Fishing Reports
Bass Fishing at Florida's World-Renowed Bienville Plantation
Bass Biology, Tactics & Gear



Middle and South Georgia Fishing Reports

Boat Ramp at Gillis PFA's Back Pond Now Open . . .
and the Fishing's Good!

(6/14/05 Dublin, Georgia) Finally back on the water after two weeks of incessant rain. Roy and his brother Ray are heading to Detroit for the summer on Thursday, so I promised to take them fishing before they left. Despite unpromising conditions (100 º temperature, muggy air, cloudless sky), we loaded up the boat and the truck and went to test the back pond at the Hugh Gillis PFA.

The front pond is over a hundred acres, but there's a small spillway that connects that larger body of water to the ten acre back pond. The GA DNR has just finished building a boat ramp and gravel road out to the small pond, and we wanted to see what the fishing was like back there.

Considering the conditions, we did really well. (Well, they did; I got skunked.) They caught a total of six bass , five of them on worms hooked wacky style, one on a crankbait. The water in the back pond is shallow, about three feet deep, but there's plenty of sticks and trees and it's a little deeper near the spillway, where we caught most of the fish. All in all, I think this is a great area to fish, because it's more contained and a lot less pressured than the rest of the lake. Although we were banging around in the boat a lot, the fish didn't seem spooked at all.

Ray caught his very first bass, pictured above, and his mother's going to cook it and the others for them before they head back to Michigan.

Posted by Joshua Kight. Click here for a printable version.   1 comments  

1 Comments:

At 4:08 PM, Anonymous said...

thats a good fish ray. hope you and roy have fun up in detroit over the summer, rob

 

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Homerville's Guest Mill Pond: Black Water, Black Bass

Harper's South Georgia BassMichael Harper displays a 4 lb black-scaled largemouth he pulled out of the dark waters of Guest Mill Pond in Homerville, Georgia last April. The pond's dam was constructed in 1840, so it's an understatement to say the bass have had time to grow big.

Click here for the rest of the article, including more fishing and historic information about Guest Mill Pond.


Big Bass from Stuckey's Pond in Wilkinson County

8 lb Bass from Stuckey's PondOn Sunday, I caught my third biggest fish ever, weighing in at 8 pounds even. Fish was caught at Stuckey's Pond, a private pay pond ($5 per person) in Wilkinson County, Georgia. I went with Devoris and he helped bring in the fish by handling the net. I was using a senko worm hooked wacky style, naturally.

Click here for the full article including a 3-D map of the pond.


Two Fish Over 7 Pounds and a Hundred Others (Really)

He rolled on the surface and I yelled at Jeff "Get the net! Get the net!" He said, "I don't see any net." Then, I realized I had lost the net last week and forgotten to get a new one.

Here's the story of how I caught a 9 1/2 pound bass and a 7 1/2 pound bass in two hours (without a net), and, along with my buddy Jeff, a hundred small ones. The bass pictures are here and here.

Fishing Lighted Docks at Lake Sinclair

Lighted Docks at Sinclair

The last day of spring break, as it was getting dark, we decided to go try night fishing at Sinclair no matter what the weatherman was saying on the radio. The conditions were terrible: high muddy water and more rain forecast, plus cold temperatures dropping even as we pulled out of Wrightsville. But really, how could it be any worse than what we had already experienced? . . . Full article here ,including recommended lures for shooting the docks in the dark.

Sixty-Nine Bass & One Bream

Mess of Bass from Davis Pond
Jeff and I weathered a downpour, got soaked, kept fishing, and brought back a mess of good eatin'. Click here for full post.

Spring Fishing at Its Best

Santiago's BassJEK Bass FishingSaturday brought classic spring fishing. Santiago and I caught over 50 bass on Saturday. With skies overcast all day long, consistently warm temperatures, and tornado weather coming in later that evening, conditions couldn't have been better. . . Full story here

Bass Fishing Destinations

Bienville Plantation Part One: The Fishing Sucks, But at Least I Met Lynard Skynard

Many hundreds of dollars in the hole, expectation dashed, vacation fast dawdling away while we floated sun-burnt on the flood-stained water-maze of an over-grown mineral pit, our spirits hit their lowest point.

