@BassSteve: Those peacocks' faces look human. Do they ever look that way to you too?

2 minutes ago, ol'crickety said:

@BassSteve: Those peacocks' faces look human. Do they ever look that way to you too?

Lol yes they do seem to have more human characteristics in the face 😆

40 minutes ago, ol'crickety said:

@BassSteve: Those peacocks' faces look human. Do they ever look that way to you too?

And they are just as aggressive as humans to boot!! Lol

33 minutes ago, BassSteve said:

And they are just as aggressive as humans to boot!! Lol

 

Don't be surprised if you catch one and it says, "Dang it! You fooled me again!"

Found a small jerkbait bite today...some superdinks and this one decent fish. Went to Lake Athens last night and fished a spook, had four blowup just the one small hookset though. 

Got some work coming up this week so my time around water will be limited finally. I'm not complaining

Hey

 

Caught yet another nice sized peacock this afternoon on a 3" white paddle tail swimbait. This one had more vibrant color

Pulled in this bruiser today. Dang near smoked the drag🤣

My wife said she wanted to go on a boat adventure and drove us all the way up to the dam, long ride but a nice day for it with pretty leaves everywhere. Water was gushing fast from the generators and 59 degrees. Got a smallie with the st croix mojo bass and saw some big trout swipe at baits, fun boat adventure 

I lost count of dinks today.   I went up the creeks chasing bait, but all the bass were 10 inch spots.   I went back out onto the main lake and caught 8 "real" bass between 14" and 18".   The "real" bass were on points, humps and at the ends of deep docks in 15 to 25 feet of water.   I caught my 1st Alabama rig bass of the season today.  It was a 14" spot on a 20 foot deep hump.   Most were on a shakey head and and Bizz Baits Dizzy Diamond cut down to ~4".

 

I had some entertainment.   I was fishing some docks that had over 20 feet of water at the ends.  2 boats come up to a state "planted" fake Christmas tree across a small channel from where I was(maybe 50 yards away).  They start cussing each other yelling "I was here first" along with all kinds of "F" bombs and taking the Lords name in vain.   I caught the 17" Largemouth.   I held it up where they could see and yelled "Y'all need to quit all that cussing and either fight or fish".    They both stormed off without making a single cast.   I started to go over there and fish but I've never caught anything at the fake trees.  They're marked by the state, so everyone knows where they're at.  They're not like the cane piles or other brushpiles you have to actually find yourself.   

 

Pictured are a 17" Largemouth, a 17" Spot and an 18" spot. 

 

 

 

Been a dink fest and missed some big fish this week but finally connected with this stud on the buzzbait in some lily pads today.  Been plenty of dinks but this is the first 4+ in a while and it felt oh so good.

Big. Bass. Pat. 

 

That's a thick fish. Did she jump? Plunge into weeds?

I say this a lot but it's the one that didn't make it to the boat that I'm more inclined to describe: day BEFORE yesterday I hit these pads on a very short afternoon outting on a whim and on my first cast i was treated to white misty explosion maybe 4 feet wide and two feet high very near the very back of the lily pad field.  I mean the biggest blow up I've ever seen ever.  The sound was like dynamite.  The lily pads that had been sitting barely moving all lay adrift in the pulsing current from her mass.

 

She did have it.  I did feel her pulling.  Didn't get a hook in her.  I wasn't ready and didn't hesitate  at all and when I felt her on there, I pulled back and I felt something but came back with a shish kabob of pad leaves and stems.

 

Not three minutes later after Meagan and Jake and I exchange whispered excitement and are getting ready to make another cast when....she breeches.  Now I say she...like she was the only fish in there.  Well I think she was.  It is a very small patch of pads and nothing else sniffed our bait day before yesterday.  But anyways...this fish was the same size class as my 11.5 and she was DARK green.  The pads come to a thick point as they jut out into the main lake and that is where she breeched.  She breeched vertically and all but the bottom of her tail came up for a split second.  She was close to a foot wide from pectoral fin to pectoral fin.  Her belly was NOT fat at all yet in fact she appeared to have spawned late a second time judging by how concave she appeared.  She was the darkest fish I've ever seen that was a bass.  I'm just thankful I got a bite out of her.  We slowed way down and threw the quiet  and sneaky kitchen sink at the pads. Before we knew it, it was time to go.

 

Yesterday we had more free time and made a bee line for the pads two hours before the lake closed to give us ample time to harass the fish in the small lily pad patch before closing time.  I caught a fish on my first cast to a laydown outside the pads.  3 lber.  1/2 oz jig n chunk.

 

I cast the jig JUST to the edge of the pads and catch a 2 lber.

