The Baron Posted July 8 Share Posted July 8 22 minutes ago, TnRiver46 said: Looks like a lot of fish for a tough weekend @The Baron, way to stick it out! Also, a snakehead in Canada ? Maybe bowfin ? We don’t have either in East TN but I have caught some bowfin and they fight like the devil Yes, bowfin but we use the name snakehead interchangeably up here (I’ve also heard them called dogfish). This one was maybe 4# and did give me an excellent fight - was wishing it was a monster largemouth when it whacked my spinner bait on a weed edge. I do appreciate the input @ol'crickety I know the clear water is an issue on my new nemesis lake, so am re-rigging some stuff - more fluorocarbon and less straight braid. There’s a lot more rock that my usual places so may also try some cranking, which I’ve never done because everywhere else I fish is just weedy enough to make that impossible. I struggle with early morning fishing - I love it, but like my early morning turkey hunts it puts me totally out of sync with the rest of the family. My son and I might try for the evening bite today, but those trips mess up family dinner which is something we value. If I was away from home I’d gladly fish the early morning and late evening, with a quality nap in between. 😊 17 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BayouSlide Posted July 8 Share Posted July 8 41 minutes ago, The Baron said: Yes, bowfin but we use the name snakehead interchangeably up here (I’ve also heard them called dogfish). Down in South Louisiana they are called grunnel, bowfin or choupique. They fool me every time into thinking I'm about to land a PB bass 😉👍 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Global Moderator TnRiver46 Posted July 8 Global Moderator Share Posted July 8 1 hour ago, The Baron said: Yes, bowfin but we use the name snakehead interchangeably up here (I’ve also heard them called dogfish). This one was maybe 4# and did give me an excellent fight - was wishing it was a monster largemouth when it whacked my spinner bait on a weed edge. I do appreciate the input @ol'crickety I know the clear water is an issue on my new nemesis lake, so am re-rigging some stuff - more fluorocarbon and less straight braid. There’s a lot more rock that my usual places so may also try some cranking, which I’ve never done because everywhere else I fish is just weedy enough to make that impossible. I struggle with early morning fishing - I love it, but like my early morning turkey hunts it puts me totally out of sync with the rest of the family. My son and I might try for the evening bite today, but those trips mess up family dinner which is something we value. If I was away from home I’d gladly fish the early morning and late evening, with a quality nap in between. 😊 Looks like it would rip a finger clean off , freshwater version of a snapper 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pat Brown Posted July 8 Share Posted July 8 @The Baron - sounds like you're running into the wall I tend to hit in the winter and in the summer - the wall has writing on it - large red letters - all caps - KEEP MOVING. Summer and Winter are very different from 'good seasons' and require a more deliberate and Methodical approach for me generally speaking. The fish are on the move. So must we be. Spring and fall i find there's pretty much a fish every where I cast and it's angry but summer and winter are 'feed months' and not 'breed months' so they're less angry and more hungry and mobile. Scout out the bream beds. Scout out the grass where the shiners make their home. Feeder creeks are huge when it's summer. These are great areas to make a milk run out of and yes like @ol'crickety says - LONG casts in clear water. If you can see em already - game over. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Super User Swamp Girl Posted July 8 Super User Share Posted July 8 32 minutes ago, Pat Brown said: LONG casts in clear water. I catch an amazing percentage of my bass at the very end of my longest casts. If bass are tucked under heavy cover, you can catch them feet from your boat, but if you're fishing clear, shallow water, as I often do and as @The Baron always does, as he fishes the Canadian Shield, it's best to stay as far from them as your casts allow. I think a lot about bass being here for 3,000,000 years. That's ten times as long as us. So, they've been tweaked and refined for ten times longer than us. They're complex, refined animals, continually moving and constantly wary. 32 minutes ago, Pat Brown said: The fish are on the move. So must we be. Preach it. The senator noted yesterday that I don't park on a spot. I don't even carry an anchor. Heck, I'd be pulling it up two minutes after I'd drop it. FWIW, I had a first yesterday evening. I often see a line in the water as a shallow water bass charges my lure. Well, yesterday, I saw three lines for the first time, i.e. three bass going for my lure. When I reached the spot, the water was sooooooo skinny, but my long cast didn't tip my hand. A couple from yesterday evening. I didn't measure the first one, but the second one was 19.75". 