Big Indiana Bass

Flying In the Face of...

Wisdom, the facts, popular opinion. You fill in the blank. I was at the store picking up some tackle at lunch today (like I need more) and bought a couple spools of line while the rebate is still in effect (last day). I wanted to try and get some fluorocarbon line in heavier test ratings to play around with, but ended up buying some copolymer line instead. Despite all the rave reviews and the incessant virtues extolled by many, both from the companies and their devout users of fluorocarbon, the data continues to suggest at the very least a big misunderstanding of the line and it's properties, if not some blatant false advertising. I came across the follow-up review of 14 brands of fluorocarbon lines as retested by the Tackle Tour website. I've also had a friend personally test these properties and come to the same conclusions:

1. Fluorocarbon is not low stretch. It stretches as much as regular mono or copolymer lines in most cases.
2. Once stretched, fluorocarbon retains a certain amount of deformity that mono doesn't
3. and finally, regardless of knot tied, you'll be lucky to get 80-90% of the lines actual breaking strength, probably less. 
4. Oops, one more. NO, fluorocarbon is NOT invisible! I have copies of the long and torturous physics calculations to prove it ;)

The article: Tackle Tour's Fluorocarbon Showdown Sequel

A Lesson In Boat Control

The weather report took a turn for the better this morning, so I headed out around 1PM to Waveland again to catch the Jr. Bassmasters weigh-in. Got there an hour before they were to come in, so I launched and fished around the ramp for the first 45 minutes. After watching the weigh-in, I headed back out to try and catch a few bass while the getting is still good. The skies had cleared and the wind was blowing hard, to the point of white-capping on the main lake open stretches.

Normally in your typical 2000 pound, low-to-the-water fiberglass bass boat with a 74-101 # thrust trolling motor, wind isn't a big deal for most. Today was sustained winds of 16-21 mph, mostly out of the west. Fishing open water structure can be a challenge in these conditions, and those with poor boat control get knocked out of the way and relegated to calmer coves pretty quick, even in big rigs. This is magnified tremendously in a 750 pound jon boat with high sides. You tend to get blown all over the place, kind of like a sailboat. So the challenge today was figuring out a way to manage proper boat control under those conditions, while still being able to make the needed specific casts for fishing open water isolated structure. After today I think I'm getting much better.

First a word about what is happening out there. Shad are about 3/4-1" long right now and schooling out in open water, just outside main lake weedbeds and over shallower structural elements. You can see small bass that bust these schools quite regularly at the moment, but they are isolated fish, not packs like what will come later. The pic to the left shows what this looks like on your depthfinder. You'll see the loosely swimming shad school circled up top, with a pair of bass trailing underneath. Whenever you found this situation you could drop a tube right down through the school and hop it a few times, and most times you'd get whacked by a bass. Turns out though that none of the bass caught this way were keepers. That will change eventually as some of the good fish relating to structural elements closer to shore get pulled off them and start following the shad in groups. I'm not sure of what the exact trigger is in this scenario, but the shad getting a little larger size might be a reasonable guess as to when the bigger fish start following. The shot on the right is another group of shad, one of the larger schools I saw today and grouped a bit more tightly as demonstrated by the greying in of the school.

Given the wind today I did a lot of cranking. I still love throwing the old Poes cedar crankbaits because of their great ability to be thrown into the wind. When not windy you can throw these things a mile which is good for getting these things down to their maximum diving depth. The other bait I threw was a 4.5" tube rigged Texas-style with a 5/16-oz. sinker. By throwing directly into the wind you can actually fish a drop bait fairly well. The trouble usually happens when you throw cross-wise against the wind and your line starts to bow. Then you lose your sense of feel and bad things happen. In total I managed about 34-35 bass, the best one in the pic to the left. Ignore the candid quality of the photo that comes courtesy of the auto timer function. I really only got to fish about 4 spots in the short time I was out there. One of these days I'd really like to get about 8 hours in on this lake and really move around on the holes. Maybe later this summer...

The State of Fish Tracking: 2008

Blackwell Synergy just provided free access to a paper discussing the current state of biotelemetry from their March 2008 issue of Fish and Fisheries. It is a pretty exhaustive review of where we've been and where things are headed. The article can be linked to here: Enhancing catch-and-release science with biotelemetry. It has tons of references to nearly all tracking studies that have been published in the various scientific journals.

We have mentioned a few tracking studies here at Big Indiana Bass before including Melissa Kaintz's smallmouth study and Jed Pearson's Wawasee study. Another interesting study is happening up in New Hampshire right now at Lake Winnipesaukee concerning tourney caught bass, and I also recently gave details for the Alabama release study going on at Lake Martin (see "Tournament" archives). Indiana is also starting to get in the game big time with some radio telemetry studies of their own. They did extensive work in 2007 with Hybrid Striped Bass down at Monroe, and have continued the effort in 2008 with a Walleye tracking study currently underway. One other really cool telemetry study worth mentioning was the 2003 Kentucky crappie project. As the technology develops it looks like we can look forward to many more such fish movement studies in the future.

