Because our water is still hard, I've been spending the last couple days reading old posts. For a while, I was going back in time a decade or more, but yesterday, I was reading posts in this thread from a year ago and I was stunned by the upswing in @AlabamaSpothunter's catches.

 

Alex's recent streak of going out again and again and catching a seven-pounder, a couple five-pounders, and half a dozen or more four-pounders has been so long that it's seemed like forever, but what makes it even more impressive is that he was fishing the same lake in the winter of 2022/2023 and whereas he had some great days a year ago, he had some ordinary ones too.

 

Alex (and PhishLI) has always urged me to focus on one lake to really learn and OMG, Alex is the proof of the payoff of that approach. He's cracked the code of his lake. I know he has really, really, really wanted to boat a DD from that lake, but as I said earlier, his streak is the best I've ever witnessed at Bass Resource and it's happened at a fully developed lake with mansions lining the shoreline. 

Katie you are without a doubt the most supportive and positive influence I've ever come across on the internet!   Your incredibly thoughtful and kind words of encouragement, praise, and coaching means the world to so many of us in this thread.   

 

I'm so excited that you'll get the opportunity to have a true home lake.  Nobody is more deserving of their own slice of paradise more than you.   You're about to go on a whole new exciting journey of learning every rock in that lake, and every critter who calls it home.   

 

I watched you do the same thing you described above about me from your first season to your second season last year.     I thought you had banger days when I first joined, but then last year you threw jet fuel on it and especially with the big girls.   I have no doubt you'll have an even better year this year, the work you put in on and off the water really translates over to real world results.  

 

Thanks for being you Katie, and I'm speaking for the entire thread.  Your support and love for your fellow angler is infectious, and something we all should be striving to achieve.    You lift people up in this world, and that's becoming rarer and rarer to find.     

Alex makes it look easy and it ain't!  He's a dangerous man when it comes to catching bass 😎.  I agree that focusing in on one body of water at a time is huge.  I have basically a few now but I know what bodies of water I'm the most intimate with and it's because I committed to them.

 

I think learning one makes learning the next easier and learning many at once can be overwhelming and confusing.

 

It's wild how lakes that literally feed into each other that I fish hold populations of bass that favor completely different lures and water and cover and structure and are on entirely different clocks as far as seasonal movements.

 

I will say that my biggest obstacle in breaking down my first couple bodies of water was my assumptions.

 

I assumed a lot of things about the forage and the depth of the water I was fishing and over time I was able to observe a LOT of things that I was missing that were critical to my success.

 

This kind of observation only happens when you get intimate with a single body of water and are always there.

 

It definitely has helped me read new bodies of water much more quickly.

 

I know people say a lot on here that ponds are easy and lakes are hard but my experience has been the opposite.  What ponds ARE, is smaller, so you can pick them apart and see how they function mechanically as ecosystems a little more quickly perhaps.  Find you a good pressured public pond where it's impossible to catch fish and learn how to catch those fish and I bet you could catch a bass out of a puddle on the side of the road too!

25 minutes ago, AlabamaSpothunter said:

I watched you do the same thing you described above about me from your first season to your second season last year. 

 

Yeah, we both made a leap, didn't we. But to be fair, yours was bigger. I know you enjoy sports analogies, so you were Michael Jordan. No, you were Bob Beamon! I was a cricket, a pretty good leaper, for sure, but no from-the-foul-line, 29 ft 2+1⁄4 inch-leaper like you.*

 

25 minutes ago, AlabamaSpothunter said:

Your support and love for your fellow angler is infectious, and something we all should be striving to achieve.

 

We should support each other. Bass Resource lets us witness each other's struggles. I read the skunk reports. I read the accounts of anglers being blown off the lake and being too cold to cast. And I shared my sad story of tipping last year. But we all keep sallying forth and hoping that today will be our day, so when you string the days that you did, Alex, you should all be slow-clapping you. Here is the BR crew:

 

 

*I am awarding three Happy Cricket Chirps to all who remember Bob Beamon. His one glorious jump was the perhaps the greatest moment in sports. 

 

6 minutes ago, Pat Brown said:

I know people say a lot on here that ponds are easy and lakes are hard but my experience has been the opposite.  Find you a good pressured public pond where it's impossible to catch fish and learn how to catch those fish and I bet you could catch a bass out of a puddle on the side of the road too!

 

Via a message, Pat shared a pic of the public pond he fishes. There is NOTHING easy about it. I'd struggle to catch a 12" bass from it. Lots of good stuff in your post, Pat. As a former teacher, I can say with confidence that you're a good teacher.

I had to look up Bob Beamon and watch his world record setting jump, once again you prove how superior your intellect is Katie.   It's no wonder why you're such a great writer.    You also made as much or more progress than I have.  I knew you were gonna catch more big fish, but you shattered even my expectations.   

 

As for Big Fish Pat, if I ever meet the hammer in person I'm rubbing his head until he slaps me.....I'm getting some of that big fish magic one way or another 😆

 

Pat's fish blow my mind, I have no idea how the man does it.   I think he secretly owns a scope and travels to Lake Fork 😂   

37 minutes ago, AlabamaSpothunter said:

I had to look up Bob Beamon and watch his world record setting jump

 

I'm glad you did. It was glorious, wasn't it? I love the way he popped up and immediately knew he'd soared. He could feel that extra, extraordinary foot he'd flown.