 

I decide, might as well go for it and pick up the buzzbait.  First cast I SEE what looks like a 6+ grab and spit it faster than lightning in a pad opening 10 feet from the boat on a long cast and this gets my heart pumping.  Next cast I stick the 4.5 lber.

 

So 3 fish now in 5 minutes out of the pads for a total of 9-10 lbs and I missed a 6.

 

The 4.5 hit with a nice low midrange heavy wet toilet bowl slurp and immediately dove to the left and felt like she practically hooked herself.

 

I had to use muscle and 40 lb braid to winch her out of the pads but these pads truly are optimal in that they are sparse and have lots of space between each stem.  Any thicker and I would have had to go in for her.

 

All I know is I'm gonna be fishing pads in cold water with a buzzbait for the rest of my life 🥹😁😝🐟🎣

It sounds like Pat witnessed the eruption of Bassatoa, the fishy sister of Krakatoa. Luckily, I had a drone in the air and got video of the hit:

 

 

It is amazing how much water a big bass can move.

 

Thanks for the telling, Pat!

@ol'crickety I reckon I'm gonna more deliberately and methodically and exclusively finesse the whole pad field and see where that gets me.  I just got antsy and excited 😝

Nothing special out of me really but at least I didn’t get skunked, getting a jerk bait to work right in the current of the river is hard. But it does work, so far vision 110 has worked the best 

Pretty tiger striped smallies @Jmurphy87. How’s the fam? 

On 11/5/2023 at 8:52 AM, TnRiver46 said:

Got a bass while crappie fishing, bout 13” under a dock that was loaded with crappie 

How'd ya do with Crappie? I'm thinking of changing targets, I can't catch a decent Bass to save my behind. Caught seventeen yesterday with big fish 13".

4 hours ago, TnRiver46 said:

Pretty tiger striped smallies @Jmurphy87. How’s the fam? 

They are doing ok for the most part, we got a motor home that we can call home, chilly at night but everything works including the furnace and built in generator. So still technically homeless but things are going a little bit better than they were, still don’t see a end in sight but I keep plugging along. Thanks for asking about how they are doing, I appreciate it.

Good deal @Jmurphy87, you ain’t homeless, motorhome includes the word home ! Keep on keepin on

59 minutes ago, TnRiver46 said:

Good deal @Jmurphy87, you ain’t homeless, motorhome includes the word home ! Keep on keepin on

 

I appreciate you checking in on Murph and his family too. 

Friday morning the temperature was in the mid 30s. For a southerner that's cold for this time of year. The day started with a dink to get the skunk out of the boat.

 

 

As the day went on it warmed up in the 70s, and the fishing warmed up too. My last fish (below) was my best of the day. We caught 4 this size or larger. My partner caught the other three big ones. We ended up catching 12 or 13 in all. It was an excellent day.

 

 

Nice one @Fishlegs, the river looks like an ocean down there 

Got to fish the home lake for a couple hours before dark. Clear skies, low 70s, no wind. I decided to stay close to home so I started on the northwest , fishing south. Only got 2 on that side, both on the speed worm. I think one on watermelon seed, the other pumpkin.

Switched over and fished towards home on the Northeast side. Got 4 on that side, with each fish getting bigger. 1 more on the speed worm, and 3 on the pumpkin blue flake yum dinger. I caught the 2nd to last one by a backhand skip up under a dock. It went around a piling but I winched him out. The last ( biggest fish) was caught a cast or two later along a concrete bulkhead that has treated me right many times before at that time of day… I couldn’t get the scale to work , so I measured it. I think it was 18.5-19 inch but it was hard to tell because of the light and angle of the fish in the bottom of the boat…Looked bigger than that. It was a very heavy fish for the length…Not complaining - I’ve been on a dink binge lately…

1 hour ago, TnRiver46 said:

Nice one @Fishlegs, the river looks like an ocean down there 

It can get pretty big in places for sure.

 

I wish I’d taken a picture of the parade of yachts that passed through during the day. It literally made it feel like we were in the ocean at times.

 

I assume they were all heading to the Tenn-Tom, and then down to the Gulf for the winter.

Zipped up to one of my local spots after work, just before last light. Temps dropped like a rock after the sun finally set which was just after 4:40pm. Winter is here. Missed a few short strikers over the next hour slow swimming and dragging plastics, so I tied on a treble-y Spro BBZ1 Shad to close things out. Found a juicy lane between two pad fields and it paid off as a solid fish blew it out of the water and fought hard all the way. The wind was blowing, my face was frozen, so I declared victory and bounced without being late for dinner.