Hey guys how was your year?? 2024

bigbill reply :

I'm sorry but i got burned out early this year the heat slowed me right down. My biggest large mouth bass was 6.1lbs. I wanted to get back in the groove again but the fall and the cold weather came early this year. Now the ice is on and its just about ready. BigBill

I want to wish all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New year !!!!

I can't wait to make that first cast when the ice is off already. I'm going to go 24/7 again till i get burned out again. I just never learn.

Now remember i fish from shore most of the time to gain acess to the hot small places. I like to fish the run off from larger lakes. This is where the bigger fish seem to get trapped and grow to an unbelievable size. I was hunting after a large fish that was tearing up the pads just out of my reach from shore. She was really busy not paying any attention to my topwater stuff that was nearby in the light about 7am to 8am. I would go back at 12 oclock and at 3pm and she would still be busy in the pads. It was awesome to watch her feed. So I returned one early morning in stealth mode about 5am in the dark and setup. As it became first light at about 5:30/6am I had her miss my topwater popper and she like a guided torpedo made a sharp u turn and inhaled my popper. Now my line broke as i got her to shore so i seperated my two piece rod and caught one of the trebles on my popper very quickly before she got away. The water drops off about two feet at the shoreline and me being disabled I couldn't reach her. But i landed a 6.1lber and as i looked up the pads were still busy with something else so it wasn't her that was tearing up the pads. My quest will continue in the spring again. All I can say is those pads and weedlines sure can hold the bigger fish near the shoreline.

Now I have a suggestion also when your on the smaller bass and its a frenzy when the action slows down scan the water because i notice the bigger fish will come in to see what all the action is all about. This is the time you may want to upsize your bait and try for them but don't cast near them, cast past them and bring your lure quietly into their zone. You must be stealthy because their very smart and spooky.

Sam reply :

Fun year. Learned a lot from many people. Did not catch a really big one but lots of 2 to 3 pounders.

Working on upgrading the boat for next year.

Going to BPS this Friday for double points day and purchase two Lowrance units; the chips; and installation. Will use the points to buy another Shimano reel.

Will also upgrade my trolling motor and refigure my battery compartment to add another battery.

Here is a Christmas note to all. Merry Christmas and tight lines!

"A Silent Night" Movie - by Mary Robinson Reynolds | The MasterMinding Maven®

Sam reply :

Opps!

The correct web site for this beautiful message is:

http://www.asilentnightmovie.com/

Maybe next year I will also learn how to use a computer.

Rattlinrogue reply :

I had a good year,but it wasn't my best.I caught a lot of bass,but my biggest that I landed was around 7 pounds.I hooked and lost four others that IMO were bigger.Never really had that happen before.I've lost one or two before,but losing four was a real bummer.On the good side,I got my 14 year old to start bassin' and he caught a 7 and an 8.It got him hooked.

Marty reply :

I caught my personal best on opening day, but other than that, it wasn't a particularly good year. Probably the biggest downer was that I lost significantly more bass than in any previous year, a number of them due to rookie mistakes, even though I've been at it for 36 years.

DDbasser reply :

I had a fantastic year!!! Bought my first bass boat in April and spent the remainder of the year learning new techniques and buying euipment so that I can fish tournaments next year.

I didn't catch any real big bass 5 lbs was the biggest but I caught a lot of bass in the 1 1/2 to 3 lb range also learned to catch bass on jigs, crankbaits, and soft plastic jerkbaits.

Look out bass here I come!!!!!!! ;D

Kana reply :

this year was probably my best. after hooking up with this site i learned alot of new things that help me catch fish. my PB was a 5+ nat bad for japan. looking forward to a better year next year as i think i have a fair understaning of japanese tactic and what variations i will need to apply to stand out from everyone else and catch bigger and more fish. thanks to everyone here for making it a fansatic year. ho ho ho to the bait monkey too, he made it costly!

