New Personal Best plus some other fish

[Farmer Ted]

Caught a new personal best largemouth yesterday...20" (beating my old record of 19.5") all in all not bad from a small heavily pressured public pond.

The fish hit an XPS "walk the dog" type surface lure (like a lucky craft "Sammie") it actually hit and missed one time so I threw the lure back out there and walked it, the fish hit again, missed and then finally got it. It was a very tentative hit for such a big fish.

I can't believe how cold the water is in these shallow ponds still...not even 70 degrees yet, yow!

I lost a freakin' monster that hit a buzzbait in the same pond earlier this year, biggest loudest hit I have ever seen and once it was hooked, I could not turn it. It buried itself in the thick weeds and managed to get off, I really wonder how big that one was.

Anyway, here is the 20 incher and another pic of a 17" smallie I caught earlier in the week as well as a few other largemouth and smallmouth pics from the year so far. The smallmouth have been killing 4" texas rigged plastic worms and the occasional x-rap or lipless crank. Largemouth have been on to various surface lures, 6" plastic worms, senkos, and spinnerbaits.

All fish were released, Enjoy.

20" Largemouth




17" Smallmouth




15" Smallmouth



19" Largemouth





I also caught this screwy trout on a deep suspending crank at my smallmouth spot, I;ve never seen anything like it. Does anyone know what it is?


I can't tell if it's a rainbow without a stripe or some strange hybrid or what.

[k0diak]

Those are chunks man! Very nice!!

[coldfront]

Nice fish!  I know sometimes it feels a little silly posting pics of 'only 20 inch' fish on here with all those guys down south hitting on those florida strain largies...but 20" is a pretty darned good fish.  Would be here in metro OMaha...

Beautiful fish...thanks for posting.

That trout might just be a brown...can't really tell from the photo...

[Mike Garrett]

Can't tell what it is either...nice fish anyway and some very impressive bass.  Nice job!

[HogMaster]

Nice job Ted!

[PaulRoberts]

Nice fish Reno. Sure is nice to be out.

That's a brown. Looks like a stream fish though. Usually stillwater fish are chunkier. Is there a stream attached by any chance?

[mikenestle]

Definately a brown trout.

[Farmer Ted]

Yeah, the more I looked at it the more it looked like some kind of bleached out brown. No stream attached to this little lake. I have caught other browns out of this place and they have a more typical yellow/brown color. Anyway, thanks for the comments.

[PaulRoberts]

That pale (metallic) coloration is due to it's being oriented in open water away from cover. They can be pale metallic in turbid water too. If they are pale but not metallic (dull) they are heat stressed.

So if this pond gives up browns, then it is spring fed, which would limit bass and trout to certain areas of the pond. I have one like this, and all the bass are shallow, all the time. The bottom in this 10 foot deep pond is a chilly 55 in summer. Certain sections of weedwalls can be a chilly 58! No bass there!