alright i'm having a bit of a problem. i live in central mass. athol to be exact. i fish mainly in athol and orange for panfish bass and trout. when i go to orange i occassionally pull in a landlock salmon. but that is always during the warmer months of the year. usually the middle of may or so to the end of august into september. i've been out everyday for the last week fishing to help with my quitting smoking cigarettes and it's working great but all i'm catching is some good sized panfish. today i seen a few small bass and tried different tactics to catch them as they were close to shore and i don't have a boat but i came up empty handed except for 30+ panfish. i'm wondering how to find the big bass that are gonna fight back when i catch them without a boat and without it being warm or during the spawning months. any suggestions. my email is michaeldhutchison01331@yahoo.com. please contact me if you have any ideas on what i might be doing wrong or how to go about my search for these bass.

Well, It is April. and its been on the cooler side. I would think that the bass will start geting more active in the next few eeks as right now.  They are still pretty much spawning. Early mornings and dusk are your best bet, the norm ya couls say, But give it a few more days, you'll get more bass action.

i went out again today for a few more hours and mostly caught panfish. i pulled in a 9 inch greyling and seen five or six nice sized bass about 14 to 18 inches or so but had no luck with catching any of them. again i seen the small ones that i've been seeing and i even caught sight of a good sized pickerel but i'm not big on them. they are too much of a hassle to get off the line with all your fingers intact you know. some of the pumpkinseeds and blue gills me and my girlfriend pulled in were between 8 and 10 inches but several were only 4 to 6 inches. and for some reason it seems that the smaller the panfish are the bigger the fight. yesterday we caught a few crappie which made my day because it was out of the norm for the lake but it was around dusk that we were catching them and mostly i've been catching one really mean sunburn because i'm not one to listen to my girlfriend or reason and i seem to go out without sun tan lotion on and no shirt since it's warm out and i just stand in the sun all day having fun pulling out the panfish left and right without finding any shade. i'm glad to see that the bass are starting to move around and come into the shallower water again but now i'm having problems with getting them to bite. any suggestions on good baits or jigs to use. recently i bought some of the blood trail hooks that seem to work and they say they leave behind a trail of a blood type scent that gets a fish to naturally go into a feeding frenzy i guess you could call it but all it seems to do is attract all sorts of panfish and small fish that don't give the same fight that i'm looking for. i am a catch and release fisher unless i catch something worth bringing home i just like to fight the fish while pulling it in. it's a bit of an adrenaline rush when you pull in that big bass you know. it's not like when you were a little kid going fishing with dad and you caught a bunch of kivvies. for an inlander who don't go out on the bay or even in that direction to do any fishing offshore in the ocean waters bass are one of the biggest fights i'll get to enjoy until i get up the money to go out on a good deep sea fishing trip unless i go to the quabbin and pull in a landlock salmon.

thanks for the advice. i'll try it out tonight before my catfishing tonight. i have been seeing the bass come into their normal bedding areas but their not clearing the weeds and everything out yet their just swimming around as if their taking up territory or something. i've also been noticing a lot of yellow perch moving towards the shorelines as well as chain pickerels and some of the smaller (6 to 10 inch) trout. i've seen a few larger trout run by the shorelines feeding on some of the younger yellow perch but haven't pulled one in yet. me and my girlfriend had several bites this afternoon while fishing on the bottom that almost pulled our poles in the water but as we reached to set the hook on whatever it was it had already let go. i'd like to catch whatever it was and get a pic to put on here. whatever it was had to be something big as it jerked my pole almost out of my hand. luckily i felt it going and caught it but didn't get a hook set. i wanna go directly from fishing for bass into the cats but i don't want the chicken livers to go bad out in the heat. once again after 4 days straight it's been pretty hot out and i'm pretty sure that after the first hour the livers would get pretty nasty. i'm going to be downloading several pictures of my girlfriend and myself with fish we've caught soon to post on here but i need to get the program for the computer for my digi cam since i lost it after i came how from being in the navy. but once i get the program for it i will put up the pictures we have of the fish we've caught. my email addy is michaeldhutchison01331@yahoo.com if you'd like to get ahold of me there. later buddy. good fishing.

Don't frett about the bass just yet they are just finhising there spawning the ones you see swimming about are the young ones. They are not actively feeding yet. I was out at White's Pond  in Concord this morning my fav bass hole just wadeing around with spinning gear saw lots of bass moving but not hitting much.

Caught a couple of little of dinks smallies water temp was only 51 we still need about a week of warmer weather once the temp hits 58 to 60 bass will go nuts. I did however catch 2 nice rainbows on a pink roster tail about 14 inch I think they where left overs from last year.

If you can find the beds the bass are in try throwing a tube bait right on top of it

and just wiggle it but not to much this might trigger an anger strike from the female.

I live near Boston I do most of my fresh water fishing around here havn't been out your way in many many years. Used to get good brook trout in the swift river on fly rod. hope to talk to you again.

Jack

.......... I fish for the moment............. Teach a kid to fish and they will teach thier's:)

thanks for the tip. any tips on crappie. i've caught a couple small ones but haven't had any luck finding them since. yesterday evening i seen a good sized smallmouth but he wasn't hiting anything i threw at him from crawdads to grubs even a red devil. but the warmer water temp is what i keep hearing about. the warmer the water the more active they become and so on and so forth.

alright so i caught my first bass of the season. yeah it was a little one and it was on a blood trail hook but it was a bass none-the-less and i got a bit of a fight out of it. we also caught about 35 kivvies and 4 perch. the best perch was about 11 inches and the best kivvie was about 9 inches. so patience is key when fishing for bass. i know u don't usually catch bass on worms and bobbers but i did today and it was a much better fight than the cat i caught the other night and all the kivvies i've caught in the past week and a half. i will be puttin up pictures of my girlfriend my brother and myself with some of the fish we've caught over the past week and a half as soon as i get the program on my computer so i can do so. if anyone is going to be in the athol orange area wanting to meet a fellow member and go fishing for a day you can get ahold of me at my email addy michaeldhutchison01331@yahoo.com and let me know when and where you'll be and we can get together and have a day of fishing. i also found out today that several of the area lakes will be getting stocked soon so there will be more fish in all of them. for some reason the fish in the fisheries weren't growing as fast as they should have been and they didn't want to put all sorts of really small fish into the lakes and have the larger ones eat them all so they had to wait an extra month or so before stocking the lakes.

i ve caught the biggest bass i ever caught b4

i have just moved to fall river from rhode island and have never fished here except saltwater at battleship cove any hints on where to go to catch some good freshwater fish around fall river or a 15 mile radious
The fisherman

kemyzt hows it goin i live in orange and allways looking for a fishin buddy i know how fussy the fish can be around here i live in orange and new to naf email coreymelanson04@aol.com and we can get together i have small flat bottom boat butt need troll moter ready to fish any time.

Bassfisher101,

 Great fishing at South Wattupa pond in Fall River, LMB,SMB,pike,musky,catfish, and many panfish, if you are into them.. Stafford Pond in Tiverton, RI  is another nice spot, very rocky so be careful in a boat until you learn the pond. It is pretty clear so you can see the blouders. Stafford is only trolling motor unless you live on the pond. Try those two ponds I'm sure you'll have some luck.