16 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Super User Swamp Girl Posted July 8 Super User Share Posted July 8 @The Baron: One more thing. You mentioned fluoro. I can't cast fluoro as far as mono and braid, so I don't use it. I'd switch to mono instead of braid and 8-lb. mono casts a lot farther than 12-lb. mono. I use mono where they get a look at the lure, like a slow-moving worm. With fast-moving lures, like a Whopper Plopper or underspin, I always use braid. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazoo Posted July 8 Share Posted July 8 I don't always get these picture sorted by the day, and often I'll fish it several days close, so forgive me if you notice the lighting is off. Sometimes I'll hit this lake a bit before bible study, and then again after. The boy entices them somehow, with is his furious retreives! Learning split shot rigging... Working too.. now just to find the hawgs. I rigged this up for the wife, gave it a test cast and caught this little fighter. I often give her or the boys rig a test cast to make sure things are in order, and often connect. I think this is the first bass I've ever caught on a roostertail. I don't fish inline spinners much. It twisted my line Got my first jig, albeit a swim jig, bass. Yum FF Sonar minnow on a Carolina rig seems to work pretty good. These are red because they were in my catchall bag with a red lure a few days. Worked at the river too! She had a knob on her nose, and another angler there mentioned catching one like that, upon seeing the pictures, he said he'd caught her the other day. Back to the private lake. Where the brim are energetic. Couple days later. Split shotting is working good and I have a good feel for it with a #3 weight and 10lb line. I am going to go to 8lb line and see if I can get the weight down some and still keep my distance reasonable. I don't particularly like these worms, but I have a bag of them. Not sure if this classic color works or is just nostalgic, which is why everyone fishes it. The boy wanted a white grub, this was my test cast. I don't use that suncatcher line for stuff normally. I do have it on a rod that I've been throwing topwaters on, but I just generally don't have any confidence in it. The next day. Watermelon with red flecks is working just fine. Eat anything that don't eat him first is his motto! I was trying this color out... eh... I still don't have much confidence in it. Probably lose it at the river anyways. 20 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Super User MIbassyaker Posted July 9 Super User Share Posted July 9 Haven't been out for 2 weeks, until this morning. Went to "Lake 6", perennially one of my better spots -- a murky, 30-acre hole-in-the-ground, out in the middle of nowhere: The locals, i have heard, are not super-enthusiastic about the place and claim it has a problem with parasites. But the bass here have always seemed plenty healthy to me, and there are a lot of them. Although I'm not sure where they all were today. Here i am with one of five, all "meh"-sized: Of course, what would have been big fish of the day got away due to user error. Might be able to go out again next week. We'll see. 20 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bp_fowler Posted July 9 Share Posted July 9 Went out today for a few hours. Didn’t much want to drive to a bigger bass fishery or deal with the logistics of night fishing. Went to the old reservoir and braved the midday heat. Water was down a bit and the water has cleared up a lot. Caught 6 burning the UV speed worm along weed lines and over grass beds. Nothing special but I still had a good time. 19 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thediscochef Posted July 9 Share Posted July 9 I get my pier back on Friday 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Baron Posted July 9 Share Posted July 9 My son and I got out for a few hours today. The wind was supposed to be very gusty so the frog rods stayed at home, but it was almost calm. We ended up working some offshore weed beds with chatterbait and I threw a Tokyo Rig for the first time. We caught a few pike on chatterbait, which was fun but I put that down to try the Tokyo Rig. I caught my first 5 fish ever on that - 3 bass and 2 pike. The first bass was maybe 1#, so it and the pike were released with no photos. The last bass was about 3.5#, but our scale refused to participate. Both the decent bass picked up the bait and swam toward me, and it was all I could do even with an 8.2:1 reel to catch up to them. The fishing was “ok” but doing it with my son made the few hours great. He drove the boat, which made him quite happy. 