I launched this morning having caught 980 bass in 2025. My goal was to catch at least 20, an easy feat in June or early October, but a challenge in August. Not only did I catch 23 bass, but many were 17 to 18 inches. I started with a 16-incher on a popper in the dark and finished with three open water bass on a Whopper Plopper. Every single bass was caught off-shore. I tried shoreline fishing and weed and point fishing, but the bass were deep. Other than the popper and Plopper bass, all were caught on an underspin with a shad-colored Keitech or a green Mayor. There was one fine bass I didn't photograph because it was tricky to unhook and I didn't want to keep it out of the water any longer. When I released it, it looked stunned for a sec and then went deep. My first bass was 16 inches and so were several following bass. I was beginning to worry that I might not catch bigger bass, but I reached an 8' deep flat adjacent to a weedy shallow area and I caught four bigger bass in short order, two seventeens and two eighteens:

 

 

Here was another nice one, albeit shorter, caught while trolling to a point. It's an example of the bass that weren't 17 to 18 inches:

 

 

I returned to the 8' flat, wondering if they were still there. They were! Two on back-to-back casts:

 

 

Then they moved, so I switched to a big Whopper Plopper to give me more casting distance. Even though it was sunny and later in the morning, I thought that wolf-packing bass might be willing to hit a lure they'd otherwise ignore and I went with a surface lure because the bass caught on the underspin were hitting it on the fall. Good guess! I caught three in three casts. Here are the two best:

 

 

In the end, I caught six 17-inchers and four 18-inchers out of 23 bass. Then I paddled to my pal's camp and enjoyed banana bread and OJ. 

 

I won't surpass 2,000 bass like I did last year, but I think I can still catch 1,500 bass in 2025. My numbers will increase through September and October can be the stuff that dreams are made of. 

Sounds like a great day. 

All nice fish.

I've not broken the 2 lb mark the entire month of August and probably haven't caught 15 fish.

Water temp yesterday was 84*.

Great stuff Katie.

1 hour ago, Bird said:

All nice fish.

I've not broken the 2 lb mark the entire month of August and probably haven't caught 15 fish.

Water temp yesterday was 84*.

 

August is tough. As I was leaving, I paddled up to a motorboat with three anglers. They'd caught two bass total, so I told them where and how to catch them. They motored off to the flat as I left.

Wow

Thanks for the report.  Haven't been fishing all week and enjoy reading and seeing your successes.

Excellent. Just more proof that I can't catch them while on a tractor, mower, or while wrestling cows.

30 minutes ago, Alex from GA said:

Thanks for the report.  Haven't been fishing all week and enjoy reading and seeing your successes.

 

You're welcome, Alex. You know how you sometimes hook and lose a fish that keeps you wondering. I had one of those this morning while trolling. It bent my rod so far back that I worried it would break. No bass I landed today did anything close to that. I had it hooked for perhaps 1.5 seconds.

Glad you are back out there! I am sure the bass appreciated the break though

 

Great report and pics! You return trip was a pretty awesome one!

2 minutes ago, pdxfisher said:

 

Great report and pics!

 

Thanks, my friend. I'm still waffling on the best way to take pics. It is nice to see exactly how long the bass are, but bump boards sure aren't pretty and you can't see where I caught the bass. 

 

Remember the three anglers in a motorboat who were struggling to catch bass? They were two men and a young girl. Well, the kid caught her biggest bass ever at the 8' flat that I told them to fish.

 

What some anglers don't understand is that the bass likely won't be there tomorrow. I expect they'll fish it tomorrow, but the bass will likely have moved. Bass fishing is like playing "Where's Waldo?" You have to find them again and again to be successful and that's the fun of it. It's aquatic hide and seek.

Every time I catch one fish right now I sigh to myself quietly and smile and say I got me another one of them pesky August Bass Fish to bite and feel accomplished.

 

you’re killing it!

3 minutes ago, Pat Brown said:

Every time I catch one fish right now I sigh to myself quietly and smile and say I got me another one of them pesky August Bass Fish to bite and feel accomplished.

 

you’re killing it!

 

Pat, I enjoy the ease of catching May and June bass, but I also enjoy the challenge of catching August bass. A woman in a kayak on the pond I fished this morning asked if I'd take her fishing. 

 

I told her I would and I said, "You will catch fish."

 

"I will?"

 

"You will."

 

The advantage of a canoe as a guiding craft is that she'll be in the bow and I can literally aim her at bass, as you steer from the rear. 

You are definitely on them.  Nice going!

Nice going. I wonder how many years it takes me to catch 1000 fish.

 

 

Thanks for the support, guys. I am a consistent bass catcher, but most anglers I encounter in Maine aren't consistently catching bass. I paddle a LOT looking for bass and am fishing nearly constantly as I'm trolling when I'm looking.

 

Sadly, I lose more than half the bass that strike when I'm trolling because I'm using 5/0 hooks and the trolling speed alone doesn't set the hook. By the time I drop my paddle and grab my rod, there's nearly always slack and that's when the bass free themselves. IF I COULD, I would use a lure with treble hooks, but there are too many weeds for treble hooks. Any suggestions for a lure that can do what an underspin can do, I.e. plow through weeds, but with slender, smaller hooks? I have had some luck trolling T-rigged baits with smaller, thinner hooks, but the underspin triggers more bites. Part of the problem is that I use a VMC heavyduty underspin, but when I tried other underspins, the bass would batter them. 

 

Even though I lose a LOT of bass while trolling, trolling tells me where they are. It's my fish finder.

 

One other question. I have narrowed my fishing down to my pond and my pal's pond, largely because I turn 69 this week and it's ever harder to carry my canoe to other ponds. I have canoes waiting at my pond and my pal's pond. My pond grows short, fat fish, like this:

 

 

They occasionally reach 18", but not often. They are powerful because of their builds.

 

My pal's pond, on the other hand, produces longer, skinnier bass, like this:

 

 

It can also produce even longer AND thicker bass, like this:

 

 

However, fish as thick as the one above are rare at my pal's pond and shorter bass just as thick are common at my pond. 

 

I fish both ponds because I enjoy them all. Which one would you favor?

I just bought some Owner Weight Twist Light hooks. I'm hoping their lighter weight will give me better hook sets. Their drawback is that they don't have blades for extra attraction. 

@Swamp Girl Congratulations. Your definitely the head engineer on the numbers train. Once you get on it's hard to get off. 

congrats and well done! 

 

It takes me 4-5 years to catch 1000 bass

What an amazing feat!

 

Wow, you're killing it!

One thing that was cool about the schooling bass was that they were hitting my underspins as they fell. I typically like my underspins to tick the rocky bottom or the tops of weeds if they're there. So, when I reach an area, I'll count one-one-thousand two-one thousand etc. as they fall, searching for the deepest count that will let me retrieve them without weeds. Well, at this flat, it was a six count that let me retrieve weed-free, so I'd cast, count to six, and begin my retrieve, but when I began my retrieve, I already had a bass, telling me they were hitting it on the fluttering fall.

 

And this is why I switched to a Whopper Plopper deep into a sunny morning because I figured they were looking up to feed.