Ahhh yes.... the pictures... when I got back to the cabin I was fixin’ to upload’em only to discover - I forgot to put some film in my S10+ phone!?

Cocked, Locked, & Ready to Rock ?

 

Heading for North Toledo Bend State Park in the morning with a 13 & 14 yr old.

11 hours ago, Catt said:

Cocked, Locked, & Ready to Rock ?

 

Heading for North Toledo Bend State Park in the morning with a 13 & 14 yr old.

We had bad winds the last two days and a flash flood that hit between zwolle and many brought a lot of muddy water into the lake.

 

Creeks have finished flowing already so hopefully the muddy water didn't spread to bad.

20 hours ago, Dougw said:

A day like no other!!!

 

Got on the lake at 7:00. Supposed to be a nice day with a slight chance of thunderstorms. Hahaha... who says weather folks don’t have a sense of humor? Anyway...

 

Put in at BigBass Marina go to Texas side and hit Oilwell area. I look for fish on the various humps and ridges but no luck with that so I start banging the bank with a 1/4oz. One Knocker. Put one dink in the boat. This ain’t working. 

 

Lotta thunder, little bit of lightening and rain... yeah that’s gonna help. In between rain squalls I decide to head to a hump that no one knows about but me - and perhaps whoever put the brush pile on it.

 

This hump is just north of millionaires point. It tops out at 22’ and has a near ledge drop on one side. Oh yeah... it also has a brush pile on it! The 10XD will just nip the brush pile. I’m chunking it with a Dobyns 805 and pulling it back with a Revo Beast 4. That reel is kind of like a Shimano Curado 300 - on steroids.

 

On the very first cast I get hung up in the brush pile - or thought I did. I was getting ready to break out my brand new Hounddog lure retriever when the brush pile started moving! Well I’m no scholar but I do know what to do in this situation! 

 

I lean back on the Dobyns and start cranking on the Beast. For awhile there the match was a draw between me and the brush pile. Finally I started making progress taking in more line than I was letting out. I’m not sure what I’ve hooked on to. Catfish? Gar? Submarine?

 

After what seemed like hours I finally get my first glimpse of what I hooked. It’s a bass - the biggest one I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s HUGE!!!! I manage to get it in the net and in the boat. I start screaming like a frikkin maniac!

 

I rummage through the boat and finally find my scale to weigh this monster with. Takes both hands to hold the scale! Finally the scale blinks then displays the weight - 14.2#s I weighed it 3 more times and each time it settled on 14.2#s. So I’m guessing it weighed 14.2#s. I get my phone and take multiple pictures. Then not knowing what else to do I release the fish. 

 

That, my friends, was the beginning of the day like no other! For the next three hours I sat on that spot catching a fish on almost every cast. I’m talking BIG fish. The very next fish weighed 13.8#s. Of my best 5 NONE were single digit fish - NONE!!! For the record books - 14.2 + 13.8 + 12.6 + 10.12 + 10.6 + 10.1 - 71.42#s!!!!!

 

Each time I caught one, took a picture and released it I figured that was the last one. In all I caught 108 fish. None was under 6#s! Truly a day like no other!

Probably a good thing there was no film in your phone.  Pictures can’t do fish like that justice!

Toledo is still fishing really good, but Rayburn is absolutely on fire.  I’ve never seen a lake with the amount of 1-3lb fish in it that Rayburn has right now.  We caught 304 yesterday, but only 2 over 4lbs lol.  We caught fish every cast for hours on Alabama rigs, spoons, 6xds, and drop shots.  I even threw random stuff that I never fish such as a scrounger head and hair jig and caught fish.  If you have the chance to go, GO!

20 hours ago, Bass_Fanatic said:

Probably a good thing there was no film in your phone.  Pictures can’t do fish like that justice!

