. I wasn't there 30 minutes before my first rod took off.

 

I had just released that fish when I heard a thump, one of my other rods was folded over.

100lbs of fish in 10 minutes is a workout. 

 

I got the rods baited back up and 20 minutes later, one started going off again.

I only had 1 more bite I think was a catfish the next few hours, despite moving spots and constantly refreshing my baits.

 

Heading back in, I had my UL with a 2" grub I'd brought to try and catch bait with, so I was making cast with that. In the creek, there was several trees dropping some kinds of berries and the grass carp were thick. I've never sight fished one with a grub before, but I ended up hooking 4 and landing 2 on 4lb test with a 5' UL ugly stick.

Right before the ramp, there's some small rapids that I wanted to cast the grub at, hoping for a white bass or wiper. Right as I went to lift it out of the water, I caught a tiny sauger.

Not a big deal a lot of places, but a river sauger in Kansas is extremely rare. I had some crawlers so I swapped my grub for half of one, and a few cast later, caught a baby walleye.

Fish like these give me hope that some day there will actually be a population of them in the river.

This post has me speechless!       WOW!