What a great site!  I'm a life long salt water fishing guy and I've been reading this site like crazy to learn about fresh water fishing.  We just moved to a new neighborhood and our house backs up to about a 20 acre retention pond. I finally got to fishing it this past week and there's pretty decent fishing there.

So far I've caught quite a few catfish, some crappie, and some bass.  I see gar there also but I haven't tried catching one yet - I'm little put off by those teeth!  I'll have to man up and try to catch one though.

Here's a picture of a bass (LMB?) I caught the other evening.  It measured out to 15 inches.  Any idea how many pounds this might be?  He looks pretty fat and well fed.  I've been catching bass, including this one, and crappie on plain old Johnson silver spoons. 

I've tried using spinners and topwaters and have only had a little success with spinners.  That Johnson spoon has worked the best, although it may be because there's a lot of shad in the water.  I even caught a 2+ foot channel cat on that spoon by jigging it near shore.

Thanks for reading - it's been a fun learning experience so far and I have a loooong way to go.

Here's a crappie I caught, also on a Johnson silver spoon.

Welcome. The bass may weigh 2 lbs.

i'm gonna say 2.9