KU_Bassmaster. reply :

My year started off with a bang. In the month of March alone I caught more 4+ lbs (what I consider a qaulity bass around here) than I did all of 2004 including 2 new PR's. On March 25th I caught my new PR of 10 lbs. 8 oz. in Texas and then came back to my home state of Kansas, and a week and a half later and caught my new in-state PR of 8 lbs. 3 oz. I continued to catch numbers throughout April, May, and June with a few quality fish mixed in there. Then at the end of July I fianlly bought a digital camera and the 4+ lbers literally almost disappeared. Call it a curse. I only caught 5 more the rest of the year and 3 of them were on one outing. That one outing was a night fishing trip, which I also tried this year for the first time thanks to LBH. Then August came and school started and I was only able to fish about 3 days a month until October when it started getting pretty cold and school stuff was tking away from my fishing time during the weekends. All in all I call it a pretty good year. I learned to become pretty good with a crankbait which I never thought would happen. This fishing season was also the longest it had ever been for me. I caught my first bass of the year on Feb. 21 and my last on November 14. In the past my season was typically from mid-March to early October depending on the weather. I really looking forward to 2006. I think I am going to join a bass club and may start fishing some Pro-Am tournamnets and get to see what tourney fishing is all about. This past year I was really trying to prepare for fishing a tournament trail and become a more versitlie angler that way I could be comfortable fishing whatever style of the boater I get paired up with that day. The spring can't get here soon enough.

KU_Bassmaster. reply :

Oh yeah, and probably .............. well definitely the best thing I did all year was join this forum on Jan. 12. This forum really helped the learning curve.

cpt2669 reply :

This was my first year fishing. So I had a lot to learn about it. My biggest Bass was about 1lbs. I did catch a lot of crappie but I am more interested in bass. Also got my first boat at the end of the season. I got my 5 year old son started this year as well and all he talks about is fishing. Like reading all the good information on this forum. Cann't wait until spring gets hear.

Thanks and Merry Christmas and happy new year.

GobbleDog reply :

In my local club (Orlando, FL) which has a total of 20 boats, me and my fishing parter finished in 5th place overall. That sounds decent, but we were actually in 2nd place most of the year until we got skunked in 3 straight night tournaments. That dropped us down to 9th place, but with a couple of strong showings at the end, we moved back up.

With the exception of those 3 skunks, we had a decent year, meaning we won more money than we paid in entry fees. Unfortunately, gas prices probably ate up most of those profits. But what the heck, it isn't really about the money anyway.

My biggest bass of the year.... just 5 lbs.

Raul reply :

Terrible ! > , my biggest fish was 7 pounds, which I caught in February and from there not only I didn 't fish as much as I was supposed to, only fished 25 days, when at the peak of the fishing season I started the repairs of my house on my own so I couldn 't go fishing, then I moved, it 's incredible the ammount of stuff you accumulate over the years, so my house still looks like a war zone, had to lift the existing garden and place new turf and I 'm not through with the house yet. Oh well, let 's see what happens next year.

Will reply :

LOL at "I didn't fish as mush as I was supposed to..." Sorry about that Raul, but that phrase mad me laugh pretty good

As for myself I had an alright year. I never did catch that giant fish or even alot of bigger fish. I did great for tournaments and broke even which is a first for myself. I think my biggest this year might of touched 5 pounds. Next year i hope to catch at least a 7 pounder, and some more smallmouth. Maybe the ice will melt and I can catch a years pb still....

roadwarrior reply :

2005 has been my best fishing year. My partner and I caught a total of forty-four smallmouth over 5 lbs. I caught my personal best smallmouth, largemouth, walley and brown trout this year. Summer fishing was good for numbers, but this is the first year that no one on our boat landed a 20 lb striper.