A Little Rust Won't Hurt

Or so you'd think. Admit it. If you looked through most tackleboxes you will probably find a few crankbait or worms hooks with some rusting or corrosion on them. It happens. You're out in the rain fishing, a little water gets into your Plano box. Maybe you put away a still wet lure. Hey, hooks are expensive and you think it's just a little rust and it largely rubs off with a good towel. Looks like new again.

That's what I thought until last night. Got out for a couple hours after work with a friend chasing walleye. We were using 1/8-oz. jigheads and crawlers. Some of the hooks on the jigs have a little rust, but no big deal. I've got cranks with the same and have never had a problem, even a worm hook or two that has spotty rust from all the salt in plastics now days. The learning lesson started when I got a big, solid "thump" on my jig and leech. I set the hook, the rod doubles over and I think I'm hung on a stump...until it starts moving slowly. I keep the pressure on but he really runs me around a stump. Still have some play in the line so I work with him and get him unhung. I now figure I have a large cat hooked at this point. I decide to put some pressure on him as he continues to try and go back down toward the woody debris I just freed him from. I decide I'm not going to let him - I keep the pressure on. Two minutes into the battle the line pops and goes limp. Crap!

I reel in expecting to have lost my jig and snapped the line. To my surprise I haven't. Instead the hook has snapped, breaking off halfway down the shank. Later that evening my friend gets hung on a stump, applies enough pressure trying to free it and his line pops. Reel in to find the same deal, another snapped hook. Now, is it just that we're applying too much pressure to the hook and it can't take it, or is it weakness from the corrosion on some of these jigheads? Remember the pictures I posted in my hook testing study earlier this year? The break came right where the shank flexes to try and absorb all the pressure being applied at the bend. So I can't say for sure, probably a combination of both factors, but it has my attention now more so than before. Just something to keep in mind the next time you tie on a bait with a little rust on the hook. You might be setting yourself up for disappointment.

Found a good link to rust and corrosion as it applies to fishing hooks. It is an Amazon book preview. Some pages are missing, and it might force me to buy the whole book to get the entire story, but even so, it makes for an interesting read. The book is entitled "Hook, Line and Sinker: The Complete Anglers Guide to Terminal Tackle." You'll want Chapter 11: C-o-r-r-o-s-i-o-n Spells Trouble starting on page 413 if the link doesn't take you right to it. You'll also have to put up with highlighting unless you click around on the site a couple times to remove it.  

More From Chicago

Another very interesting presentation from the 2008 Chicago NALMS Conference. This one entitled "Tournaments, Fish and People: They All Need Good Water Quality". The presenter was Hal Schramm from the U.S. Geological Survey, Mississippi Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit. The title is a little misleading in my opinion, so don't let that fool you into not checking it out. It is largely a look at the status of tournaments in the U.S. including their evolution, how they've grown, and their positive and negative impacts (both real and perceived). It's pretty short at just 11 slides so it makes for a quick read.

Damn This is Fun

Back out to Waveland this afternoon for a few more hours. Was curious to see how well things were holding after weekend traffic and tourneys. Arrived around 12:30, just in time to get launched, run across the lake and get caught in a thunderstorm. Sat it out in the corner of the lake while it poured. Fortunately it blew over quick and I had brought my rain gear. Cleared out nicely after the storm though. Even pushed quite a few boats off the water which didn't hurt any.

So I captured some graph pictures to give you an idea of what I'm referring to. This first one is a shot of a main lake area where I'm graphing what I believe to be bass in an "activity zone" (click all pics to enlarge). This is a pretty quick way to try and get an idea of what depth you need to be fishing, or at least it makes for a really good range to start in on a lake you might not be familiar with. With the cloud cover and heavy rain, these fish were a little shallower than what I had found on Thursday under pretty high sun and hot conditions. In this particular shot you can see the activity layer is right around 7'-10'.

