Awesome fish @Choporoz!  

 

Getting on that killer prespawn bite would have me burning a stogey as well 😎

@Choporoz, that's a heckuva day. Now, if someone starts wearing @T-Billy's musky-hunting fur cap while smoking your cigar while fishing @king fisher's barbed wire lakes with @Zcoker's gators, he'll be the Chuck Norris of Bass Resource.

 

 

 

 

Got rained out, managed to last about 90 minutes before I called it, but I did get 6 bass and culled 2 tilapia. Biggest bass went 5lb 4oz, on a Shadow Rap Shad. I was picking apart a cove where the wind was blowing pretty hard and corralling bait up towards the banks. Bass weren't feeding super hard but they were biting. Was really nice to get into a sizeable bass, they've been stingy lately and it made dealing with the crappy weather worth it. She nipped the back of the bait on a long pause right as I was hovering over a sandy point during a brief respite from the rain and before it got much worse.

 

She never came up, stayed down and dogged me the whole fight. Which was a relief because I barely had her hooked. I've had guys ask me why I spent so much time/money tinkering with this setup (still very much a budget setup though), and this is why. If I was still throwing these on braid-to-leader or a stouter rod like when I first started out with the technique, 100% I'd have lost this fish.

Let's go @Aaron_H, awesome to see you catching hogs again!   

Heck, yeah, Alex! The world ain't right if Aaron ain't dancing with the big girls!

The view out my front window this morning. Take a wild guess as to why I'm not catching bass. I do, however, hope to fish on Thursday, if the ice melts:

 

 

With a storm front a few hours away I decided to jump out to my little whopper plopper honey hole on Ray Roberts. All the people camping in that area had packed out already so I had free access to the tree I've been casting next to. It's windy, but it's a south wind which has been the determining factor in the success of this particular spot. 

Third cast, biggest topwater bass I've ever caught, and tied for the biggest bass I've ever landed on the bank. 7lb 5oz.

About two cranks in, there's a good size splash on my lure, and I give it a second before setting the hook. The new airdx/tournament pro combo handled greatly. This fish jumped four times before I got it to the bank. The first jump made it clear that it was a nice fish. I lipped it at the bank, and of course had to document, it was clearly one of my better catches. There was only one barb in the fish. The whole fight lasted maybe 25 seconds, but it felt like forever. Got her released and she swam off strongly. Missed two smaller strikes, a gar, then pinned a smaller bass with a black choppo 75.

Sun set, weather started picking up so I called it a night. I think I fished for about an hour.

Let's GOOOOOOOOO @thediscochef!

 

Love seeing the grind pay off, magnificent fish!

That's a good one @thediscochef.

17 minutes ago, thediscochef said:

With a storm front a few hours away I decided to jump out to my little whopper plopper honey hole on Ray Roberts. All the people camping in that area had packed out already so I had free access to the tree I've been casting next to. It's windy, but it's a south wind which has been the determining factor in the success of this particular spot. 

Third cast, biggest topwater bass I've ever caught, and tied for the biggest bass I've ever landed on the bank. 7lb 5oz.

About two cranks in, there's a good size splash on my lure, and I give it a second before setting the hook. The new airdx/tournament pro combo handled greatly. This fish jumped four times before I got it to the bank. The first jump made it clear that it was a nice fish. I lipped it at the bank, and of course had to document, it was clearly one of my better catches. There was only one barb in the fish. The whole fight lasted maybe 25 seconds, but it felt like forever. Got her released and she swam off strongly. Missed two smaller strikes, a gar, then pinned a smaller bass with a black choppo 75.

Sun set, weather started picking up so I called it a night. I think I fished for about an hour.

 

Four jumps?

 

Here's the recipe for your big girl: Half frog. Half hog. Half beast. All bass.

 

#mathdon'tlie 

Got this one with a watermelon seed fluke jr. I was working from home and suddenly thought of the fluke jr, which I haven’t fished with much lately, even though I got a 6 1/2 on one once.

I put one on my third combo, went out back, missed one , then got this one .

Not sure why the pic wasn’t clear.

Got out this morning for the first time since last Tues. Surface temp had dropped 5-6 degrees. I only had about four hours to fish today. I spent the first couple fruitlessly chasing muskie, then picked up the flippin stick for the last couple hours.

 I figured I'd find some LM in deep treetops, but much to my surprise they were shallow. All were caught from sun baked wood in 2'-5'. No bigs, but I caught four of these, and one about 2.5#. 

I get to fish a full day tomorrow. I'll split time between muskie and bass again. Well... I'll split time again if the muskie aren't chewing. 😉

20 hours ago, thediscochef said:

With a storm front a few hours away I decided to jump out to my little whopper plopper honey hole on Ray Roberts. All the people camping in that area had packed out already so I had free access to the tree I've been casting next to. It's windy, but it's a south wind which has been the determining factor in the success of this particular spot. 

Third cast, biggest topwater bass I've ever caught, and tied for the biggest bass I've ever landed on the bank. 7lb 5oz.

About two cranks in, there's a good size splash on my lure, and I give it a second before setting the hook. The new airdx/tournament pro combo handled greatly. This fish jumped four times before I got it to the bank. The first jump made it clear that it was a nice fish. I lipped it at the bank, and of course had to document, it was clearly one of my better catches. There was only one barb in the fish. The whole fight lasted maybe 25 seconds, but it felt like forever. Got her released and she swam off strongly. Missed two smaller strikes, a gar, then pinned a smaller bass with a black choppo 75.

Sun set, weather started picking up so I called it a night. I think I fished for about an hour.

Heck of a fish man. Almost as cool, that flannel is rad.