New techniques for me have been eye opening. I very rarely fish crankbaits, but because of many posts here at BassResource.com I caught my PB on a crankbait in September. I have always known that jigs were a big fish lure, but I never really fished them until this year and have just recently started catching big bass on jigs. Spinnerbaits are a category I once fished, but hadn't in many years. Again, it was the posts here that got me back to this class of lures. My newest experiment is drop shotting. I fished this technique a few years ago when it was just getting some publicity, but never caught any big fish so I stopped. Well, I'm back.

My biggest producer for 2005 was the GYCB Fat Ika, especially for largemouth over 5 lbs. Number two overall, but number one during the summer, Micro Munch El Gordo tube. Jerkbaits have been my very best lure for other species. I caught my PB smallmouth (on artificials), some very nice brown trout and my PB walley on these lures. As a sidenote, in most categories I fish one brand almost exclusively, but with jerkbaits I fish several successfully: Rapala Husky Jerk & X-Rap, Lucky Craft Pointer & Staysee and Rattlin' Rogues. Two other surprises that worked for me when the usual suspects weren't, Roboworms and GYCB Kreature.

And finally, referring to the "usual suspects", they have been soft plastics for a number of years. I tried to get away from the Senko and Kut-Tail this year, but when the bite slows, these are still my go-to baits. Next year I'm going to put the Fat Ika in the penalty box for awhile. That isn't advice for anyone, I just want to focus on some different lures and techniques. 2006 is about jigs and drop shotting on structure in deep water fishing for big bass only.

basser89 reply :

I've had a real up and down year. We had a really weird spring around here and never really had a chance to figure out what the fish were doing in the prespawn except a PB (5lbs 8ozs) I got in a small farm pond. Had some mixed success during the post spawn but nothing of any size. Then summer came and for some reason, I spent WAY too much time "hobby fishing", that's what I call musky fishing. I am thankful I was able to finally catch on to plastic worm fishing and also wacky rigging! Early fall, I was able to break my PB (5lbs 9ozs), hey it wasn't by much but I did do it! ;D Had a chance to take a week off from work later in the fall but wasn't able to put any kind of a pattern together. The year isn't over completely! I still have the warm water discharge areas near me and hope to do some smallie fishing before the year ends!

Raul reply :

Ok Will, here 's something more to make you laugh a little bit more:

Went to Loonkerland in March ( I call the lake that way because there 's MONSTER BIG MOMMA basses there ), grabbed a jig, dressed it with a plastic frog, made a cast to a very bassy looking spot, the moment I lifted the jig a BIG MOMMA hit it, well she pulled I reeled in........then about 10 ft from the boat she made a jump and spit the jig on my face, man the fish was BIG ! ( caught plenty of 10 pounders and she was BIG ), the only really big fish I 've caught in months, grabbed my jig and to my surprise I noticed that the hook point was completely dull so actually I never hooked her, the absurd is that I carry a bunch of jigs and I grabbed the only one with a dull hook, and to make it worse, I hooke the trailer to it and never bothered in checking the the sharpness just because I was stupid enough to assume that the hook was sharp, duh !.

Peter E. reply :

Well,

When i look at this year in reveiw i would have to say from a fishing stand point it had a slow start and less fishing than my addiction requires, but it was a year of learning because i made up for my lack of time on the water by taking the time to read about different techniques and strategies. This year was the first year I treated fishing as a science and not as a hobby. I treated it like a mathmatic equation with defined steps and rules for varying conditions. I used the In-Fisherman FLP formula and then attacked each situation accordingly.

The FLP formula works like this:

F- Fish, under standing their behavior (feeding habits, preffered prey, seasonal changes, the effect of tempreture and so on)

L- Location, understanding the location of the fish and how it effects their feeding behavior.

P- Presentation, understanding how the other two parts of the formula effect the way you should present the bait.

Understanding this formula really increased my catch per trip, other than that I learned never to let a woman stand in the way of your fishing. I had to Brad Paisley one of em'.

