Pond Boss Forums FISH & FISHING Sunfish-Including Largemouth and Smallmouth Bass How to catch My Florida lmb on live bait

Not to derail this thread, but here is one take of fish with respect to bleeding, unhooking, handling, etc.;

https://midcurrent.com/experts/how-well-do-fish-recover-from-being-foul-hooked/

When I was removing the circle hook and looking back, I should have cut the line or kept the fish, even though I saw very little if any blood.

Quote "In the top Florida bass lakes, I'd bet over 80% of the bass over 10 lbs are caught on live shiners" (captain Jamie Jackson. West Lk Tohopekaliga FL) - by Steve Quinn, In-Fisherman Magazine pg 20-24, Jan-Feb 2020, 'Shiner Men Talk Big Bass'. It is a very good timely, how to article of talking to Florida bass fishing guides for using shiners for catching bass. Article also has an insert showing Hook Removal for swallowed hooks. Article sections: Collection & Care of Bait, Rigging Up, Location, and Conservation Concerns.

Thanks Bill for the article and thanks everyone for your advise.I'll see how good I am after this weekend! Hah!

Shiners or trout are pretty much a guaranteed LMB in my experience. Shiners are a lot less expensive than trout of course. I've dropped shiners and trout in together and watched LMB ignore the closer shiner and bee-line for the further away trout.

Most of the guides I know down in FL this time of year take customers out and use live bait. They give them the option to use artificial lures, but they tell me most opt for live bait because they want to catch fish.

Well,wife and I fished pond yesterday for about 3 hours with live minnows for LMB. Did not catch a one!! On the bright side my cnbg are plenty large enough to eat a 3 inch minnow. We caught several that were in the 10 inch range and weighed one pound!! Every time one would hit and run with it I swore it was a bass!! Lot's of fun but not what we were looking for. I know there are huge monster Florida bass in there and that adds to the excitement every time I put a bait in there. I just need to live long enough to CATCH one of them!!

That's strange, I've always thought LMB were some of the easiest fish to catch. you might want to try to catch something else and pretend to ignore the bass, then you wont be able to keep them off of your hook.

I would give another shot at it. Here we just went through a week of cold nights and cool days and yesterday was a high pressure bluebird day but did see some cloud cover late evening. As you already know, lmb will/can go into a lock jaw mode after the types of weather changes we have seen this past week.

I've seldom found that if a live minnow or shiner was near a bass, that it WASN'T going to be eaten!!!!

That's crazy, Flame!!

Hmm... I think you're gonna need bigger bait!

Can you use 3-4" BG?

I will be trying again. I'm not guiving up that easy. And I need to catch some small bluegill to try!

Yes cold fronts can put fish off feeding. They can go into deeper water and sulk especially in winter probably even in Texas. Wait for several warm days and higher or increasing barometric pressure. What is your water temperature?? Fish again a couple times later in the month when water get closer to 65F.

Bill is right and here's a bit more info from my days fishing saltwater with live bait. We'd just use a hook, no weight. Only time we used a weight was to get the bait deeper than you'd ever need to in a pond.

Hooked under dorsal fin - baitfish swim closer to the surface.

Hooked under the anal fin - baitfish swim deeper

Hooked thru the lips - fish swim wherever they want to, you can set the hook quicker because predators eat the fish face first, and there is less chance of pulling the hook out of the baitfish when reeling it in to cast again.

Have you thought of just trying a large nightcrawler on a bare hook with nothing else ? If you have the right tackle and a big enough crawler you should be able to cast it with nothing else. Just let it slowly sink and hang on!