My personal best largemouth is 18 years ago. For years now, I've hit a bit of a ceiling here. While I'm satisfied with 5-6 pounders that are 20-21 inches long, I'm not able to breach that mark. And I haven't been able to for 18 years. I've been able to upgrade new PB smallmouth several times over the past decade, but not LGM.

I know I'm on the right water. The surveys indicate good numbers of trophy-sized bass where I fish. And I've caught fish that should, in theory, be bigger now because I've been catching them for years right at mark of my PB.

I try to fish in peak times - right before a weather front, at night, sunset, prespawn, in the rain, etc.

What else can I do this season to try and net that 7 pounder/22 incher? Please don't say go to Texas or Florida either. I'm fishing in MN and the fish here don't grow nearly as big. Our state record is only 8+ pounds.

Only observations on my part and keep in mind that my MN personal best was only 23in.

Search out another body of water known for bigger LM. Change your schedule. Trophy bass, although they need to eat more, often times will seek out larger prey so they only feed for short periods. That translates to offering them larger baits. You may be missing those time periods by limiting when you go. The biggest bass in a lake have a 'home' where they spend the majority of their time after they spawn. That spot will have more than one thing that makes it attractive to them. Security, forage availability, cover and an escape route (often to deeper water). A spot, or area that only offers one or two, though it may hold good sized fish, will likely not hold a trophy sized one.

Fish jigs, bigger swimbaits, slower, and more often.

Fish the right waters, fish the right time of the year, fish high target areas, fish often, don’t be impatient, slow down with big plastics. Big bass are territorial and will move in slowly to investigate, and then spring!

Remember where you caught the smaller bass, and in what cover. If you are catching 2 or 3 pounders in grass then move out of the grass. Also, look for humps, creek beds, and holes. Sometimes the bass are too big to hide in sparse cover.

I’m a big fan of broad sweeping generalizations that help catch bass everywhere (😀😂) - with that in mind (😉) - I will offer you this small piece of broad spectrum wisdom that has caught me MANY big bass when I think about it.

Extremes are important.

Let’s unpack this.

You need to go on days when there are extremely few people on the water.

Days when it’s extremely windy. Maybe extremely calm. Extremely early. Extremely late. Extremely mid day. Find extremely dark shade lines that are extremely tight with extremely heavy cover. Extremely sunny banks with no shade.

Extremely clear water. Extremely dirty water. Extremely still water. Extremely turbulent water.

You need to fish extremely heavy gear to catch these extremely smart fish and successfully get them out of where they like to live - the most extremely heavy cover you can find usually.

Fish a lot of extremely obvious main lake structure that gets constantly hammered during these extremely unique conditions or situations.

Then you’re gonna need to master fishing extremely fast with lots of baits and extremely slow with lots of baits because big fish are very familiar with the easy peasy lemon squeeze retrieves that 98% of weekend warriors hit em with every day.

Use extremely small baits and extremely large baits - both work extremely well for big fish and usually one or the other will work best so I try both a lot.

Fish extremely heavy weights and extremely light weights.

Fish extremely shallow and extremely deep.

Extremely flat areas and extremely steep areas.

Fish the bottom. Fish the top. Mid column is usually where I catch 0-5 lbers. The bottom or the surface has produced the lions share of giant bass for me (extremes).

Be prepared for extremely long days with extremely few bites but when you do get a bite it will be extremely rewarding and even more so when you catch her.

Good luck Gim!

@gim

I know exactly how you feel. My largemouth PB came in 2008 at 7 lb 5 oz. I have caught numerous 5 and 6 lb bass over the last 18 years but exceeding my PB has eluded me. And knowing how long you have been on this forum and how long you have been fishing, I suspect you will have implemented most, if not all, of the advice given. A piece of advice that @geo g gave may slip under the radar for some, but I think it rings true. As he stated, "fish often."

The only other thing I would add is this. Fish often on a lake that is known for fish bigger than your PB. I live in northwest Missouri and there are a handful of lakes that are known by MDC for bass in the 20 to 22 inch range. Smithville Lake, which is nearby hasn't produced an 8 lb'er in tournaments since 2001. That doesn't mean they haven't been caught and not reported though. I have caught a number of 6 lb fish there. The smaller lakes tend to not have any reports about bigger fish. Over the past couple of years I have kept my eyes peeled for fish bigger than 6 lbs being caught, but only one lake in that handful has produced a reported 8 lb'er in that time. That lake is a bit over 2 hours from me. I rarely fish that lake but it appears I will have to do a lot more driving if I want a better chance at upping my PB.

