Stupid Crazy Pond Fishing

[hoglaw]

This is my last weekend on two legs. Having microfracture surgery on Tuesday and will be on crutches for 8 weeks after, so I tried to pack a whole bunch of fun in this weekend. I can't really canoe/wade right now because of the knee, but I can still boat fish and play golf so I decided to do a whole bunch of both this weekend.

I'm lucky to have access to a dream farm pond here in NWA owned by a friend's family member. Friday after work he took a flatbottom and my girlfriend and I took another and met around 6. This pond is absolutely packed with big bass and doesn't get fished except by us (and one trespasser we ran off a month or two ago that probably had 40lbs of bass on a freaking stringer). During the day the bass will lay in the thick grass and not do much at all, so we were just hoping for an hour of chaos right before dark when they start eating frogs. That had been the SOP for the past few fridays, but we had some really nice dark clouds rolling over us so I thought maybe they'd get going earlier.

My buddy hadn't arrived yet so the girlfriend and I were glad to get the jump on him. We launched our boat and motored towards the deeper grass-free area of the lake near the dam. I had us all rigged up and ready to go, and handed my girlfriend a stout frog rod with a zoom horny toad and 30lb braid. On the way across the lake, she was hanging the rod out of the side of the boat with about a foot of line...just standard casting length. I didn't think anything of it until a big one smashed her frog right next to the boat while we were running full trolling motor speed! She about had a heart attack and nearly lost my rod in the process. From then on, it was clear they were eating. We went through four packs of horny toads. 20 frogs, all eviscerated by fish. They were biting so hard and heavy that it was immediately clear to me that running out of frogs was a real possibility, so I started leaving the "cripples" in the bottom of the boat to flip over and use later. Sure enough, we went back through most of them. I have no idea what our final count was, but it was pushing 50 that were brought to hand. We didn't catch any giants by that pond's standards, but probably had 10 or so in the 4-5lb range.

I'd rather watch a fish eat a horny toad than any other top water lure. These fish were coming a foot out of the water just crushing them. Not a bad last trip before 8 weeks of hobbling around on crutches.

[ColdWaterFshr]

Oh son! How does one get a pass to this secret farm pond?

[fishinwrench]

Killer!

Good luck with the leg overhaul.

[Jerry Rapp]

sounds like a great trip! I hope you broke par in golf also! On a side note, you said you started saving your toads when they tore up. We all should save all of our torn up plastics and not just drop them in the water. I use to be bad about that, and then started looking into Robert Montgomery's writings in Bassmaster about discarded plastic baits. Now I throw all used plastics into a corner of the floor of the boat to be trashed accordingly. And also, in 8 weeks you should be in great shape for Fall fishing!

[ollie]

Sounds like a huge blast!!! Man it don't get much better than that even though you were only out there for a little while.

[jbtiwns30]

when i use the horny toad i always bring 2 packs and a small thing of super glue. saves money on the toads, unless they take out the legs on it. it works perfectly so you can keep on fishing when they dry and trust me they dry with in 10 mins.