I know some of you probably live on a lake, but for those who do not, how far round trip is most of your fishing trips?

I'm blessed to live close to the river where I fish. It's usually a 15 minute drive whether it's to fish on the bank, or to the ramp for a boat trip. About once a month I drive an hour to meet a friend who drives two hours to fish a different stretch of the river. It's not difficult for me to get to the water.

I'm not ON the lake - closest shore is 2-1/2 blocks from me, but is dominated by multi-million dollar homes.

Launch ramps near me - All part of Lake Minnetonka

Phelps Bay 1.2 miles
Spring Park Bay - 2.0 miles

Harrison Bay - 2.1miles

North Arm - 3.2 miles

Maxwell Bay - 3.7 Miles

Other lakes in the area

Dutch - 2.5 miles

Little Long - 5.2 miles

Whaletail - 6.7 miles

7 hour round trip to my best lake. 5 hour round trip to the nearest lake with bass. 5 min to the ocean, but I prefer to drive for hours and fish for bass.

NY/NJ- 3.5 hours round trip. Sometimes a day trip, but usually with a stay over.

Fla- 5 min.

For my "regular" day trip spots, anywhere from 20 minutes to 2 hours one way. If it's 2+ hours I try to save it for when I can do a multi-day trip.

From 20 to 40 miles, 30-60 min one way. Of course the further I go the better it gets.

I'm surrounded by a fair number of options.

On the road, times average out to be about 2.5 hrs for round trips to bigger water.

And half that for smaller stuff.

Could also be an hour round trip on the water as well.

The caveat to all of this is bigger water often means bigger brown bass.

So the distance I am willing to travel each way

is often driven by how intense my big fish itch is at the time.

#lakemenderchuck

😎

A-Jay

I’ve got two small ponds about 10 minutes away from. Both hold bass but only one has bigs. A 15 minute drive puts me at 6 different small reservoirs. 5 bigger lakes/reservoirs within 30 minutes. The wildlife area with 100s of strip ponds is 35-45 minutes depending on how deep I want to get in there. But my longest drive is the 12ish hour one to MacGregor Bay Ontario.

I’m around 70 miles round trip from most places. When I go down to the tidal it’s 140 miles round trip.

70 to 80 minutes round trip to the reservoir. Mostly highway driving.

Good Fishing

50 to 100 miles roundtrip.

I stay within an hour and a half to two hours from home. I fish Plymouth/Cape Cod the most, followed by New Hampshire's lakes region.

Any more than that and I book somewhere to stay for a couple days.

I live 32 miles from Table Rock and 50 miles to Stockton. So my normal trips are 64 and 100 depending on which direction I go.

Local river is about a mile, usual spots are around 80 to a 120 round trip.

Week long trip to the Adirondacks is 620 round trip.

Other camping/fishing trips are 240 to 500 round trips.

Honestly I try and keep them as short as possible. Florida has so much good water to fish I swear you could dig a hole, wait a few minutes for water to fill it up and catch a lunker out of it.

So my choice drive time is 30 minutes or less and most often 10 minutes or less.

It is my 12 year old son who is now making me drive long distances of 100 miles or so for his saltwater fishing trips.

And its not just the road trips.

When I get on the water I am not one of those people to run a boat 20 or 30 miles just to find a place to fish. My last trip out I asked my son how far did we go on the outboard motor. He said 1 or 2 miles and that is about as far as I need to go here in Florida.

Sometimes I put in at the boat ramp and just get on the trolling motor right from the start and fish away from the boat ramp and back again all on trolling motor. I just don't need to run the heck out my motors to fish thankfully.

So shortest trips are boat ramps 5 minutes away, and longest trips are around 100 miles and everything in between.

I'm an hr drive from the nearest lakes.... 2.5 hrs one way is my max for a day trip...

I have 4 community reservoirs near me, none of which is more than 13 miles (20 min) from the house, the closest (3.5 mi., 7 min), so roundtrip, 15-45 min. Not a fan of driving to fish these days like I used to do when younger, but have plenty of other big water options within an hour and a half if I ever get the urge.

Fish 10 - 15 lakes per year.

Average is 2-3 hour round trip.

Favorite lakes are 7 hour round trip so end up camping when I get there and stay up to 2 weeks.

I can drive 5 minutes to the nearest lake, but most of my drives are around 100-150 miles round trip to get to the better lakes.

Eight miles round-trip to my pond.

Three times that to my pal's pond.

I am currently in college and haven’t found any productive spots for me nearby yet. But at home, In my neighborhood there is a chain of 3 ponds. The most productive one I have caught 3 fish over 4 pounds since living there for a year. There is a golf course with ponds I fish a couple miles away which is where I caught a 5.6 pounder last year and a 6 pounder yesterday. Within a 30 minute drive there is one big lake and 4 public reservoirs. The farthest I go currently is the occasional trip to a newer reservoir about 20 miles from my house. If anyone knows river fishing or the new river, let me know. I would love to learn to fish from smallmouth.

I live about 40 miles south of my favorite lake. Some lakes I fish are 80-100 miles north of me. I rarely travel south.

My closest lake is 19 minutes, but between 19 and 39 minutes I’ve got 10 or so lakes I could put on. And if I expand that out to an hour I add at least a half dozen more. Since I am time limited mostly and do shorter trips, I pretty much cap my trips to that 40 minute one way distance. I also follow the 2:1 rule- I need to fish for at least 2x as long as the drive there and back. That means for the lakes 30 minutes away I need 3 full hours- 30 there, 2 hours on the water, 30 back. Of course I try to do more, but that’s the minimum.

Up until last year I lived on a lake so it was easy to launch from by backyard. Where I live now I have over a dozen lakes within 90 minutes. My GF has a second home on Keowee, about 3.5 hours away, so I head there some weekends.

With my GA Bass Nation Kayak schedule I travel up to 4 hours away. For the Bassmaster Kayak Series I've traveled up to 13 hours away. I'm supposed to go to Caddo next month, but I think I'm going to sit that one out and maybe the rest of the schedule. I'm not in tournament mode this year.