Some really good reads up in here.

I ran track and cross country in High School. One of my teammates suggested a few of us should try fishing. The three of us went fishing for whatever might bite, but we didn't catch anything. I wasn't deterred. I liked the peace and quiet. My Dad had me hunting deer with him for many years, so I took naturally to the patience fishing requires. The assistant XC coach liked to fish, and he lived on a lake. So when he heard we didn't have much luck, we were all invited to fish there. The lake was overpopulated with bass. When I started researching about fishing, bass fishing had the most readily available tutorials on YouTube. They also were fun to catch. It didn't take long for me to start fishing whenever I could. I took to it fast. I still enjoy hunting, and my Dad still doesn't like fishing all that much 😆 . I owe a good bit to that friend back in high school who encouraged me not only to try fishing, but to lift weights. He was older than me and a good guide for me. This was back in about 2016. I've fished consistenly since 2017 or so. 

I got into bass fishing because of my Granddad. My first fishing trip was with him. Our first stop was to catch crawdads in a ditch near the house. The first lesson I learned was not to go catch crawdads. They kept nipping him and it was the only time I heard that man cuss. Next we went to Swift Ditch to wet a line. We used cane poles, floaters and crawdads. Almost immediately, my pole was about taken out of my hand by what then seemed to be a really large bass. We went on other fishing trips but always caught catfish. As I came into my teenage years I started longing for that large bass again. I started teaching myself but wasn't very good at it. By my senior year in high school, I started fishing with my best friend, Tommy. He was a good bass fisherman. He taught me a lot of what I know. When I entered the working world, I worked with a tournament fisherman named Mark who taught me the rest of what I needed to know to become a decent bass fisherman. Fast forward to now, I love to study bass and bass fishing methods, locations, lures etc... It is my one hobby and sport. 

My avatar picture is the first good day of fishing I had. Fished at a cousins pond with a cane pole and can full of worms.Caught a couple of nice bass, a channel cat and plump bluegills. I broke that cane pole lifting a bass.

My Grandfather and Dad were serious bass fisherman and started taking me in the Atchafalaya Basin at an early age. When I was 12 I was taught to use a baitcasting reel and when I got good enough with it they would take me bass fishing.

 

When I was 14 (this would be in 1966) my Dad and I were fishing an area with a lot of surface vegetation. Dad gave me an Uncle Josh pork frog on a weedless hook and told me to cast out and twitch it across the top of the grass. On about the third cast the water exploded and somehow I managed to catch my first largemouth over 7 pounds.

 

Been hooked ever since.

 

 

Grew up in Southern Californian catching Yellow Tails. 

Moved here and converted to Bass Fishing

 

Love every moment and my 5 year old boy is itching to go with me as he has his own rods. 

I think my first time fishing was in 1964, when i was seven. Dad said lets go for a ride and we headed out for a 30 minute drive past some lakes. We stopped at a party store and i got an orange crush pop (a treat for me at the time) and dad got something, i didn't know what. We got back in the car and drove a few more miles and came to a little bridge and we pulled over and stopped.  A good sized lake was on one side of the road, with a small backwater on the other. Dad pulls out this little piece of plastic with about 20' of line, a bobber, and a hook. It cost 10 cents. He started digging for worms, got one, and told me to pinch an inch or so off the worm and thread it on the hook. I dropped the worm down about 6' to the water that was only 3' deep. I caught 23 bluegill/sunfish in a half hour. The biggest might have gone 4". My favorite childhood fishing memory is when i went with dad and his buddy from work rented a little 12' boat. His buddy hooked something, not sure it was a fish, but somehow he lost his rod and into the lake it went, in about 15' of water. He said that his wife would kill him if he lost her pole. That was when he stripped to his skivvies and dove in to try to get it. He failed. I never saw that guy again.  At twelve years old, i was in Ky. with my family, visiting all the relatives. I had a birthday and dad took me into town and i got an Eagle Claw ultra light combo and a 1" jointed minnow. Caught my first lm on grandad's pond. Loved it ever since.

I was arrested when I was in high school for steelhead fishing without a fishing license.  The judge was an avid trout fisherman and sentenced me to fish for trash fish for the rest of my life.  I got off easy.

On 8/11/2025 at 6:46 PM, river-rat said:

I managed to catch my first largemouth over 7 pounds.

 

A seven-pounder on your third cast? Was your first car a McLaren and your first date with Halle Berry?

Caught a Smallmouth in 1973 at a low head dam. Then started getting Fishing Facts Magazine and it started. Been ate up with it ever since. My Buddy’s pop was a River rat. Passed it down to a lot of us. Had a million dollars worth of fun the past 52 years . Love it 

I didn't quite have a direct route to bass fishing specifically. My dad always kept fish in aquariums and ponds while I was growing up, but it was pretty much all tropical/exotic fish, and I couldn't help but always enjoy setting up tanks with him and learning about fish.

 

My mom was the one who was take me fishing cause she just loved to do it. However, we never targeted anything in particular - just went to the same spot and suspended a minnow under a bobber until something hit. That was on the TN in AL.