 

It's not "superior intellect." It's simply memory. I watched it happen on the TV. 

 

Lastly, I want to rub Pat's head too.

Y'all are welcome to rub my head.  It's mostly bald and probably sweaty this time of year 😂😂😂 

 

I'd love to meet y'all and go fishing!  Alex take me and Katy out on your boat and y'all can rub my head and I'll show you what your lake has in it!  🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼

Started work really early yesterday because I was supposed to be on a 3 day trial, but we showed up at 8:30 to find out that one of the key witnesses had Covid so they had to continue it, which meant I got out of work early, on a 75* day, so I went fishing for a couple hours. 

 

Didn't set the world on fire, but I caught 10 in a little under 2 hours. Always nice to steal an extra trip during the middle of the week. Caught them all on a Ned or a Rogue.

Gearing for first trip fishing in TX this year and only the third trip total this year. Tomorrow evening

 

Weather was been great

16 minutes ago, LrgmouthShad said:

Gearing for first trip fishing in TX this year and only the third trip total this year. Tomorrow evening

 

Weather was been great

 

Good luck!

Mostly cloudy and light south winds combined with highs over 70 today found me back out on the water. After farting around with some deep shad school stuff without luck, I headed to the nearest creek arm and did some scouting for crappie. As expected, they’ve scattered and are probably about to spawn, but I hit a couple bass up shallow and decided to chase them most of the afternoon. Ended up with about 16 fish on a combination of jigs and soft plastics. Did run across a couple crappie though, and one of those was about the most obese thing I’ve ever seen - lol. Fairly short compared to some I’ve caught, but that belly pushed the scales down to 3.15 lbs. 😎

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wow!

That's a Big Un...

I second @roadwarrior's WOW!

That crappie is looking ready to explode!  3.15 is completely insane!  Your lake has to have some giant bass in it too with crappie that size!  Sheesh!

Wow! I've never seen a crappie like that. Insane

Consider this about @Team9nine's crappie. Its belly is comically distended and yet, it still wanted to eat. That fish is never sated. In two years, if @Team9nine catches a 7 lb. crappie, he'll be able to say to it, "Good to see you again!"

 

And if the crappie could reply, she would say, "I'm hungry. Got any minnows on this boat?"

😬

@Blue Raider Bob: Your bass confounds me as much as @Team9nine's crappie. How did you fit a hook into your bass's mouth, Bob?

4 minutes ago, ol'crickety said:

@Blue Raider Bob: Your bass confounds me as much as @Team9nine's crappie. How did you fit a hook into your bass's mouth, Bob?

     I didn't do the fittin', he did! And to think I've complemented you so many times on the quality of your fish.......and you're makin' fun of mine!   😁  Everyone can't catch inland whales like you Katie. The youngin's get to get caught too!

     Actually, I've been amazed over the years at the ability of tiny bass to hook themselves on the lures we use. I've got tons of pictures like this where a little fella has eyes bigger than his stomach and tries to eat a lure much too large for his lips. And as you see, it's not just bass that have this behavior, their cousins the Bluegill share this trait. 

That fish is crazy Bob, it has to be almost a year old and still that size.   Should have thrown him in your slice of heaven pond 😁 

 

I always look at catches in terms of odds.....obviously a DD is like a lotto ticket win, but catching that fish had some extreme odds as well.     Outliers are the most fascinating fish to me.   

Bob, I once caught a smallie in Canada so small that when I posed with it, you could mostly see my finger lightly pinching it and it looked like I was giving the photographer the bird. 

6 hours ago, FishTax said:

Wow! I've never seen a crappie like that. Insane

I've caught gobs of crappie back in the day but I've never seen one like that. Longer maybe but never that fat. She could populate the entire lake!

2 hours ago, ol'crickety said:

Bob, I once caught a smallie in Canada so small that when I posed with it, you could mostly see my finger lightly pinching it and it looked like I was giving the photographer the bird. 

Please share that picture. I want to see if you really were!

51 minutes ago, Blue Raider Bob said:

Please share that picture. I want to see if you really were!

 

I'll try to find it, Bob, but I have a lot of Canada folders. 

It was trout day with the ultralight.

 

 

Now on the board with some smallies and trout, I'm going to see about trying for some largemouth tomorrow from the kayak. 

 

However, I expect the lakes are still pretty cold, so Skunk Risk will be high.

Went out yesterday and today.  Tuesday we had a high of 71 degrees and partly cloudy.  I had high hopes and went to a larger body of water know as the Old Reservoir.  Unfortunately the fish did not share my optimism and I only managed three dinks (first 3 pictures).  2 on the fluke and the third with a tandem blade Spinnerbait.

 

Today we had a high of 59 degrees winds out of the south and rain. I returned to Gun Club not expecting much given the my luck the last two days however I managed 4 this time 3 on the fluke and the last with the tandem Spinnerbait again. Size of the fish was noticeably improved but still not giants by any means.