The Airbnb Bass series has been a slow burn on Jon B's channel for nearly a year - the host renting Airbnbs around the country because the listings happen to have fishable water on them - and this week the format finally graduated to renting an entire ranch. The property in question is the Red Magnolia, an East Texas ranch with cattle, blue bonnets and one small, shallow, clear bass pond that paid for itself in a single afternoon.
"Is renting an Airbnb for just one day to fish a private pond worth the money? Today we find out," Jon opens. "Welcome to the Red Magnolia. We are out here in East Texas right now and we're going to explore this beautiful landscape, this parcel of land that not only has cattle, blue bonnets, but also of course hopefully some big largemouth bass."
The selection criteria, as on every Airbnb Bass episode, came down to a single photograph in the listing. "Like I said in the listing, there was a picture of a pretty decent four or five pounder," Jon said. "So, I'm hoping to stumble upon one of those." The pond itself - shallow, clear, grassy, with a bluegill base feeding everything else in the water - looked exactly like the farm ponds he grew up fishing in Illinois.
The opening sequence was a sight-cast that nearly worked too well. Jon threw a 'soon-to-be-released' Googan Gizzy Glide across a school of bluegill being hunted by a visible bass and watched the bluegill themselves chase the lure. "Oh my gosh, dude. He's clapping bluegill," he called. "This fish is so jacked up chasing bluegill right now. The bluegill chasing the bluegill. That's how good of a bait this is that the bluegill think it's their friend."
The sight-cast didn't convert, and the second cast almost cost him a face. "Almost killed myself," he said after a bass speared at the glide without eating. "I have never almost taken off my own face with a frog."
A one-pound bass eventually opened the score - "Our first Airbnb Bass. We can officially say that this pond has got some decent fishing" - and Jon stepped down into a finesse rotation with a 5-inch Lunker Log. The reasoning, on camera, was that a small clear private pond is still a pressured pond. "As much as I think that they probably would eat the gizzy glide right now, the water is probably not right for it," he said. "It's very clear and this is a tiny pond. So even though it's a private pond, I'm sure it still gets pressured."
The second half of the day was a bluegill session built around his daughter Mila's tackle box, which had been left in his truck. "My daughter Mila left her tackle box in my truck. In here are all the necessary tools for blue gigging fishing," he said. "We've got bobbers, grubs, jigs, you name it." The session produced a hammer-grade bluegill on an ultralight rod and an open question about whether the fish in the pond are regular bluegills, redears or hybrids. "Asher and I were trying to figure out what exactly what type of bluegill these are. If they're just regular bluegill or if some of them are hybrids."
The end-of-episode scoring, a fixture of the format, gave the Airbnb itself a 9 out of 10 and the pond an 8.5. "This place is beyond cozy. This would be a great place to bring my daughters, my wife, or maybe if you've got daughters or sons or family, this would be an awesome place to bring a small family." The pond scored a half-point lower for being a little shallow and a little small - but, in Jon's words, 'we caught the heck out of them.'
The wider pitch is the same one the series has been making since it started: that small private water rewards finesse, that an entire ranch rental can be justified by a single listing photograph of a girthy bass, and that an ultralight rod with a six-year-old's tackle box can carry the second half of an episode when the bass shut off. "This would be a great place to bring your kids, the youngans, to just experience fishing," he said. "Like, no better place to introduce someone into fishing because the fish are there. They're willing to bite."
*Source: Jon B., 'I Rented An Entire Ranch Just To Fish This Private Pond!,' published 18 May 2026.*