Short float with a buddy, got a spot , thinking Ky instead of Alabama 

^^^ That Spotted guy is living it's best pre spawn life clearly 😎

Dang what a fatty. Cool! 

1 hour ago, TnRiver46 said:

Short float with a buddy, got a spot , thinking Ky instead of Alabama 

man look at the belly on that thing

1 hour ago, TnRiver46 said:

Short float with a buddy, got a spot , thinking Ky instead of Alabama 

 

Positively obese. Nice one.

Well that was close, I took my canoe out at this airport at 7:00 and the plane crashed at 7:30. They were definitely landing a little squirrelly today 

https://www.wbir.com/article/news/local/plane-crash-tennessee-river-south-knoxville/51-2f4137a1-bb87-486c-be25-4f4a65fc183b

Got some of Chris Zaldain swim baits and the beast hooks to try in lieu of a small underspin/swimbait I've been catching pretty well on and stuck this nice one in the pads.  Ya think she wanted it!?!

 

 

 

Missed 4 bites on the bait before catching this one so it definitely gets bit!  I missed my first good frog fish of the year sadly and Jake had a good one come unbuttoned in the pads (he thought he was hung for a solid minute of the fight before realizing he was dragging a good fish and giving her slack with his retrieve).  I missed one on a bigger worm and then switched to a smaller speed craw and never got bit on the t rig again.

 

Weird day!

I'm slowly starting to work my way through this past week. I have so many stories and pictures to share. Everyone here was incredible with the support. I needed 1 big bite and I was walking the Bassmaster Classic stage, that sounds crazy to say but it's 100% true. We went straight to Grand Lake and stayed in a B&B on Monkey Island for the Classic and fished Thursday-Sunday after my tournament. so I fished every day for a week straight last week. There's a lot to get to and unfortunately work is going to get in the way of me doing that too quickly.

 

 

I'd never fished or even seen Tenkiller before and it fished a lot different than I expected. Water was mid to low 50's the closer to the dam I got, upper 50's to low 60's the further up the lake I got and the water was much dirtier. I struggled a lot down the lake and did decent from midlake on up. One real key thing I noticed, every pocket that I went into had shad in the very back getting blown up on, every one. The further north I went, the more shad and the more fish there were chasing them. I fished around Chicken Creek where we were camping the first day and did pretty well on a shakyhead, tube, and micro football jig. Day 2 I went to Strayhorn by the dam and did terrible for the first half of the day. I think I'd caught maybe 3 or 4 fish and only a couple were the 12" minimum. I drove a complete lap around the lake, checking out ramps and looking at different areas. I wanted to fish the river but it was so windy that it wasn't safe in my mind. Hindsight, I wish I'd gone to the furthest north ramp and tried there, I think it was more protected and the winner was in the river. I ended up in Snake Creek the last few hours of the day. It reminded me a lot of Chicken Creek and I did well again on the shakyhead and micro jig. Day 3 I went to Barnacle Bill's and struggled a lot, but there was shad everywhere and fish chasing them a lot. The water was dirtier and I did catch a couple nice ones towards the end of my day. The rock snot made fishing a crankbait impossible, and I couldn't get bit on a jerkbait or spinnerbait. I really expected all 3 of those baits to be huge players. By the end of practice, I'd caught 2 on a jerkbait and 1 on a spinnerbait. It really felt more like I was fishing a late summer/early fall tournament than a prespawn tournament. I never found any really big ones, and certainly couldn't find the big smallmouth, but I did find lots of quality that I was pretty happy with.

 

Seems like it’s been forever since I’ve been able to fish.  Yesterday was beautiful but I was working OT so I could render unto the bait monkey.  I made I promise to myself that I was gonna fish today no matter what.  
 

Well I got 50 degrees, winds from the south-southeast gusting to 37 mph and a steady rain.  Decided on the Crappie Hole since it has been producing bigger fish for me. Managed two on a Booyah Blade white/chartreuse spinner bait which had been successful for me there before however I went with an Indiana/Colorado combination instead of the willow leaf/Colorado.
 

Results were similar with two fish today.  Smaller than usual from that particular body of water but still bigger than what I had been catching at the Gun Club and the Old Reservoir.

On 3/24/2024 at 5:27 PM, Aaron_H said:

Got rained out, managed to last about 90 minutes before I called it, but I did get 6 bass and culled 2 tilapia. Biggest bass went 5lb 4oz, on a Shadow Rap Shad. I was picking apart a cove where the wind was blowing pretty hard and corralling bait up towards the banks. Bass weren't feeding super hard but they were biting. Was really nice to get into a sizeable bass, they've been stingy lately and it made dealing with the crappy weather worth it. She nipped the back of the bait on a long pause right as I was hovering over a sandy point during a brief respite from the rain and before it got much worse.

 

She never came up, stayed down and dogged me the whole fight. Which was a relief because I barely had her hooked. I've had guys ask me why I spent so much time/money tinkering with this setup (still very much a budget setup though), and this is why. If I was still throwing these on braid-to-leader or a stouter rod like when I first started out with the technique, 100% I'd have lost this fish.

Aaron, I'm surprised you haven't gotten a hair citation! Obviously, gimruis is out fishing! But beware...he will return!

18 hours ago, TnRiver46 said:

Short float with a buddy, got a spot , thinking Ky instead of Alabama 

Ain't bashful about the buffet line, that's for sure! What are they eating in there? That can't be all eggs, can it? Might have et a beer can!

@Bluebasser86: One big bite away from the stage doesn't surprise me a whit of a bit. You're such a consistent angler. As always, confidently speaking for all of us, we're so proud of you. Even if I were invited, I wouldn't compete: too scaredy!