Big fish have no doubt seen nearly every lure known to man, or something similar. Get creative, be different, offer them something no bass angler in their right mind would tie on; resign yourself to getting much fewer bites.

Gim, I think there's a lot of luck in catching a big bass. I feel like I just happened upon the six to eight-pounders I've caught. I couldn't go fishing right now and catch some more big girls. They're so rare and I just happened to bump into them here and there.

Heck, even four-pounders are rare for me and I estimate I catch about 20 four-pounders for every six-to-eight-pounder.

You’ve got excellent advise already, not to much to add but…

Keeping in mind my waters and seasons are different from yours.

The vast majority every new PB I’ve landed came from either site fishing individuals off beds or in heavy submerged or floating matted anything.

My equipment is matched to what I’m doing which can change daily.

From 25# flouro to 80# braid

H/F to H/XF rods with high speed reels.

All those are my sweet spots.

Point is, any more advice for reference I can give you is meaningless except for 1 thing.

Know your waters intimately and learn every nuance of each change and be ready to capitalize.

Where I fish is where Big Mama lives, what I use is dialed in because of it.

That is your key.

We all come at this from different perspectives

Timing as @papajoe222 and @geo g said

Bait choice as @GreenPig mentioned

Take advantage of the extremes as @Pat Brown explained

Find and exploit “Big Fish” lakes as @senile1 said

Be creative as @Tackleholic explained

Except in tournaments in others states I rarely fish docks, points, deeper than 15fow, creeks, rocking bottoms etc.

Improvise, Overcome and Adapt

and let your knowledge and skill take it from there.

Good Luck

Mike

My suggestion is to swallow your pride & start trolling on a regular basis.

There's only one answer, drop shot, must be fished exclusively 😛

Location is #1. However, using magnum soft plastics and other large baits will increase average size and maybe fool a giant.

Lol

Sorry, drop shots, trolling, and live bait aren't happening

I'll keep my pride on that front

Otherwise, good info thus far

I don’t know what your lakes are like so my info may be worthless. I fish highland man made rocky reservoirs. When I am targeting larger bass I go at night during a waxing gibbous moon and fish channel swings where the rivers cut into bluff ends. I use 1/2 to 1 oz jigs with large trailers. I don’t get hung up on color as long as it is living rubber in black or brown.

I keep the boat in at least 50 fow cast to the bank and fish it back. I only plan on getting 5 or 6 bites per night but none will be dinks. I don’t do it often because it is boring and no one else wants to share that experience.

I’m absolutely with @Pat Brown on this. My PB fish have always been caught on extremes. Dead middle of the afternoon 2pm bluebird sky’s when it’s 95 degrees, 38 degrees with 20 mph winds. Gotta be there when the others will not.

I’m also a big believer in early early times. Like watching the sun break the horizon early. And I believe the big girls only bite once a year. That fish didn’t get huge by being dumb. They don’t feed like smaller buck bass. She’s not willing to possibly make her last mistake for a lackluster presentation. You have to be dialed in and present whatever lure perfect

Almost always within a cast length of deeper water. Usually more like 1/2 cast.

Most of my big fish were near a deep/shallow transition.

If you were a monster bass and could bully any other fish, what spot/area would you pick?

Agree that they have "seen it all" so slower/faster smaller/bigger.

I'm pretty sure all the days I caught a trophy fish, the rest of the day was kinda mediocre. Tells me I was probably doing something really different, and the average-sized fish didn't like it.

IMO the big old girls are a different species, often skittish and sensitive to sound and movement. If you ask the question "how do my 10-20 biggest fish behave?" you might see a little different pattern there. Only one out of my top 5 were caught sitting deep casting shallow.

