good day on the water today.  i really thought i'd see some good fish on beds and get to sight fish a little, but that plan pretty much fizzled.  snatched a few little bucks off the few beds that were made, but i only saw one small female on a nest.  played around with her a few minutes until she cooperated just to get back in the swing of sight fishing.  after another hour of looking and not finding, i abandoned ship on the sight fishing game.  i just don't think the spawn has really commenced hot and heavy yet around here.  it will probably be on big time with the next full moon though.  so i started chunking and winding.  rattlebaits, spinnerbaits, and swim jigs produced sparingly.  the big fish just weren't wanting to cooperate.  i was starting to get frustrated.  

 

then something rather unusual happened.  i discovered a huge bluegill bed which is odd on its own since usually the gills don't really get cranked up around here until the bass are at least halfway done spawning.  i figured some slab bluegill might make me forget the mediocre bassin' day so i tied a small plastic on my spinning rod.  normally i do really well with this setup but the gills just wouldn't cooperate very well either.  but then i caught a bass, and another, and another until i was catching small bass almost every cast fishing for bluegill.

 

that told me something.  they wanted small and they wanted slow.  i just had to find a big female.  figuring the majority of what i had caught were bucks, i had to assume the bigger females were still holding out in a little deeper water.  so i tied a baby craw with a 1/8 oz. weight onto my spinning rod.  backed out to a submerged fence row with timber and grass and there she was.  8 lbs. 1 oz.   really fun on the medium light spinning rod.  well, i can say it was fun now but at the time it made for some tense moments.

 

 

Beautiful fish, soon to passing those good genes to the newest generation.

8 hours ago, paul. said:

good day on the water today.  i really thought i'd see some good fish on beds and get to sight fish a little, but that plan pretty much fizzled.  snatched a few little bucks off the few beds that were made, but i only saw one small female on a nest.  played around with her a few minutes until she cooperated just to get back in the swing of sight fishing.  after another hour of looking and not finding, i abandoned ship on the sight fishing game.  i just don't think the spawn has really commenced hot and heavy yet around here.  it will probably be on big time with the next full moon though.  so i started chunking and winding.  rattlebaits, spinnerbaits, and swim jigs produced sparingly.  the big fish just weren't wanting to cooperate.  i was starting to get frustrated.  

 

then something rather unusual happened.  i discovered a huge bluegill bed which is odd on its own since usually the gills don't really get cranked up around here until the bass are at least halfway done spawning.  i figured some slab bluegill might make me forget the mediocre bassin' day so i tied a small plastic on my spinning rod.  normally i do really well with this setup but the gills just wouldn't cooperate very well either.  but then i caught a bass, and another, and another until i was catching small bass almost every cast fishing for bluegill.

 

that told me something.  they wanted small and they wanted slow.  i just had to find a big female.  figuring the majority of what i had caught were bucks, i had to assume the bigger females were still holding out in a little deeper water.  so i tied a baby craw with a 1/8 oz. weight onto my spinning rod.  backed out to a submerged fence row with timber and grass and there she was.  8 lbs. 1 oz.   really fun on the medium light spinning rod.  well, i can say it was fun now but at the time it made for some tense moments.

 

 

 

Love it! That's the one I've been looking for, like.....forever...lol.

CONGRATS!!!

 

Hootie

Sounds & Looks like a great trip and that's

Another Nice One Paul ~

Congrats

A-Jay

WTG!!

Great looking catch.  Congratulations.

Another beauty!

 Bravo Sir. It takes skill to wrangle a hog like that with light equipment. 

Neat story. Reminds me of a guy I've met a few times recently on my local ponds. He's been drawing blanks mostly, but I watched him catch a decent bass on a little Beetle-Spin like set-up. Next time I saw him, he had it tied on and said that's just about all he's been catching on.

 

Also... I often "speed test" smaller fish to see how willing to chase they are. And it often does translate to the larger fish too. 

congrats on the gorgeous fish!

Nice job figuring her out!

 

Very nice bass Paul, for you this has been the 'year of the cows'   

 

Roger

That's a mighty big bluegill Paul.

Awesome!!! now that's what I call finding the pattern. Way to go

Nice fish Paul, and I enjoyed the account of what happened even more! Continued good fishing, I don't think you'll put that spinning rod down any time soon, JB 

Cool story. I'm going out tomorrow and the water is in the low 50's here (southeast Nebraska). Had no luck yesterday,  so maybe I'll try to go small tomorrow.