Fat Boy's 2012 Fishing Pics (Updated: fall bassin')

[icin_eyes]

Nice mix of fish! 

[Fat Boy]

Went fishing yesterday.  For the report and story, you'll have to check the Maryland reports section.  Below are some pics:

Spunky...


Fat and Spunky...


My buddy Howard caught this one as a nuclear explosion went off (kidding...my phone camera takes pics like this sometimes and I have no clue why)...


I caught this one on the way back to the ramp with zero fishing time left, last desperate cast kind of thing:

[Fat Boy]

Went to BH again today, fished with my buddy Howard out of his crawdad from about 1 PM until sunset.  We started off slow, Howard with 5 bass on a plastic worm and I got one decent one on a Baby Brush Hog.  I did fish some big baits targeting tiger musky for a good amount of time, but no follows or hits.  At one point we trolled for a little while and the only action that I had was snagging and losing my musky spinnerbait in a submerged tree.  Try breaking off 80 lb. Suffix 832, it ain't easy while trying not to sink a crawdad!  My buddy Howard caught a huge yellow perch trolling a spinnerbait for muskies...pretty funny.

Around 3 PM or so things began to pick up.  I switched to a plastic worm and began to pick up some decent fish.  Again, they weren't necessarily on wood, instead cruising and feeding along the first drop off, but we did find a few on the wood.  I got one on a chatterbait at the end of the day, the only fish on hardware.  Howard finished with a dozen and I got into a zone and wound up with 21 total (19 on the plastic worm).  Only 5 were dinks, the rest were between 15 and 18" long.  Some were fat, and some were spawned out with obvious bedding wounds.  I think that for the most part, they are done but there may be a few males still protecting beds, although I didn't see any of them.  I'm wondering if some are bedding deeper because that water is still pretty clear.

There were a lot of boats out there today.

Here are a few couple pics, but my 18" one didn't turn out.  I'm ready to buy a real camera and stop using my Droid.  The Droid is OK, but not reliable.

The perch that thought he was a musky:


Howard with a decent bass:


Here's one with the black spot syndrome covering the tail:


Howard with another good one:


Takin' the shoes off, kickin' back, ketchin' bass:


Spunky largemouth:

[Raquettedacker]

Way to go Kevin....   Great pictures....   I hope to get on the water tomorrow if I get out of work early...

[Water Wolf]

Nice going Fat Boy, your having a good season sofar.
Nice mixed bag of fish.

WW

[JiggerMan]

kevin those are some nice pics of your season so far. 

I cant believe that perh took a spinner bait that big.  is that common?

Keep the picsd comming

[The Reel Deal]

Good pictures and fish!

[drobertsinMaryland]

Nice fish, looks like a good outing Kevin. I like Howard's hat.

[Goatskin]

Looks like your have one heck of a good year! I hope it only gets better for you.  

[Fat Boy]

Thanks guys, I appreciate the feedback.  Here's some more eye candy from my last trip on 6/9/12...

After spending a week at Capitol Hill for a training seminar (which was really cool by the way), I was ready for a good trip this weekend.  Howard and I planned to plop the ol’ Crawdad into a lake on Maryland's Eastern Shore for a change.  Plus, we knew that Black Hills would be a zoo.  Temperatures were predicted to be in the upper 80’s to low 90’s, so we knew it would be hot.  But, would the fishing be hot?


Our goal on this trip was to get into a good largemouth and chain pickerel bite.  In the past, chatterbaits and lipless crankbaits have been hot on both species, and I had hoped for a similar bite.  After arriving at the ramp and putting in, it wasn’t long that I tied into this chainside on a white chatterbait…it wasn’t a big pickerel, but man do they ever hit hard.


Not long after that, I tossed my chatterbait around a big deadfall and hooked into a big largemouth.  I’d say it was 3 to 4 pounds or so, but I can’t prove it, because after leaping twice despite my efforts to keep that from happening, the green bass threw my chatterbait back at me in defiance.  Yep, that big bass tore me a new one…

After that, I tossed hard baits for quite a while without another bite while Howard experimented with various soft plastics and chatterbaits.  Neither of us got into them much along the main lake, so we decided to head up the lake into the skinny water.  I really like it up there as it’s like the Maryland Bayou with cypress trees everywhere.  Sometimes the fishing can be good, and with the temperatures increasing quickly as the sun became higher in the sky, the shady cover of those cypress trees felt pretty good to us.  And we thought that the fish would like that as well.  So, with the prospect of cooler water and perhaps a little current, we hoped to get into them up there.


