June's best bass

[SMDave]

Hey all, just thought I'd share my pb for the past month of June with the only people that give even a semblance of a crap about my fishing accomplishments/achievements :LOL2:. Caught in a TINY pond -- I can nearly cast to the other side with a 1/2 oz. Rat-L-Trap -- at a local park (Barbara Smoyer Park, for any other central Jersey locals). Never weigh my fish, but if I had to guess, I would say that it was probably in the 3-4 lb. range. Feel free to prove me totally wrong, however! Never been a good estimator of weight personally.

I was only there for about 30-45 minutes & landed three fish total. I hit this pond periodically and always purely just for fun -- never in the pursuit of hawgs; there are tons of little dinks (1-1.5 lb. tops) that are always super hungry and willing to bite. It's the kind of body of water where realistically, you never need (or want) to use anything other than an ultralight setup. On any given day, you're pretty much guaranteed to land at least 2-3 fish within the time that I was there for. Didn't know there were fish of this quality in there at all though, so landing the big momma was certainly a nice and welcome shock Just might have to stop at this pond more often and for longer! Best part is that it's less than ten minutes from keys in the ignition to having my line in the water.

Time: ~ 7:00 PM EST
Conditions: Clear skies
Air Temp: ~ 74℉ , slight breeze
Water Temp: Unknown. Water was surprisingly clear for having rained pretty hard the day before however
Water Depth: The entire pond is super shallow, and these fish were hooked right by shore in less than a foot of water
Lure: 4" Yum Dinger in Watermelon Pearl. Fished weightless Texas-rigged on a 3/0 Trokar TK110 Offset EWG worm hook, slathered with garlic Megastrike attractant. Been snelling ALL of my hooks recently (I've been experimenting with straight-shank flipping hooks as of late, even in standard Texas-rig applications) and feel my hookup ratio has definitely improved quantifiably
Rod//Reel: 7' ML/Fast Field & Stream Tec-Lite Spinning Rod // Okuma Stratus ST-30 Spinning Reel
Line: 8lb. Seaguar Inviz-x Fluorocarbon
Number of fish/weight: 3 x Largemouth Bass (2 @ ~1 lb., 1 @ ~3-4 lb.)

Thanks for taking a look!

-- SMDave

 

[onthewater102]

Been an off year up in CT too - very few people on my local forum are seeing fish in the 4lb - 5lb class at all. Candlewood Lake, which regularly makes the top 25 bass lakes in the country in Bassmaster is seeing most 5-fish tournaments won with bags of less than 12lbs when usually it takes 18-20 to win there. Very unusual.

2015 PB for me thus far is 3lb 12oz on a green buzzbait out of <1 FOW on the inside edge of a patch of lilies in the middle of the day when just the open water strip between the lilies and the shore was shaded. Pulled my 2nd best on the year out of the same location same bait a few casts later, a mere 3lb 7oz...pitiful. Last year it was a disappointing trip out if I didn't have at least a few 3lb + fish, this year they've taken the place of the 5's last year.

We're pointing the finger at the insanely late ice out (mid/late April) and the very rapid warming to an early to mid May spawn...the whole year has been very strange.

 

[JL8Jeff]

Nice! With all the rain we've had, the river has been up and stirred up so I haven't made much of an effort. I went out Tues after the rain to change gas tanks and made a few casts into the river bank since it's up in the bushes and caught a couple of 13-14" smallmouth which really surprised me. I was using a cracked Mann's crankbait that no longer floats but suspends due to the water that has leaked in. :lol: I need to get some new gear