MIbassyaker

Last week they needed something juicy dropped right on their heads. Fortunately, the old Zoom Lizard was at hand. One of fifteen cookie-cutter 15"-16"ers. The bigs have been hiding.

Five rigs in the kayak, each doing double or triple-duty: -weightless Senko- or Fluke-style plastic -Texas rig worm or creature; jig -Buzzbait, spinnerbait, or belly-weighted swimbait -walking or popping topwater; occasional jerkbait -finesse worm on head of some kind (ijgworm, shakyhead, slider, etc. ), ned rig, or tube

Best of 13 this morning at 16"....which otherwise was Dink City: To be fair, I find the day after Memorial Day holiday is often rough going.

My first fish on 5/4, after finally escaping my work/life to-do list for the time being -- a modest beginning to the year: (That's a "hot sauce" Siebert Fogy hanging out of it's mouth)

Let's try this again -- Just my luck, I finally get out on the water for 2026 in time for BR to go dark for a few weeks. Since then I have managed five ~3-hour trips. Some highlights: First fish of the year: Lots of 2-3lb action: Two best so far have been this 3.5lb and 4.15lb: The spawn seems is imminent in the smaller & shallower waters around here if it hasn't started yet. I'm going to hit a couple bigger/deeper lakes next week that may be a few degrees cooler.

My physical prime is long gone, although I'm basically healthy and still have plenty enough strength and endurance to handle the rigors of fishing. But now I'm in my knowledge prime, and that makes me a much better angler than I used to be.

You also said milfoil and coontail. Both of those hold bass better than curly-leaf pondweed. The Eurasian milfoil is also invasive, and similarly crowds out native plants, but is much easier to fish. Underwater it looks like long "tubes" with red tips, but collapses easily, so you can kind of rip stuff through it to an extent. Coontail is native and excellent to fish where you can find it. It will grow deeper than most other weeds and stay green later in the year. Has a sort of "christmas tree" appearance in the water.

I know it well This stuff is a menace on our natural lakes up here where it takes root. Its an invasive that grows super-fast and thick, crowding out the native vegetation. Unfortunately, it's not really preferred by either bass or the main baitfish species and is so thick there usually aren't a lot of pockets or spaces underneath. It makes one of my best lakes nearly unfishable for about a month in late spring/early summer. In most cases, the only choice while it is thick is to try fishing over it or around it. However, it will begin to die back and thin out before too long. By July here, it has usually thinned out enough to provide some irregular edges and openings that can be picked apart.

It's a suspension bridge with a 200-foot drop at the highest point, a grated road you can see through, narrow lanes with no divider between you and the oncoming lane, and frequent strong crosswinds. There is actually a lift service they run for people too afraid to drive across.

What has changed? Arthritis in my knee is worse and I need to lose some weight.

Oof. Forgot to set my team.

I've got a tube of the crawfish scent that's probably 10 years old, but never tried it....thanks for the reminder! (it doesn't expire, does it...?)

Boom! Congrats!

My experience simply doesn't match the feeling so many have that EWGs yield worse hook-ups compared to straight-shank and offset round bend. I notice no big differences between the three, but if anything my EWG hookups seem more reliable. I think this may have to do with hooksetting and craft stability. In the kayak, I have limited range of movement and simply cannot make a big swinging, full-body hookset as one might do on a boat deck or on the shore. The kayak also creates a lot of give on the hookset, as it moves easily in the water. Thus, even if there is a natural advantage to straight-shank and offset round bend in terms of hookpoint angle over EWGs (and I'm not entirely convinced the advantage is real), in my case that advantage is probably off-set by greater error in trying to create enough force to push the hookpoint clear through the plastic body. An EWG texposed & skinned may be more likely to get by with a hookset that is less consistently sure, and possibly better if the hookset is generally less forceful. The hookset I use is sort of quick, firm pull that, when I imagine what's happening, feels more like "pressing" the hook into the fish, rather than "slamming" it. I also use medium and light wire hooks almost exclusively with plastics, as I DO noticeably lose more fish with heavy-wire hooks of all kinds.

Ponds are open around here and the rivers are back down to more reasonable levels after the big rains a couple weeks ago. Larger lakes still have ice, but its coming off. As usual for me at this point in the Spring, the main obstacle right now is not conditions, but work/life obligations and lack of free time.