pb Big gator and pot bellied bronze

[Chrisper4694]

went out after work Thursday with not enough time to deal with the boat so just hit some shore fishing. The spinner bait wasn't getting any interest so I switched to a buzz bait.

A few casts later it gets absolutely demolished! It turned so hard as it hit I didn't even set the hook really, I just thumbed the spool lightly and held on as it drove the hook home on itself and went ballistic. Jammed my braided line into a log and proceeded to make runs digging deeper into the wood. No way it was coming out...and idk how many runs it would take to fray and break the line...so out I waded in just calf high boots.

Thankfully the fish was hooked very well and as it took a rest I was able to shake the line out of the log with some slack and tighten back up again before the gator thrashed again. It wasn't until I had the fish at my feet in the water until I realized how big it actually was. 37 1/8" crushing my previous best of 33.5"!

I hate that there are leaves stuck on the fish for the picture but catching fish from the shore of the Passaic is just a pita, so much easier and safer for the fish from a boat! I think things went well though as the fish took off within seconds of going back in the cool water. No other hits or follows but if I only catch one fish, that's the one I want!

Next up, a report from cong: nothing trolling but tons of marks and bait for the first few hours...jigged up nothing but gills and white perch after that. Slightly stumped with all the talk of good jig bite I personally thought the water was still too warm in general. So I talked my buddy into hitting the main lake points so I could cast shallow over and near the weeds.

The shadow rap worked very aggressively with short pauses immediately caught a small largie followed by a piglet of smallie with a full belly! 18 3/8". Shortly after that the sun came out and my buddy wanted to go back to trolling. Still nothing. We picked up some chicken liver and played with small hybrids, white perch and gills for a while. Hit the shallows again with the shadow rap and a crank bait picking up another decent lm bass and an average sm bass. In hind sight, should've just pounded the shallow points and weed edges all day, but oh well it wasn't my call to make haha.

[Esox Luciano]

Congrats on the new PB!! One fish is def all u need with sizes like that, many skunks going for the bigguns pays off when they're hitting though! Great lookin bronze as well! Don't u hate when you know you should be in a certain place to get a bite but have to accommodate other's intuition as well, it is only fair but damn,lol.
Great catches man and the pics are nice as well!!

[saxmatt]

Sweet pike, congrats!

[MikeNJ]

Both great fish! Congrats on your PB.

[JDTuna]

Congratulations on the new pb! Awesome gator! Congrats on the small in as well.

[Jigman13]

Good fish Chris. It's sweet when they're over 3 ft!

[AndyS]

NICE fish !!!!!