Toledo is still fishing really good, but Rayburn is absolutely on fire.  I’ve never seen a lake with the amount of 1-3lb fish in it that Rayburn has right now.  We caught 304 yesterday, but only 2 over 4lbs lol.  We caught fish every cast for hours on Alabama rigs, spoons, 6xds, and drop shots.  I even threw random stuff that I never fish such as a scrounger head and hair jig and caught fish.  If you have the chance to go, GO!

I used to could fish - now I can't. Well... more accurately I used to could catch fish and now I can't. Wednesday I caught 10 fish. Maybe one or two would'a been keepers. Really maybe only one and really really probably none would have kept. I'm scanning but not seeing squat. I get on the bank and beat it to death and can put some fish in the boat but there's no quality. Toledo Bend has been, and still is, my biggest nemesis. Saturday I sat on one main lake hump/point for two hours. Caught 2 14" fish. The day before I had scanned and seen nothing but fished anyway. While I was fishing a school of 4-6#fish came up busting shad in about 16 fow. No... I didn't catch any ov'em.

 

Yeah, I know what you mean about a picture not doing justice to those size fish! ? I had a lot of trouble deciding to tell that event. I started to tell what happened later in the day in the back of Housen how I had to fight off a 12 foot alligator, by chunking full 12 oz. bottles of coke at it, that was trying to eat an 8# crappie that choked a 10XD I was throwing in 4' of water. That ever happen to you? Man, getting that 10XD out of that crappies mouth without decapitating it was a real challenge!

 

Now I'm just waitin' for some ya'hoo to come along n' call me a liar! Mark my words it's gonna happen!

Summer deep water creek channels .   Is this your typical big producer or not?

Not sure if this weekend would be classified Wild & Crazy or Dazed & Confused!

 

Never could get the Tahotsu to start, so that limited us to trolling motor only. And that's if we could go out because of torrential rains & lightning.

 

I ain't going out in open water in tin boat while holding a 7' Lighting Rod & I ain't talking Berkley!

 

The about Cajuns is we ate good!  ?

1 hour ago, Catt said:

Not sure if this weekend would be classified Wild & Crazy or Dazed & Confused!

 

Never could get the Tahotsu to start, so that limited us to trolling motor only. And that's if we could go out because of torrential rains & lightning.

 

I ain't going out in open water in tin boat while holding a 7' Lighting Rod & I ain't talking Berkley!

 

The about Cajuns is we ate good!  ?

Yes we do lol.

@A5BLASTER y'all stay safe ?

 

 

19 minutes ago, Catt said:

@A5BLASTER y'all stay safe ?

 

 

Yea My dad told me he seen a pic of it on the web, maybe Toledo fishing reports is where I believe.

 

My butts been in the house all day lol. Might go hit 1215 tommorw.

Yeah... I was just south of the bridge when that storm hit. I had just finished hitting one cove and was heading for the next about 1/2mile away. I figured I had time to make the run and I did but boy howdy you didn't wanna get caught in open water when that puppy hit. Minimum 50 mph straight line winds got the lake P.O.'d in a hurry. Blew for right at 1 hour then took another 30 mins. for the lake to calm down!

@Catt. Thanks for the videos, I've watched the first 7 so far.  They are very informative, I'll probably watch them several times before my trip starts.  They talked about spoons being a good way to figure out if the fish your seeing are bass or not.  I know nothing about jigging spoons, so do you or anyone else have any recommendations for a good spoon to try?

11 minutes ago, Troy85 said:

@Catt. Thanks for the videos, I've watched the first 7 so far.  They are very informative, I'll probably watch them several times before my trip starts.  They talked about spoons being a good way to figure out if the fish your seeing are bass or not.  I know nothing about jigging spoons, so do you or anyone else have any recommendations for a good spoon to try?

War eagle 7/8 oz jigging spoon. It comes with a swivel so your line doesn’t twist,

1 hour ago, Bass_Fanatic said:

War eagle 7/8 oz jigging spoon. It comes with a swivel so your line doesn’t twist,

 

Rod, reel, line, technique

 

You ain't getting of that easy ?

2 hours ago, Catt said:

 

Rod, reel, line, technique

 

You ain't getting of that easy ?