After tossing chatterbaits all the way up, we both switched to finesse plastics.  Well, we found the chain pickerel.  I think that I landed about 10 percent of the ones that bit, the rest bit me off or jumped and threw the hook.  Meanwhile, Howard got into a zone and began systematically thumping my butt catching one nice largemouth after another, as I kept getting bitten off or catching dinky bass.  During that time frame, Howard also lost a big bass that lept a few times and finally took to the cover and broke Howard off.  We estimated that bass to be in the 20”+ range, maybe 5 pounds or so.

Howard put on a clinic up there on finesse bassin’






After spending some time in the skinny water, we moved back out to the main lake again and worked soft plastics around the cover that we worked with the hard baits earlier.  We managed some more bass and pickerel, and eventually I was able to make a comeback.  We fished the shady woody cover and the bass were willing once again, chewing on our plastic worms like candy.  We didn’t catch a lot, we caught some quality fish.

We saw a critter swimming across the lake and determined that it was a raccoon.  We caught up to it and I tried to get a picture, but my Droid picked an inopportune moment to act up and prevent my camera from operating properly.  I cursed so dang loud when that raccoon got away that the zillion turtles nearby all ducked under the water’s surface all at the same time.  Now I was really ticked off about the way the day was going.  At least you’d think that the camera would permit me to record something!  NOT!  Meanwhile, Howard was getting quite a kick out my moment of rage, cracking up at me in the back of the boat…

…kind of like earlier up in the Maryland bayou when I tied on a new Zoom Baby Brush Hog and snagged a branch on my backcast, then after peeling that off the limb proceeded to do it again above my head followed by some foul language on my part.  As if that wasn’t enough, my next cast to a cypress tree base promptly zoomed right for the middle of the tree 10’ above my projected target, and wrapping around a tree limb.  I went ballistic.  Thank goodness that St. Croix makes stout rods because I think that I nearly ripped the tree down in my fit of cursing rage.  The lure came out at lightning speed and thumped me right in the chest.  Howard was in tears laughing, I think.

Here’s the first fish of my comeback, not big by any means, but he thought he was a 5 pounder and fought that way…which brought a measure of happiness and calmed me down a bit.


Two casts later I tied into this nice one, my biggest largemouth of the day.  This fish made me forget all about the raccoon incident.


Well, we caught some nice quality bass after that, but nothing picture worthy.  I had one more decent bass hit a chatterbait and a nice chain pickerel do the same, nearly ripping the rod from my hand.

In summary, we finished a beautiful day with some pretty decent numbers, but we worked our butt off for them.  Each of us caught a dozen bass and our share of chainsides.  I think that I finished with nine pickerel (out of a zillion bites and bite offs), and we each caught a couple big bull bluegills.  I’m not sure how many chain pickerel that Howard caught, but I believe that he caught a few more than I did.  I know that he also had a huge one bite him off at the upper end of the lake.  I tried to fish my panfish set up a few times, but the pickerel kept biting me off, so I gave up on that.  I might as well have dumped my jigs into the lake.  The bluegills were feeding on the surface all day across the lake.  It probably would have been a grand time with a fly rod and a small popper or dragonfly imitation.

[Raquettedacker]

Great pictures and stories Kevin....

[Fat Boy]

Thanks Dom!  Hey, I love that signature!!!!!!!  LOL

[muskyon46]

nice fish guys

[Fat Boy]

The Weather Channel…all week last week indicated a great weekend for the Indian Head area.  Sunny or partly sunny, not much wind…pefect.  Friday, that forecast all of a sudden changed.  They called for 15-20 mph winds out of the South, and out on the water, it seemed worse than that.  Not only was the amount of wind troublesome, but the direction was out of the South or Southwest.  That couldn’t be a worse scenario for fishing out of my new boat.  It just ain’t built for that kind of runnin’.

