The lake by the house is still 3/4 frozen, but still managed to get a couple little ones from the bank after work, and watch some teens make questionable life choices 😂

Lol. Boys will be boys.

4 hours ago, T-Billy said:

Boys will be boys

Reason number 485 why women live longer than males. 😂

12 hours ago, Team9nine said:

Thought it would be tough, and it was. Post frontal, NW wind gusting to 20, and 43 deg water temps…but I avoided the skunk with this one on an A-rig.

Team9nine, that is serious backbone! NW wind gusting to 20 and cold water and you still got out there! Sometimes I wonder about our sanity, but never about our resolve!

1 hour ago, Blue Raider Bob said:

Team9nine, that is serious backbone!

Yeah, he's hardcore.

They were only calling for 3-6 mph, so I was really disappointed when I awoke to 21 mph gusts. A quick look at a wind map showed we were directly in a funnel of wind coming out of the mountains, but showed almost no wind 20 minutes east. So I gambled and went east, and arrived to see white-capping at the ramp. At that point, I felt committed after hooking up and driving out there 😁 It did finally die down after an hour or two, but calm post-front is worse than windy post front in my book. Only fish bit early.

17 hours ago, Bluebasser86 said:

You can tell the kid in the blue shorts is really contemplating his life choices.

The post frontal conditions persisted - high blue skies - but the wind died to a light breeze, and I changed lakes to a more shallower one. Water here was a bit warmer at 46 degrees, and while the crappie I saw wouldn't cooperate, a few of the bass did 😎

Everything on jighead minnow or A-rig. Best fish was 4-1/4 lbs.

I’ve never fished from a yak, so I’m not sure how good/bad they are in gusty winds. I can tell you my inflatable is ok in a moderate breeze, but the gusts this morning played havoc with me this morning. There was no debating about it, I had to use the anchor. It made fishing difficult. I did boat one (plus a dink), but lost a decent one a 5” Senko WR. I think it had the bait but not the hook in its mouth. Looked around 3-1/2 to 4 lbs. The two I boated were on a green pumpkin lizard on a WR hook simply hooked in the head and drifting it.

I decided to fish yesterday afternoon, right before a front . The weather was very windy and cloudy, temps in the low 70s.

I had decided I wanted to fish with shiners, so I went to my secret shiner pond back in the woods. I really had to work hard, but finally was able to catch a couple. Then it was off to another pond to throw them out. Tried one good spot and got one about 1.5 pounds, which ate the 9-10 inch shiner.

I moved to another good spot, and cast the remaining shiner 3 times . He would immediately swim back towards me into the 25 knot winds. Like he was scared of what was there.

On the 4th cast , he stayed near where I threw him ( probably was getting tired).

This fish was the result. Just a little over 7 pounds.

In all honesty, I may have caught this fish before but I can’t be sure. He doesn’t look exactly like the one I caught in the same pond last year that was the same general size. This one seems to have a bigger head , one eye looks like it’s going blind , and she seems to have more of a pronounced coloration on her sides…

Had the perfect storm of warm weather, wind, and rain to knock the ice of one of my favorite winter fishing lakes just in time for the weekend. There was one pretty good patch of ice covering one of my favorite banks and my livescope revealed a lot of fish hiding back under the ice unfortunately. Things started out pretty slow, I managed to catch a few small ones on the scope off deeper structure but mostly I was getting casting practice. I noticed as I was fishing towards the south end of the lake where the creek runs in, the water was slowly warming up. That gave me the idea to check out the back of another cove where a drainage pipe runs in. The water was 38-41 everywhere I had been, it was 46-49 in the back of that cove when I got there and there was fish everywhere. I ended up catching 34 bass, several white bass, several drum, 2 trout, and a bluegill. Most of them were in 1-4 feet of water that was much dirtier than the rest of the lake. My big fish of the day thumped one of my homemade micro football jigs.

Mike's back at it! I like how you had to work hard to catch your shiners and how the shiner kept swimming back to you to escape your BIG bass.