I use a Dobyns Sierra 733 with a shimano curado E7 w/12lb sunline sniper.

 

A jigging spoon is one of the few techniques that floro really makes a difference. Most bites come on the fall and floro makes a world of difference in detected those bites on slack line. 

Deep water summer time bite is over rated sometimes lol

 

Biggest from today, ended it with a couple of good eaters and 15 dinks, had 3 other keepers come unhooked and missed 2 others.

 

My lil secret grass feild is heating up on its frog bite.

 

Brought this one back too cross check it's weight on my neibors scale to see how off my scale is.

 

Happy to say mine is still only reading 4 onces high.

On 5/26/2020 at 3:11 PM, A5BLASTER said:

Deep water summer time bite is over rated sometimes lol

 

Biggest from today, ended it with a couple of good eaters and 15 dinks, had 3 other keepers come unhooked and missed 2 others.

 

My lil secret grass feild is heating up on its frog bite.

 

Brought this one back too cross check it's weight on my neibors scale to see how off my scale is.

 

Happy to say mine is still only reading 4 onces high.

Nice fish Blaster. What’d it weigh? 

26 minutes ago, RonnieF said:

Nice fish Blaster. What’d it weigh? 

One once short of 5 lbs.

On 5/27/2020 at 10:19 PM, A5BLASTER said:

One once short of 5 lbs.

Man that water looks muddy.

24 minutes ago, Troy85 said:

Man that water looks muddy.

It was that day. But not where I was fishing.

On 5/26/2020 at 8:50 AM, Bass_Fanatic said:

War eagle 7/8 oz jigging spoon. It comes with a swivel so your line doesn’t twist,

Hope to get over to fish Toledo Bend at some point. What are the best color spoons to have on hand?

32 minutes ago, BayouSlide said:

Hope to get over to fish Toledo Bend at some point. What are the best color spoons to have on hand?

Silver if the sun is shining, gold or coleslaw if it is cloudy.

On 5/26/2020 at 3:11 PM, A5BLASTER said:

Deep water summer time bite is over rated sometimes lol

 

Biggest from today, ended it with a couple of good eaters and 15 dinks, had 3 other keepers come unhooked and missed 2 others.

 

My lil secret grass feild is heating up on its frog bite.

 

Brought this one back too cross check it's weight on my neibors scale to see how off my scale is.

 

Happy to say mine is still only reading 4 onces high.

Good fish man! 

2 hours ago, Bass_Fanatic said:

Silver if the sun is shining, gold or coleslaw if it is cloudy.

Will do...and thanks!

3 hours ago, Bass_Fanatic said:

Silver if the sun is shining, gold or coleslaw if it is cloudy.

Good fish man! 

Thank you. Not the biggest I have ever lucked up on but it was the biggest and nicest one that day.

 

Was going to go deep that day but decided too take a ride and check my grass feild, when I pulled into it the water was still beautiful and they were going nuts chasing bluegills.

 

Had too drop the trolling motor and grab the frog lol.

So first off I want to thank Catt for starting this thread. And also all the great guys that have added knowledge over the years.

 

I wouldn't know have of what I know now without this great knowledge base but.

 

Sometimes to much knowledge is a bad thing. Let me explain.

 

So I take off this afternoon, thinking I'm going to go hit this cove real quick like and then go find something deep and try for some big girls.

 

Well guess what I never leavt that cove, had a school there that was just on fire, can't even remember how many 2 1/2 to 3 pounders I landed. I landed enough to wear the paint of a kvd 1.0 crank and lose 2 barbs off the back hook.

 

I know I was in the 85 plus fish area landed when I shut it down right at dark and they were still going nuts.

 

I get home, shower up and start thinking, man if I had done this are dang why didn't I try that.

 

Then it hit me.

 

You big dummy you just brought home a 8 bass stringer of 2 pounders and nearly had a 100 fish day with a square bill crank.

 

Sometimes knowing alot can get in the way of what's important.

 

Just enjoying the fishing and time on the water.