I took my buddy Rodger down to the Upper Tidal Potomac (he asked me to find him a 5 pound bass to have a chance to catch), with an initial plan to hit some spots on the main stem to do some cranking.  Mother nature had other plans for us, putting out 15-20 mph sustained winds all day long.  I had in mind to hit two particular spots further down river near Mattawoman, but realized that it would have been just short of dangerous trying that out of my boat.  So, we sought out more protected water, shunning Mattawoman itself knowing that there was a huge tournament scheduled for there (heard from a buddy of mine).  So, we put in further up river and only dared the main stem at one spot, but after getting soaked to the bone early in the morning, we gave up on that approach and stuck to the more protected creeks. 

Early on, we caught a few short bass but the bite was tough.  A few weeks ago, we found lots of fish in the weeds near the ramp, but yesterday it was void of fish…no bait, not the teeming life that we had seen not long ago.  It looked as if the weeds were dying, or covered with a slimy algae, weird.  No bites in that area.  We hit some woody shorelines, cranked some deeper areas near the mouths of the creeks as much as the wind would let us, and tried a variety of baits in what usually are proven spots…no bites.  We did find some fish in the creeks, but the wind made it tough to do much finesse fishing.  My hunch was that the fish were tight to cover due to the bluebird skies, and that seemed to be the case.  Everyone else had the same idea staying in more protected water, as there were a lot of boats in each of the creeks.  It was like you had to wait in line to fish some spots, so I’m sure that these fish saw pretty much the typical baits all day long.

This slab crappie thought he was a bass, inhaling my plastic worm.


Not the big blue cats of recent fame in this area of the river, but this small channel cat enjoyed munching on my plastic worm too, causing me to giggle a little bit as he chirped at me.  Deeter deeter...  The funny thing was the backs of the creeks were the most protected and easier to work finesse baits, but the bass didn’t seem to be back in there, but as you can see, the other species were there. 


Rodger with a decent largemouth caught on a plastic worm… The bass, of course, seemed to be where the wind could attack us, making finessing tough…


Here’s another tidal bass.  This one ate a chatterbait.  I fished this bait hard, with not many hits…it was like musky fishing, a LOT of casts for few bites.  I think that I tossed a thousand casts each for crankbaits and chatterbaits with not much to show for it…  At least the lures sizes gave my arms and shoulder breaks that musky fishing wouldn't.  The wind, however, man that made my legs sore leaning on that trolling motor all day long, fighting waves and boat wakes too.


…except…one giant fish made my day.  It engulfed my chatterbait along a windy shoreline, giving me a fight that I’ll never forget.  Not many fish peel drag off my baitcaster, but this one sure as heck did.


This beast weighed 14 pounds and was 36 ˝” long.  Any time you can catch a fish three feet long, it’s a good day.  Wow, and what a fight.  I’m no longer snakehead challenged.  At that point, I forgot all about how tough the bass fishing was that day.


As if the challenge of catching and landing them isn’t enough, unhooking them when they entirely swallow your lure and then killing them, as required by law, is even more challenging.  Their jaws are extremely strong.  No problem…I have musky gear, a strong pair of massive longnose pliers and a jaw spreader, right?  Well…ugh…no.  My jaw spreader was at home in my musky box, and my pliers were on the boat but apparently went overboard after going over a speed bump that I didn’t see until it was too late, a little too fast!

Where’s the chatterbait?  Too far away for these forceps to reach and out of view, down it’s gullet almost.  Rodger, luckily, had a jumbo extra long pair that helped extract the lure as I used his other pair to pry open the toothy jaw.


And then, the feeble forceps weren’t strong enough to rip the gills out, and we didn’t have a decent knife on board.  Funny thing, Rodger gave me a new knife and it was at home, still in the package.  He used his keychain knife to cut the gills out as I gripped them one at a time with the forceps.  Finally, we killed the beast…it almost looked folded up in my mega sized cooler.
 

Let me tell you something boys, this fish was 36 ˝” of solid muscle.  It was quite a thrill.  After I weighed it at home, I filleted it that night and cleaned up the bloody mess.  I’m going to blog about these things soon.  Tonight, my wife and I are going to eat this monster of the Potomac.  I can’t wait until my next time down there when I’ll be able to run the river without worrying about swamping my boat, and hit the places that I want to fish.

[Raquettedacker]

Very cool catch Kevin...