Fishing Forum

I have been fishing my 3 favorite ponds and the past 2 weeks nothing will hit at all it's driving me nuts. The first pond is clear can see right in the water minimal weeds good foundation. I use jerk baits, cranks, artificial worms everything nothing will hit. The other 2 ponds are covered in lilly pads about 90% of both ponds. I have been using live action frogs anything that is weedless and nothing. I see huge fish smashing the water for everything but my baits. Also the fact i'm out in a boat doesn't make sense at all. Every year I catch about 50 4-6lb bass monster pickerel and now nothing. Even the past 2 months before they were hitting like crazy. If anyone has any ideas on what I can throw out there that would be great. Maybe they don't want what I have to offer and maybe I can get a idea on some new stuff they haven't seen before.
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Depending on where you are those fish could be just finishing their spawn. I live in MD and was out last weekend and there was a mix of fish. Some were still on their bed and wouldnt take a lure no matter what you threw and some were out deep post spawned but very slow. On a slow day I ended up catching 5 fish on our pumpkin craw and our purple craw. I was punching grass mats and fishing deep structure. Water was as clear as drinking water. I was out with some friends who were using our worms, lizards etc and only caugh 3 fish. The craw seemed to work better than anything.


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try more natural colors..

and try wacky rigged worms

trust me.

white spinner baits with wavefishing swimbug ... try it weight less or on a spinner bait.

look this thread and learn.

There are some good fishermen here.

If what I just said don't work..

go with very small beetle jigs.

orange or white or black.

find what they want. Real it slow almost of the bottom at first .. if no strike ... real it so fast you see a ripple on the top of the water below it.

trust me.

I catch more bass than anyone on this site.

check my profile and the freshwater fishing and bass fishing forums.

try that

AND THIS IS THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO DO


most important.

small pond? creek?

SILENCE.

creep up on those bass.

if you can see them they already have seen you and you won't catch them.


walk softly and consider yourself a sniper or ninja...

you are stalking a prey...

ok go catch some fish.

if you do what I just said in this super long post you will catch some bass.
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I'm actually out on a boat. I either paddle or use my small trolling motor. This is the first year I have had this problem which really stumps me. I have the crayfish I have the spinner baits and buzz baits I have so much tackle it's insane.The 2 ponds with just lilly pads are very shallow ponds some spots only reaching 5-6 feet i'm talking heavy cover with really big fish and tons of stuff to eat. The clear pond gets up to about 15 feet deep. This is the first year I have ever been almost skunked I can usually go anywhere and pull them out. I thought maybe about them spawning but these ponds are so over populated with fish it shouldn't make a difference. But i'll give your ideas a shot once the rain lifts up. Hopefully this will be a better week of fishing seeing how I go every single day before work and all day on the weekends as long as it's not pooring. I'll keep a update and let you know how it goes.
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You said "OVERPOPULATED" ... (*oxygen levels)

Did the pond turn over? I had a local pond that I used to wear them out at a few years ago turn over. I couldn't catch anything there last spring at all. No bream, bass or crappie. I kept going there every few weeks and ran into another fisherman I know from our county. He was hiking* past that pond to Old man Johnson's crappie pond about 300 yards further into the farm fields here.

*we fish alot of watershed ponds that farmers made back in the 50's to 70's or ones they sold the dirt off their property to make some of highway 63 with. Some of those ponds are half a mile back in the fields with no road access and you have to hike.

Well I got to talking to him and he told me used to fish this pond too and that one morning the summer before he showed up and there were fish lining the banks dead and many more up in the shallow water still alive but gulping up out of the top of the water for air.

He said the pond had "rolled" and that it would be a couple of years before the ones that survived would even be big enough to catch and I should just leave that pond alone for about 5 years and let it recuperate.

I'm not saying that is what happened to your pond or ponds but it appears to have happened to two of ours that year when we had low rainfall and high heat and those ponds were OVERPOPULATED you could catch all kinds of fish there all the time and even see huge bluegill from the bank in schools. The fish population just got to much for the body of water to sustain and they just didn't have enough oxygen and many died off.

I can catch a few 1-2lb largemouth there now and a few 6" crappie but no more bream at all and no more catfish. I just don't even go there now and won't go there again until around 2015.

Just a thought I'm throwing out there because if I hadn't talked to that other fisherman I would have been stumped as to why the fish just "quit" biting in those ponds.[:/]
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No all the fish are alive and well. You can see them everywhere bass, pickerel, crappie, bluegills, pumpkinseeds, and every so often you can ghet a glimpse of come carp and trout in the non weed pond. The pond that has no weeds a river runs in to it from a dam so it's constant flowing water in and out the other 2 ponds are spring fed. I fished 2 of the ponds today and had a pretty good day. Caught 3 nice size bass in one of the padded ponds and 2 pickerel and 2 bass in the cleared one using the crayfish method that I was told to use. I really think they might have been spawning but hopefully things keep going good. Thanks for all the advice hopefully I can land the big one this year and beat my record.
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Ive had my best luck on regular gulp or culprit red shad/tequilla worms with a plain bass hook and bullet sinker. When that fails there is a awesome wal-eye bait with a spinner and two hooks so you can use a live night-crawler and have the advantage of a real worms scents. Cork popping shinners, and worms work good for white perch(crappie) and bass when they wont bite atrificial.
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Wacky rigged senkos are my fail proof. I use size 2, octopus hooks. Just cast it out, let it sink, and then twitch your rod, it will make the worm twitch like it is a noodle. Drive's em crazy! Caught my biggest bass, of an estimated 8lbs, on a wacky rigged worm. Using the technique i just described.
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