Peter

Top reply :

my Bass fishing year got a LATE start... late August

After that it has been good as far as I GOT into Bass Fishing. Then the Bait Monkey got into ME

My personal best was probably about a 3 1/2 pounder but that is just an edjumicated guess... I bought TWO scales so I will be able to say for certain what they weigh from now on.

I have bought some SERIOUS gear, in so far I have bought 4 very nice graphite poles and 4 nice reels.. two of which are curados. I bought more than a normal person's share of bait, there there is the fishing buddy and the digital lip grip and now I am eyeing a trolling motor for the pay lake I go to and rent a row boat at hehehehe. I am not even going to mention the "crap" I bought because I was too green to figure out that I should buy decent stuff rather than the cheap stuff.. Its been a BLAST... my wife won't agree.. but I have really enjoyed it

I joined a local club... yes I will fish some tournaments but to LEARN not to compete.. yes I want to do good.. but the first year should be a learning year don't you agree? why should I limit myself in learning when I hopefully will have 8 or more guys helping me get better...

here is to a wonderful year.. and here is to an even better next year... HEAR HEAR!!!!

Hookhead reply :

Sadly I caught a lot fewer bass this year than last year (2004). I was able to get my boat on the water late in the year so that is definately a factor! Next year I plan to be 'on' the water more that 'at' the water a whole hell of a lot more! I just bought some fresh Yozuri hybrid and Max Pro and I'm chompin'at the bit!

chicobass reply :

I TOO WAS RE-INTRODUCED TO BASSIN AFTER A 15 YEAR ABSENCE. I BOUGHT A NEW RANGER, BOUGHT TONS OF TACKLE AND HAD A FAIR AMOUNT OF SUCCESS. I FISHED A COUPLE OF TOURNAMENTS TO GET SOME EXPERIENCE, JOINED THE FISHERS OF MEN TRAIL FOR 2006 WHICH MY PARTNER ( ALSO MY WIFE ) AND I ARE VERY EXCITED ABOUT . AS FOR MY BIGGEST, IT WAS ABOUT 4 LBS, CAUGHT ON A 1/2 Oz AIKENS JIG AT A LOCAL POND BUT CAUGHT PLENTY OF 1-1/2 - 3 LB'RS FISHING THE POTOMAC & RIVERS FEEDING THE CHESAPEAKE BAY.

GobbleDog reply :

Quote
I joined a local club... yes I will fish some tournaments but to LEARN not to compete.. yes I want to do good.. but the first year should be a learning year don't you agree? why should I limit myself in learning when I hopefully will have 8 or more guys helping me get better...

To heck with learning! Win money and bragging rights! Learning comes later.

SENKOSAM reply :

It was a year of surprises!

1. I began to ice fish in Jan. after not doing so for 10 years. I followed the lead of someone I never fished with before and dialed in to some incredible numbers of panfish using spoons/meal worms and finally only 2.5" tubes for amazing late season crappie.

2. Fished with someone for the first time that I've known for 30 years and learned things from him I would have never even imagined on my own --- and he stinks as a warmwater basser! LOL

You never know. Through watching him, I learned the amazing abilties of the simple 1.5' Slider grub (black and glow tail) on a 1/16 oz jig head. I gave him some of my handpored sticks and watched him jerk the crap out of them in open water over some weed beds. We pulled over 15 bass in one area using that simple technique. (A split shot was used 2' above the stick and the bait was allowed to die in 8' after stutter twitching.)

3. The swimming Image (by Heddon) and Frenzy jerkbaits performed excellently in spring and the Frenzy crank worked well in summer.

4. Spinnerbaits were not great fish catchers this year, but my last day out, caught a 19" pickerel.

Guess I'll have to cast them more next year.

5. Banged bass on a thick flipping tube for the first time in 3 different waters. (t-rigged on a wide gap); ditto for a jig and plastic trailer. (last time I used a jig was in 1996 with pork)

6. Caught bass and many panfish in Dec. (unheard of for me in 45 degree water)

7. Fished more waters and with more partners and even made a video for Lunkerville TV.

8. Tried out many hybrid plastics I created last winter and caught all species, all year long. Time to mold many of them in plaster for next year.