😊 19 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Super User PhishLI Posted July 10 Super User Share Posted July 10 The best of yesterday. Hated having to leave as the bite finally started to really turn on right after dark. Ended the sesh missing something large that violently smashed my Beast Coast Miyagi while fishing along a ledge. Folded my heavy rod and shocked my elbow. "Get the net!", immediately followed by "Noooooo". This place holds oversized monster Pickeral too, so it might've been one of those. Who knows? Next time. Saturday was brutally hot, and the fishing was tough at a different lake, but we beat the skunk. 22 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Super User LrgmouthShad Posted July 10 Super User Share Posted July 10 I think Pat and Jake caught their very first bass at a pond today. Not sure though. That guy FishTax found one flopping in the bank and grabbed it for a photo, too @Pat Brown how was my report this time? 😁 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Super User Swamp Girl Posted July 10 Super User Share Posted July 10 Those are some slabs, @PhishLI. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fried Lemons Posted July 10 Share Posted July 10 I’ve been having horrible luck with big fish recently. Dumped 3 in the last week that were in the 5-7lb range. I think it’s the hot weather softening their mouths so that it gets nearly impossible to keep them pinned on a big treble hooked lure. Anyway here’s two that I managed to land. Probably because they weren’t on treble hooks. 4lb 7oz on a jig 5lb 11oz on a swinging jig 23 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Super User Swamp Girl Posted July 10 Super User Share Posted July 10 @Fried Lemons: Gosh, you catch big fish! You're one of BR's top anglers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Global Moderator Bluebasser86 Posted July 10 Global Moderator Share Posted July 10 I tried to go to a lake I haven't been to this year on Sunday. Should have stayed away. By about noon, I'd caught 5 little ones. Moved to a nearby lake and felt like I knew what I was doing again. Biggest one was 20.75" and 5.26lbs. Also had one just blast my Besotted pencil popper. 23 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Super User Swamp Girl Posted July 10 Super User Share Posted July 10 3 hours ago, ol'crickety said: @Fried Lemons: Gosh, you catch big fish! You're one of BR's top anglers. Ditto for @Bluebasser86. 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Super User J._Bricker Posted July 10 Super User Share Posted July 10 Nothing like a sunrise over the Delta when you’re able to see the Sierras in the distance. Best fish of the day was a 3lber dropshoting a Roboworm in sparse tules. While landing the fish, I was surprised by what appeared to be a very healthy fish also had numerous lesions on one side. 17 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IcatchDinks Posted July 11 Share Posted July 11 After an incredible week last week fishing with @Pat Brown, @FishTax, and @LrgmouthShad, I drove home with the family Sunday. Didn't get out to fish again until Tuesday morning (yesterday) but got skunked at the pond. This evening, I had a friend cancel plans we had, so I had a few hours to fish, and decided to try wading the river for smallies. My wife's grandfather gave me his old set of waders, so I figured I'd try them out, and old tho they be, they kept me dry as a bone. I caught four fish total, three on a little H2OX crankbait, and one on a white Jawbone popper, after I lost the crank on a laydown. The third fish was a new PB smallie at 17 inches long. My previous best had been three separate fish all at 16 inches. All the fish were super healthy, all gave incredible fun fights, leaping, thrashing, and generally causing mayhem. It's good to be back home. ❤️ 20 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Super User NorcalBassin Posted July 11 Super User Share Posted July 11 Nothing too exciting, but for July I'll gladly take it. 19 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Global Moderator TnRiver46 Posted July 11 Global Moderator Share Posted July 11 Went for a sunset paddle with my wife, dropped the boats in at 7 . Got one little smallie that was stuck in a brush pile up against a cliff. Took forever to get it free but he was still on there. Got to watch several small planes land right over our heads too 18 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Super User Swamp Girl Posted July 11 Super User Share Posted July 11 @TnRiver46: You could be a life coach because you really know how to live well. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Global Moderator TnRiver46 Posted July 11 Global Moderator Share Posted July 11 Thanks @ol'crickety, I had made a boo boo at work and she insisted we go paddling instead of me stewing over it 😂 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Super User Jigfishn10 Posted July 11 Super User Share Posted July 11 1 hour ago, TnRiver46 said: Got to watch several small planes land right over our heads too . I'm really trying to figure this one out J/K Bud...looks you had a great sunset night with your wife. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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