 

Since I get bored easily that style of fishing didn't really stick with me. It wasn't until I was living in PA and I had to work from home at the onset of COVID, and I was getting stir crazy staying at the house all day, so I went across the street to a state park and tossed a line in the lake and caught my first rainbow trout. It made me feel like a kid again and from that point on I've had the craving to catch as many fish as possible. 

 

I fumbled around for a couple years trying to actually learn how to fish, experimenting with different lures/techniques for targeting different species. During that time I got to thinking that bass were so common that they weren't that interesting to catch. I ended up moving back to AL where I grew up and really started to figure out how much fun bass can be (topwaters, schooling bass, sight fishing, watching my line slip away on a T-rig bite, etc) and before I knew it was pretty much aiming for bass exclusively, and every other species was an afterthought.

I was born and raised in the suburbs of Los Angeles. My father assured me that we were in fact 'city slickers'. In the early 60's some of his friends introduced him to water skiing and speed boats, and he was 'hooked' on those activities, so we began to identify as water skiers. Even my mother could do a shore start on a single ski. For whatever reason I have no idea, I loved the water, but was enamored with the idea of fishing rather than water skiing. They had to order me to water ski, that is if they could find because I had usually wandered down the bank to find a quiet place to fish.

 

We took water skiing vacations many, many times over the years, travelling 500 miles each way to a lake in Nevada where the water stayed nice and smooth all day, which is fantastic for water skiers. We could pick any place on the shores to camp among the plentiful white sugar sand beaches under the cottonwood trees. I distinctly remember on the trip to the lake and then again on the way home, every time we would see some janky fishing vessel being trailered (like the rig pictured below) someone would chirp "Hey, there's Jeff's boat!" Rinse, repeat. Rinse repeat. Rinse, repeat.

 

 

I remember one night when the adults would gather on the sand to play volleyball, I waded out to our boat and cast out a chunk of a hot dog and an enormous carp ate it. The rod was bent to the fore grip. One of the other men promptly waded out to the side of the boat and cut my line with his pocket knife saying "That's just a nasty old carp!" More hilarity, and I was scolded later for fishing from the boat. 

 

One day, I checked out a book from the school library that was a collection of stories that were all about bass fishing. Something about the way the tales were told spoke to me and I have been enamored with bass fishing in particular ever since. As a teen, I would get at o'dark thirty to ride my stingray to the local golf course pond to dangle earthworms at the edge of the reeds in hopes of catching a bass. I caught everything but a bass. I did hook into a pond donkey, once using a Creme grape colored worm that came pre-rigged with props at the end (as I have recounted in other posts) that promptly broke me off after a short but valiant battle. 

 

I was in my twenties before I finally figured out how to catch an actual bass. Trolling crankbaits of course, LOL. I was working at an aircraft factory where I joined the company fishing club. It was there that I met and befriended some really avid and knowledgeable bass fisherman. One of them told me that he lived in Castaic, and was able to get home and fish after work (even though they close the lake at dusk). To make an already long story slightly less lengthy, the stars aligned for me and I moved here in 1987; I've been here ever since. 

 

This last pic is of one of the best days of my life. I was able to buy a one year old Ranger in 1988 (a 393 with a 200 Merc). This was an Easter Sunday not long after I bought the boat. My entire family came up[ to the lake to spend the day. Each of my brother had their boat there too. My older brother's boat is in the foreground (a 16' Avenger, very much overpowered with a modded 200 Johnson). My younger was there with an 18' jet boat (with a big block Chevrolet). My older brother's boat needed perfect conditions to reach it's potential, which we didn't quite have that day, and try as both of them might, I waxed both of them with fish in my livewell and rods strapped to the deck. Hilarity ensued. Within days, both had their motors torn down claiming something wasn't right.

 

 

Hilarity still ensues to this day, and probably always will. Rinse, repeat. Rinse, repeat. Rinse, repeat. Rinse, repeat. Rinse, repeat. Rinse, repeat. Rinse, repeat. Rinse, repeat. Rinse, repeat. Rinse, repeat. Rinse, repeat. Rinse, repeat. . . . Every chance I get.

I have been into fishing since my first time, about age 7, when I hooked...and then lost...a catfish (A pretty good one, dad said.. I just remember the splash of the fish surfacing).  But while I was always interested in bass, it wasn't until I moved to Michigan 17 years ago that I really got into them.  

 

I grew up fishing a river that did not (as far as we knew) have bass in it. My dad and brothers and I caught channel catfish, bullheads, drum, suckers, goldeyes, and an occasional rock bass, pike, walleye or sauger. 