All in all, a pretty nice year.

Siebert Outdoors reply :

I actually tried to keep track this year of how many bass over 12" I caught. Ended up at 389 I beleive in mid oct. I gave up the counting but was still fishing and catching. I caught several over 5lbs, lots of 3-4s and tons around 15-16" and even more from the 12-14" range. Next year I think I will keep track again but bump it up to 14" or bigger. Overall a good year. Especially with a jig.

Lightninrod reply :

2005 has been a banner year for me . I got a new PB, this 8/11, back in Feb. I got my first ultra-lightweight rig and Bass that month too. I also replaced my old Basshunter UBHII with a http://www.f150online.com/galleries/pictureview.cfm?pnum=112849&anum=3382'>new UBHII Basshunter.

I caught my Paca Craw Bass in April. I got my first swimbait Bass that month too.

I started getting 'serious' about using Matt's Baby Bass swimbait for the first time this summer. It brought me dozens of Bass, including: a 6 lber, and this nice 7 lber.

In Aug, I caught Bass on two new swimbaits for the first time; a MS Slammer and a JR Mouse. Aug. also gave me my new http://www.f150online.com/galleries/pictureview.cfm?pnum=132520&anum=3382'>PB, this 9 lber

Lately, it's been slow Bassin' for me but I did manage to fall in the water for the first time while Bassin'. I toppled head-first right off that dock while kneeling down to fill a cooler with water. Yes, I kept on fishing and let the air dry out my clothes even though it was about 47 degrees air temp.

Gonna be hard to top 2005 but I hope to be able to try !

Dan

Marty reply :

Quote
the absurd is that I carry a bunch of jigs and I grabbed the only one with a dull hook, and to make it worse, I hooke the trailer to it and never bothered in checking the the sharpness just because I was stupid enough to assume that the hook was sharp, duh !.

Hey Raul, I mentioned in my post that I lost more fish than usual, a number of them due to "rookie" mistakes, even though I've been at it for 36 years.

I'm not glad about what happened to you, but it's comforting to know that I'm not the only_______(choose your noun) out there.

Raul reply :

And what makes it terribly sad Marty is that the first thing I always say when someone talks about lost fish is " Check your hooks, they must be razor sharp ".

Don 't know, those "rookie" mistakes must be Alzheimers or some sort of nasty stuff like that, ya know, like leaving the keys inside the SUV and closing the door with the safety on. ( done that too....several times )

SCarter reply :

Better than average year with quiet a few in the 3 1/2 to 4 1/2 range. Very rough summer here in Ga due to sweat and gnat factor. Largest boated was a 5 lb. Hooked a very nice one in the fall (fishing partner swears it would go 8) and had it spit the spinnerbait out at me right at the boat. Very sickening feeling. Partner and I fished nearly every trip this past year like a tourney in that we are going to fish FLW and club tourneys next year.

guest reply :

I had a great year. I don't want to jinx myself because there are still 2 weeks to 2005 but I did not get skunked once this year. I caught at least one keeper bass on every outing. Caught an 8lber (estimate) and a weighed 6.2 lber. many in the 2-4 lb class. Also learned to use the jig/plastic effectively which is my biggest accomplishment for this year. Developed some skill on other new techniques such as the tube bait. Also really got over going to the Senko if no fish right away. I was determined to lessen my dependence on that lure this year and did so. I am really pleased with that. Next year, I want to be able to pull more fish from the deeper water and rely less on the banks and shallows. I also need to rediscover fishing the plastic worm. I have lost some of my ability with that killer bait and I am determined to do better.

Have a great holiday everyone and an even more satisfying 2006.

avid.

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Hey guys how was your year?? 2024

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