So once you figure out the activity zone, which BTW should only take about 5 minutes of graphing across any main lake or primary cove mouth, you then want to start looking for structural elements that coincide with the appropriate depth. In other words, structure that tops out at or breaks very near the exact depth of the fish you are graphing. Here is an example of one such area on the lake that I graphed and caught a picture of. You can see coming out of about 10-12' of water, I suddenly encounter a nice break that tops out at 6' before dropping back into about 8' of water where it then gradually sloped up the flat into shallower water. Areas like this act as both migration routes as well as stopping points for bass filtering out of the shallows on their way toward deeper water. In this case I just swung out and around to get lined up on the break and then threw parallel as well as at a 30-45 degree angle across the drop. Sometimes the angle of the cast can make all the difference in the world as to how many bass you'll catch. You really want to first understand how the structural element is layed out, and then you need to try different presentations from different angles to figure out how to trigger a bite. BTW, this spot was loaded with bass :)

So the final tally was another 38-40 bass, of which nearly 30 kept. Shad are continuing to filter out toward the main lake and were much more prevalent, both on the depth finder as well as visually. A few isolated bass starting to bust on the schools, but these are mostly smaller fish right now. The better fish are still grouped on the structure spots. Interestingly, drop baits worked as well as crankbaits today. I caught a lot of bass on both. On one spot I caught 10 nice bass on soft plastics in just 15 casts. Some of these spots are so small and specific, if you can throw repeatedly right on top of them it is almost guaranteed you'll get bit. They were really popping the drop baits when they hit, too. Very fun. Of course the crank was faster, especially on the deeper areas or on sections that are a little larger and might run for a length.

Speaking of cranks, just an opinion here but a post that caught my eye on another board. The question being how do you set the hook on crankbait fish. Lots of guys sound like they let the fish do the setting, or don't like to put much pressure on a bass at all. I say hogwash. While I don't drop and set on a crankbait fish like you would a worm or jig, once a bass has engulfed my crankbait and I realize it, I like to put a good heavy swing set on his butt. Really get that rod doubled over and some pressure to the fish. From there you can play him however you want. For some reason people think you don't set hard with trebles, and I'm not sure where that comes from or the reasoning behind it. To me, you need to put some good pressure on the hookset with trebles. You're only applying 'X' amount of force to the fish on any given hookset, and with trebles, that force is divided by the number of hook points in his mouth. Unlike a jig where if you hit him with 10 pounds of force on a single hook, that is what translates to the fish. On a crankbait, if he has 3 of the 6 points from two trebles in his mouth, then that same 10# force is divided by those 3 points (in principle), ultimately resulting in just over 3 pounds of force per hook point. So I say swing hard and double the rod over. You'll land more bass and look real impressive all at the same time. 

Not Kentucky Lake, But Close

I'm having a hard time coming up with a name for this post. A couple ideas that crossed my mind were "Don't laugh at old men in jon boats", "Quick, buy a lottery ticket", and "Oh My God". Given the recent Elite Series event down on Kentucky Lake where guys were flat whacking them on ledges, along with some recent posts on another board/forum about how Indiana fishing sucks compared to Kentucky, I decided on the name at the top.

Every once in a while everything just falls into place and you can do no wrong. Rick Clunn referred to it as being in a Zen like state where every move is the right move. Most other sports refer to it as being "In the zone". I tend to refer to it as a timing bite, just being on the lake in the right places at the right time. Sometimes lakes just "turn on", if only for a day and show you their potential. I'm guessing there is a little more to it than that. There were several boats out on the lake today. I'm sure they all did OK, though I don't know that for sure. But on to the details.

Lake Waveland: water starting to clear, weeds up nicely, water temps hovering at 79-80 degrees and just a slight breeze on occasion. Perfect conditions for a little jon boat to sit out in the open and fish ledges and drops. I got the clue right off the bat heading over to my first spot to try. Saw nice groups of fish that were graphing large enough to be bass stacked up every time I came across mid-depth structural elements. After seeing this a couple times I just stopped on the first area that fit this profile. Pulled out a deep running crankbait, fired out a cast and started to reel. The rod loaded up! Sweet, nice bass right off the bat. Next cast, same deal. and again, and again. Had a friend pull up and watch me put the first 5 or so in the boat. He quickly tied on a crank, us being basically boat to boat on this little area, and he lays into one on his first cast. Between the two of us we hit about a dozen bass. I have my 5 fish limit (a theoretical baseline - all bass being released immediately) within 15 minutes. I started at 2:15 and it is now 2:30 PM.

So I know what to do and start looking to repeat the pattern in other areas. Next spot holds nothing. Third spot I catch two. The I hit the fourth spot and load up. On to the fifth spot and it's a repeat of the fourth. I'm actually catching doubles on my crankbait. I'm up to about 25-27 bass at this point. I decide to change up and throw the frog in the mats. I do this for about 1/2 hour and catch 4 or 5 and miss several blowups. This is slow and tedious, and the quality isn't there like the open water fish. I move around just graphing and come across a neat spot that fits the profile. Fire out the crank and it's on again, cast after cast. The bite slows after a dozen more bass or so, so I move again.