I just scouted a pond in southern Maine that looks fantastic. To reach it, you have to launch by a bridge and then paddle your boat about a mile down a winding river. My kind of pond! I'll probably rent a motel room for one night because it's a ways away and fish the evening and then the next morning.

Clayton, I consider you the quantity competition, but it's not fair when you're fishing in January and February. I beg ya, wait until late April. You've got a 3.5-month head start!

j/k

Fish away, my angling buddy.

@Swamp Girl Anyone who competes with you needs a head start...well, maybe everyone except @Bluebasser86. Y'all are fishing catching machines!

Nice one @N Florida Mike!

On 2/12/2026 at 8:17 PM, Bluebasser86 said:

The lake by the house is still 3/4 frozen, but still managed to get a couple little ones from the bank after work, and watch some teens make questionable life choices 😂

Bluebasser, we were all teens at one time and yes, we all made some questionable life choices in our day. Just glad we survived them! Wish some of mine were as harmless as a cold plunge. What's tough is watching YOUR teens make questionable choices! You want to tell them, "DON'T, that didn't work out for me!" But they have to live and learn as we did. That picture gives me the giggles every time I look. 😆

1 hour ago, Blue Raider Bob said:

Bluebasser, we were all teens at one time and yes, we all made some questionable life choices in our day. Just glad we survived them! Wish some of mine were as harmless as a cold plunge. What's tough is watching YOUR teens make questionable choices! You want to tell them, "DON'T, that didn't work out for me!" But they have to live and learn as we did. That picture gives me the giggles every time I look. 😆

It’s funny because I did almost the exact same thing as they did and have a picture somewhere to prove it 😂

Rain cleared late yesterday evening - about 1.75”. Nice post front day today - lol. Was hoping for some stained water, but only found one small area on the lake I was on today. Surprisingly, water temps held up, around 48 deg., give or take. Picked off a limit of bass in the 3 hours I was out, but nothing over 3 lbs. Jerkbait and A-rig accounted for all. Also found a mix of crappie and white perch hanging near the one mudline I came across, but not much size to them.

Sunscreen, short sleeves, and frogs singing

Fished this morning from 7 - 12. Water was 51 and pretty stained from rain. Caught a little green one on the full size jig and a "WHITE" one on the spoon. The lake got crowded, forgot it was a holiday.

On 2/15/2026 at 12:54 PM, BrianMDTX said:

I’ve never fished from a yak, so I’m not sure how good/bad they are in gusty winds. I can tell you my inflatable is ok in a moderate breeze, but the gusts this morning played havoc with me this morning. There was no debating about it, I had to use the anchor. It made fishing difficult. I did boat one (plus a dink), but lost a decent one a 5” Senko WR. I think it had the bait but not the hook in its mouth. Looked around 3-1/2 to 4 lbs. The two I boated were on a green pumpkin lizard on a WR hook simply hooked in the head and drifting it.

"It's the beard Cotton, trimmed and lethal"

GP, I can always count on you for a pretty pic.

Not my work sadly - but how big y’all think Damian’s latest is? I dunno about you guys but that thing looks biggggggg.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DU1Z8v0gdg_/?igsh=MnJyemxmeGVqenI2

Damian Thao doesn’t really hype things ever and he’s caught a lot of giant bass - that’s a really really big one.

36 minutes ago, Pat Brown said:

that’s a really really big one.

It sure is! Does that point really drop off deep? It looks like a really good fishing spot

41 minutes ago, Pat Brown said:

that’s a really really big one.

If that picture is totally unedited then that's an absolute beast! It looks like one of Tom's @WRB-2.0 monster bass. Thanks for sharing @Pat Brown.

4 minutes ago, Fishlegs said:

If that picture is totally unedited then that's an absolute beast! It looks like one of Tom's @WRB-2.0 monster bass. Thanks for sharing @Pat Brown.

Damien isn't a guy that is going to edit a picture, and he catches monsters on swimbaits in California so I'm not surprised at all by it. Also the fact that he's about 5' nothing does make his fish look even bigger but that one has to be a mid teen range fish still.