Hi fellow Hiveians,

Today I wanted to share some pictures of the fish we've been catching lately!

The Year of Smallmouth

This year has been an interesting year for sure, weather wise. We've had a pretty good amount of rain and it's been a little annoying for a few reasons but one of the main ones is that it hurts our fishing time! With all the rain, we get less time on the water! It's much better to be dry when you're out on the water.. likely you don't appreciate what that means unless you're a fisherman :D. Being out in the rain isn't ideal when it comes to fishing unless you do it for your job. We do it for fun, so it's not as ideal to fish in the rain haha.

In the times that we have gotten out though, we've had some pretty decent luck thankfully! I don't know if that's because the fish are extra hungry since they aren't getting the tasty morsels from the land dwellers like they normally do or what, but we've been having some fun when we are able to sneak out a few hours on the water!

What's been very interesting is that this year so far, we really haven't caught that many largemouth bass! I don't know specifically why that is, but I suspect that the quantity of rain has something to do with it. The largemouth bass are usually a warm water species, where they prefer the warmer temperatures from the sun and water to the cooler ones. This has worked out at any rate though, because there are plenty of other fish around to bend the rod!

We've caught a few of these bass. Some call them black bass, others call them calico bass, and yet others call them something else I can't recall at the moment. Whatever the hell they are, they are a bass and they are pretty fun to catch! They fight well enough and they are always hungry. Their favorite snacks are the shiners we get from the store of course, because it's legit fish. They are known to bite some of my other lures though, the fake ones. They are almost like the bass-version of pickerel, in that they are always hungry and always biting something!

We've not caught many perch yet this year and that's okay in some ways. I would certainly like a few more perch though, they are a fun fish to catch! They are very smart and aggressive, where they will strike at your lure or shiner in a certain way to try and get the morsel off it without getting actually hooked. It works sometimes and thankfully doesn't work most of the time. It's a decent fight too! Even the small ones give the pole a nice bend which is good. The little man loves to get these, as they are less common than sunfish but they are usually always willing to bite a line with a worm on it, whereas bass really aren't too interested in something as small as that most days.

The real winners of the year though are these freaking smallmouth bass! These things have been amazing! I haven't caught this many smallmouth bass in my life I don't think! Most of the time when I would fish with my dad we would be catching all largemouth bass. This year though, it's the year of the smallmouth!

I am not at all complaining, let me get that straight lol smallies are such a good fight! They do all kinds of aerial flips and shit, and it's quite a lot of fun to watch them do their acrobatics. They are however more of a "cold" fish, in that they prefer the cooler waters. This is usually why we don't see them too often, where we go it's a bit warmer and the water is usually filled more with the largemouth. I think with all of the rain that we've been having this year, it's led to a real boom in the ability to catch the smallies and my son has definitely been enjoying that aspect!

What's interesting is that we've been to our normal spots of the year, where we would catch predominantly largemouth bass and we've caught mostly smallmouth or all smallmouth! I find it very interesting, because I didn't realize that they were living here as well. It certainly makes sense when you think about it, but if you don't catch a specific fish much in an area, you tend to think that they are just not around. Not the case with this it seems! Lol. They are hanging out alongside the largemouth, just being pickier about the weather it seems! We also caught out first fish while it was raining which was interesting. We never caught fish when it's raining, I know that some people swear by it or hate it. We've tried it but haven't had luck until tonight. I wouldn't recommend it too much, because all our stuff got pretty wet but it wasn't that bad.

He's caught the biggest smallmouth bass I've ever pulled in in my life this year too! I've fished for several decades at this point and I've never caught a smallmouth bass this size! I was so excited too, because he caught it, not me! I've caught a lot of the fish and let him reel it in so that he gets a piece of the action but this fucking monster here, he cast his line out and caught this heffer all by himself! I was so proud of him and you can probably tell that the picture he is smiling ear to ear, so excited for that giant fish he caught hahaha. I tell him all the time that he's caught the biggest smallmouth bass I've ever seen in my life and he gets a big kick out of that, but he better believe it's true!

It's shaping up to be quite a decent year for fishing, even though we've been getting a significant amount of rain. I can't complain about that too much, with catching all these beautiful smallies!

^-CmplXty. _{Real human written content, never AI.}

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