Largemouth bass fishing

[rogan]

Over the past year I have been learning to bass fish. I had always resisted largemouth bass fishing, but it's hard to explain why. One large factor is accessibility, since I live in a state of extreme opposites. We have impounded rivers (that have filled up steep walled canyons) and created large 10,000+_ acre lakes, or we have very small man-made urban lakes 1-6 acres in size.  Both of these extremes cause access issues. There is minimal shore access in the large reservoirs, which then mandates a boat for fishing access. The urban lakes are all public access, and therefore get pounded by all the locals and fish are highly pressured after having constant fishing activity.

But I decided I was missing out on fishing opportunities and thought it was time to try my hand at a new to me style of fishing. It has been an excellent process and has improved my angling skills that will carry over into all the other fishing adventures.

I do not wish to own a boat at this time, so I would concentrate my efforts in the urban lakes. Close to home, easy to fish from shore and shorter, but more frequent trips meant I would be able to try out new things and grow into the large, and I mean LARGE, subject of bass fishing with artificials. I also considered my fishing conditions; small highly pressured urban waters. The majority of the fish are going to be smaller, 10 to 13 inches, so maybe my gear should be scaled down to target fish this size. If/when I travel to a large impoundment, I can always scale up and fish traditional sized bass gear.

And so the learning began... that giant video library that some folks refer to as a "University" got a lot of search time. I discovered information about BFS and I knew my idea of scaling down would work. I lucked out and found an ABU 2500c from a local retired fisherman who was unable to fish anymore and paired with a 2500 spinning reel I had a good start on my gear. I didn't do anything special to the ABU, just cleaned, lubed and set it up with 6lb yozuri hybrid line. It needs new bearing and isn't really good for anything less than 3/16 oz, but for what I'm doing right now, it's working very well as is. The spinner is a shimano stradic (another lucky find) spooled with 15lb braid and topped with various light mono for the task at hand. On 6'6" or 7' rods, these combos are working well.

The real fun part was picking out what lures/techniques to use. I have heard of all the traditional bass stuff: spinner baits, chatterbaits, swimbaits, plastic worms, dropshots, jigs, texas rigs, jerkbaits, crankbaits, etc... and this is where the university research paid off. I started to see that some baits were more effective in certain seasons and that angler skill in using these baits was a real thing. I found two guys in particular to be the most helpful, providing solid information about the why and the when, and even more important, they are willing to explain how to fish for bass on any budget, something not always found in the fishing world, or any other part of the world either. (A search for Matt and Tim will find these guys if your interested).

So I picked some relevant baits and armed with some techniques, I started hitting the urban lakes. And I found success. Over the course of a year I was able to catch several bass (and some cool by-catches) using several different methods during the changing seasons and conditions.  Even better, I caught some on plastics I made myself, which will be a topic for another thread on another day. So hear are photos of some bass and by-catches using underspin swimbaits, homemade worms on a shakey head, ned rig and crankbait.

[rogan]

Here are a couple more, and some by-catches

[Keta]

:0)

[Swami805]

Fishing is fishing, looks like a lot of fun

[Midway Tommy]

Any time you catch a fish it's a good day!