 

But on TV and print media, bass were everywhere, Bill Dance and Al Lindner were catching them on fishing shows, In-fisherman and Field & Stream had articles about them, and the Bass Pro catalog had this dizzying array of bass lures -- plastic worms and other creatures of every color, spinnerbaits of every configuration, plugs in all shapes and sizes. I would pour through it, dreaming one day of owning every Rapala and every color worm. TV and Magazines were essentially where I learned about bass.  I would buy bass lures to try and use them occasionally, hopefully. In my home river and sometimes other places if we were vacationing.  Instead I caught...often nothing, but sometimes rock bass, bluegill, crappies,pike, walleye, or perch.  

 

I finally ended up catching my first smallmouth and largemouth in back-to-back summers. around the age of 15 or 16.  One day at the river, something grabbed my nightcrawler and took off, and then....jumped, 3 or 4 times. I was surprised it wasn't larger. When I got it in, I recognized it as a bass (smallmouth, I was pretty sure).  The next summer, at a church camping retreat, I, my brother, and some of our friends were caching bluegills off the fishing dock.  While they were occupied, i tried using a plastic worm on a "texas rig" that I had seen referenced in countless articles and shows.  I cast to some visible weeds, and immediately got a hit....and it was my first largemouth. 

 

Shortly after that, fishing took a backseat to other life things -- I worked jobs, went to college, then grad school, moved across the country a few times, got married, etc.  I fished here and there occasionally, and sometimes caught bass, sometimes other species but I didn't really come back to fishing as a regular activity until moving to Michigan....turns out, there are bass all over the place here, and pretty easy to access.  And I needed a new obsession, an excuse to get out, explore.  So, I dug in, learning mostly through trial and error based on things I saw on the internet, memories of things I saw Bill Dance and Al Lindner do on TV in my youth, some transfer of knowledge from prior multi-species experience, and old books and magazines which I started collecting again for fun. And then kayak fishing blew up, and so of course I had to get in on that.   And here I am.   

My dad took me crappie fishing before I knew what was going on. We did that and his buddy came along. His buddy got into bass fishing and we caught the bug. I got my first baitcaster when I was about 13 for Christmas 1983-ish. 

I had no choice. As soon as I was out of diapers my dad took me. I took many a nap curled up under the driver's console of that old Fisher marine.

My parents had a cabin on arguably the best lake in the PNW for bass fishing.  At least at the time.  It's in my DNA.  Been bass fishing since I could hold a rod.

I grew up in Los Angeles and fly fished for trout in the Sierras but mostly ocean fished until a buddy started a fishing store in Burbank.  I worked part time there and met many of the local fishermen and they invited me to go bass fishing.  It turned out I was pretty good at it and got invited to back seat at tournaments.  I still ocean fished a bunch until, in '99 we moved to GA next to Lake Lanier.  It turns out Lanier is much like the So Calif lakes, deep with not too many weeds and I bought a boat and went bass fishing several times a week.  A couple years we moved to the upper part of the lake and one of my neighbors waded small rivers to catch Shoal Bass and invited me.  I bought a kayak about 2004 to fish the smaller rivers which I still do but all over the state for the GA DNR bass slam.  Do to the cold winters here, 40s, we bought a trailer in central FL and I had to learn how to bass fish all over again with all the vegetation.  Due to advancing age and health issues I'm not fishing a much as I was but still go and enjoy it.

How I got hook on bass (smallmouth) fishing. It was May of 1976. I was 16 years old. Trout fishing was (and still is today) a love of things to do. A couple of my buddies I grew up with wanted me to take them to where I’ve been going. I’m not saying they knew nothing about fishing, I’m not saying they didn’t know how but they certainly were not trout fisherman. It’s all good they were buddies I grew up with. Like brothers and that’s more important than anything at that time.  
So it worked out that we skipped church on that Sunday and I drove us over a couple of counties from home to a creek that I had been taken to by an old retired guy that I worked at his farm. The trout stream was a feeder stream to the river which was fairly close to the stream sections I took them to.  
I dumped them off at a couple of spots and told them to fish there for a bit and slowly fish their way down to where I was gonna be. A spot I’d never fish before but it was a good spot to park the truck and I’d figure the creek out. I fished these two natural spillway type dams. Caught trout pretty quickly. Than I had to start releasing them because I had one short of my limit and wanted to keep fishing and eventually the guys would be coming my direction for when we finished.  
I was fishing minnows (a trout favorite of mine) and I was getting these killer hits that were stripping my minnows off. I thought that it was maybe some of those bigger old breeder trout the state puts out once and awhile. Well I’m about out of minnows and I’m down to all my spinners, spoons, kast masters and a chunk of Velvetta Cheese 🧀. These were pre Power Bait days. 
I opted to tie on and throw some Mepps and Panther Martins spinners. The best move I’d ever chose to do in my life. The two sections I was fishing had a bunch of smallmouth bass in them. The fish were only 10”-13” size fish but were ferocious. A real eye opener. I was hooked on Smallies from that day until this day. Over the years I’ve caught bigger Smallies in that section. Some 14”-15” fish. 
From that time on I started concentrating on the river. I believed the river was their home. I really don’t know much about smallmouth migration to this day. 
That day of trout fishing had turned me on to being a river rat. That day was all it took to get me hooked on bass fishing.