4-10-05. This post recounts bad fishing, getting lost, and meeting Lynard Skynard in those first awful days at the world-renowned Bienville Plantation. Full story here.

Bienville Plantation Part Two: Why You Should Listen to Old Men Talk About Fishing

So it's late Tuesday afternoon, and we're covered in sulphuric dust from our unintentional tour of the phosphate pits while searching for Low Bush Bay earlier that day. The sun is beating down hard at Lake Number 14, and we haven't caught any fish. Both of us are sort of leaned back into the boat, lines drifting aimlessly in the water, when we see a boat turn the corner of the cove where we had just finished fruitlessly plunking the water. There's an old man with professor-like glasses leading the trolling motor and a younger fellow in the back of the boat. In contrast to our sorry condition, they both seem happy.

Rob yells out to them, "How you doin' - caught any fish?", expecting only the familiar gripes in return.

The old professor calls back, "Oh, 'bout thirty or forty. How about you?"

We both jump out of our seats. Surely he's lying . . .

Read the full story of how we found fishing redemption at Bienville Plantation and first learned the full power of senko wacky-worm fishing -- a tactical development that has led to more fish and more big fish this spring than the rest of my fishing life put together. Full Article Here.

Third Trip to Bienville Plantation: Three Fishing Lessons

Bienville BassBienville BassBienville Bass

On Saturday, Rob and I fished at Bienville plantation in Florida again, and, before the rain chased us off the lake, we caught these two nice fish. Mine weighed in at 4 lb 11 oz, and Rob's somewhere over three pounds. All fish were caught using a wave worm hooked wacky-style. I've been extremely lucky this season in catching so many large bass, especially as compared to past years. In thinking about it, I can think of three factors beyond luck that have contributed to this success . . .

Click here for the full post.

Taking Advantage of Bass Behavior and Biology

The Sounds Bass Love, Hate, and Ignore

This article explains the anatomical basis of bass's perception of sound and how anglers can use the information to entice bites in different situations.

Bass have two inner ears tucked under the skin behind the eyes. The inner ears can detect sounds from a great distance but only at a relatively limited frequency range -- around 100 to 200 herz, or what humans would perceive as a low bass (music bass) sound. These are the types of sounds produced, for example, by a school of feeding shad. Bass also have lateral lines that run down the side of their bodies, but I didn't realize the specialized hearing role they played. The lateral lines are perceptive in hearing really low-frequency sounds, in the 0 to 100 herz range, but the lateral lines only work at very close distances (a few body lengths).

Click here for the full article.

Best Bass Bait Ever: Senko Hooked Wacky-Style

Senko Wacky StyleA Senko hooked wacky-style: best bass catcher ever? Absolutely. Works best in clear water 2' to 6' deep. Doesn't work well in dark water. Picks up and snags on woody stuff in water, like sticks or branches, so avoid using in those areas, but it's surprisingly weedless. Any color with red or red flakes has worked best for me. This post and picture is here.

All About Hydrilla

HydrillaHydrilla was named after the Greek beast the Hydra, seen here. When Hercules cut off one of the Hydra's head, two grew back.

What to Fish With in Hydrilla
History of Hydrilla in Southern Waters


Insect Sprays Repel Bass

From Keith Jones' book "Knowing Bass" -- Bass hate the taste of insect repellent ingredient DEET and they can taste less than one part per million of DEET mixed into their food. A single application of insect repellent with DEET to the hands can contanimanate your lures enough to repel bass for ninety minutes of longer.
Here's a link to Jones' book on Amazon.com. This article repeated here.

Zoom Speed Worm Shortage?

Last year Zoom introduced the Ultra-Vibe Speed worm. This is just a regular speed worm with a slit in the back paddle. A lot of people were cutting the paddles themselves because this increases the vibration of the paddle as it is retrieved weightless on top of or just under the surface of the water. But that's not the way my friends and I fish them, so when a sales person at Bass Pro Shops told one of my friends that Zoom would be discontinuing its old speed worms . . . Full article, ihcluding where to get remaining speed worms, here.