@gim lots of good advice, much of it I needed to hear. My only adds are 2 times of year that I think you have ignored are key big fish times. First is ice out till spawn; since MN just made it legal, it's time to put in the time. The second is the window when your water takes the biggest temp crashes in the fall. In my water, the best for me is the big crash down to 60 ish, usually in October; and then if things are normal, there will be another cold snap that usually sends the water from the mid 50's to the high 40's in a short amount of time. I think the big girls get careless as their prey is stressed out by the environment and easy pickings. Hopefully you can time it up and not miss any of hunting season.

scott

Have you looked at tournament results or master angler submissions to see if anyone has caught a 7lb class largemouth in recent history? Is it possible that 7lb class largemouth are rare up there?

35 minutes ago, 12poundbass said:

Is it possible that 7lb class largemouth are rare up there?

Oh I don't think there's any doubt they're rare.

In theory, if I have caught somewhat frequent numbers of 5-6 pounders over the years, and released them fully alive, those fish should be approaching 7 pounds now. In theory.

Maybe it's possible that the population simply hits their own ceiling at that size too, and I'm conducting a fruitless mission for big foot.

I feel that my take on big bass varies sharply from many of you. I don't believe that simply saying you're fishing for big bass means you're actually fishing for big bass. I don't even think that fishing with only big swimbaits means you're actually fishing for big bass. As I wrote earlier in this thread, I occasionally hook a big bass over six pounds and whereas I attribute it to luck, I also think it's due to time on the water. Go to Vegas and spend enough time in front of a one-armed bandit and you'll eventually win. Spend enough time on the water and you'll eventually have a chance at a big bass.

There is a cheat code and that's FFS, which finds the biggest bass for you, but being an old woman in a simple canoe, I'm content with not knowing what's out there. I like the mystery. I enjoy the hunt.

There have been times when I've posted a pic of a big bass and was told, "Now go catch a bigger one."

Nah. I choose to enjoy what I have, not continually pine for something bigger and better. And whereas I tell myself every year that I'll use my scale more, I care more about getting the bass back to breathing than some number I can share at Bass Resource. So, yeah, I'm an outlier.

I will say a shocking number of my fish over 8 were caught within a day or two of or on a full or new moon. Lots of opinions about this - but it’s a consistently observable trend in my fishing - which is primarily shallow cover oriented fishing.

With regards to “be a little different” advice - this is bigger than most people want to believe.

Simply showing them something A little different from what they see all the time absolutely is more likely to get them to bite under most circumstances.

That could mean a heavier or lighter weight like I talked about earlier in my “extremes” post.

That could mean tying your own skirts with bright blue lumiflex and putting a chromed out trailer on the back and painting the claws orange or pink.

That could mean throwing full size jigs on a lake where everyone swears by finesse jigs or vice versa.

Everybody on your lake in every tournament swears by EWG - try a worm hook. You’d be amazed what hooks can do for action and fall rate to make things “different” to a fish.

Fishing baits with no skirts only on a lake where skirted baits are very popular etc.

Sink strips or float strips for hard baits are huge.

I love spike it markers and use them for hard and soft baits to make things look a little more natural than most of the baits they see.

Don’t sleep on hook sharpeners - the big fish I catch - usually I’m on my game and my hooks are super sharp. If changing hooks on the water is easier - by all means do that - but sharp hooks is a must for when you finally get her to bite.

There's some lakes that just have a better shot than others. Here in MA there's a shot at a 5 in basically every lake, but that step up to 6 and 7 narrows things down a bit, and again for 8s. If you're hunting for a 9 or 10 you better be doing your homework and mixing and matching every superstitious trick in the book. Of my "local" go-to's there's really just a couple lakes I consider a "big fish" lake with a shot at a PB. One is very secluded feeling because the shoreline is undeveloped. Lots of nature there, tons of vegetation and cover, they stock it with trout. It gets a good amount of pressure so it's usually not a numbers lake but that shot at a new PB is there and I've broken/tied mine three times there.

The lake isn't everything but I think for us northern anglers it's important to be honest with ourselves about the lake's potential before we start trying to target a PB or else we might be wasting our time a bit. As far as baits and technique I think there's value in upsizing. Swimbaits are prevalent in MA, and giving them a larger presentation of their typical forage is a good place to start. For me that's rat baits in the summer, crawlers, larger jigs/worms, golden shiner/perch/trout baits.

Go big. Once I started doing that I started catching BIG fish.

I don't even take my own advice on this one, but...fish at night in the dog days.