This spot I drove over by accident the first time through and didn't stop because another boat was in the area and I didn't want to show anything. This time I'm alone on the area. I throw for a bit and don't catch anything. Oh well. I look up at the weedline and it runs funny. I remember catching some real nice fish here years and years ago (like a decade), so I run over and graph. I find what I'm looking for and back off and cast. First cast loads up. So does the next...and the next, and the next. I sit here for nearly an hour and can't remember going more than two casts without a bite. Another 35 fish or so - the motherload! The bite finally slows on this spot too. I'm past my stated ending time by an hour. I wanted to leave by 6:15 (4 hours) but I finally call it at 7:15. So I get 5 hours on the water and end the day with 68 bass, 53 of which are keepers over the 14" limit. One of the best days I've had. Interestingly this lake also holds my personal best record of 107 bass in one trip from about 3 falls ago. This trip beats it on quality though.

One of the interesting observations is the number of bass with melanosis. I've got one example in the pics above. Easily a dozen or more with heavy markings. Another cool thing is how some areas (or maybe some bass) never change. These spots I'm fishing are for the most part spots I've fished and won lots of tourneys off of going back 15 years. Same lake, same baits, same line ups, same spots, same results. I can see how "community holes" become that way. Also neat in the fact that fish keep repeating the same patterns year after year. So while we're not Kentucky Lake, I sure as hell felt like KVD out there whacking schools of bass grouped up like they did this past week down there.

Great Sunscreen Protection, and a Few Fish, Too

Got out for 3 hours late yesterday. Decided to try and chase big fish. Spent the first two hours throwing nothing but a 12" worm and a DD-22 in water 10'-15' deep. Covered a decent bit of water moving along slowly just following the contour of the bottom. Did manage to catch 4 bass this way, but they were all 15" and less and all came on the crankbait. After 2 hours I decided this wasn't going to work, so spent the last hour going shallow with a frog. Caught another half dozen this way which was fun, including the days best in the pic. Learned a little more about the lake layout by going this route, but in hind sight I probably should have just concentrated my efforts on known structural elements. May not have changed the outcome anyway.

Do want to get a little product plug in, though. As much as I realize the importance of using sunscreen, I still hate putting that stuff on. The best stuff I ever found was some version on a towelette that you could wipe on and that actually felt good doing so. Not greasy, slimy, or heavy. Recently my wife picked up a can of spray-on sunscreen. I didn't have high hopes at first, but after using it several times now this stuff is pretty darn good. Goes on extremely dry and light. Easy to rub in. Doesn't feel greasy at all. And actually works. Coppertone Oil Free Sunscreen Lotion in SPF 50. Advertised as a quick cover lotion spray, I usually spray in small amounts directly onto my skin or hands and then rub in. It's fragrance free and waterproof. If you haven't found a good sunscreen yet, search this one out and give it a try.

As an aside, here is a good site for Sunscreen Facts - straight to the point with just the specifics and great reference documentation.

Those Evil Tournaments?

Here is a link to Gene Gilliland's presentation at the NALMS 2008 Chicago Conference held April 29-May 02 at the Holiday Inn Chicago Mart Plaza. Gene is Senior Fisheries Biologist with the Oklahoma Dept. of Wildlife Conservation. He also contributes to several Internet forums, and has an "Ask the Biologist" page on the BassZone website which is centered down in his neck of the woods. In this talk Gene covered the common issues with tournies including delayed mortality, fish relocation, impacts at the population level, perceptions vs. reality, access issues and financial impacts.

THOSE EVIL (?) TOURNAMENTS

Know Your Aquatic Vegetation

The grass is starting to grow on many lakes, at least the ones that aren't flooded by crazy amounts of water right now. Understanding which type of aquatic vegetation you have can help lead you to better bass fishing. Here are the links to a simple picture guide from the Midwest Aquatic Plant Management Society that covers the most commonly found "weeds" in our waters.

Plant Reference Chart (Pg. 1)

Plant Reference Chart (Pg. 2)

Happy Days Are Here Again

Hey, most days on Waveland are usually happy ones. Got the chance to get back out there for just a few hours (<3) Sunday afternoon. I stopped and spoke with the gate attendant on the way in. She said the heavy rain last weekend brought the water up over the road and causeway leading into the ramp. It actually forced an evacuation of all campers in the back half of the campground because they weren't sure when the water would actually recede back to normal. As it turned out, it was a pretty quick drop.

I arrived to find the start of good weed matting, only slightly high water levels and a pretty good stain. Not much traffic on the lake today though which was a change from yesterday according to the attendant. Water temps have risen into the upper 70's with all the recent high temperatures. If the weeds are matting you have to pull out a frog bait of some sort on this lake. They're not always biting on top but you can usually manage a few fish. Turns out the frog bite was a pretty decent call. Managed half a dozen in the hour or so I threw it. Man what a fun bite! They were crushing it pretty good, too.

I'm chucking this bait on 65# PowerPro and a 6'10" MH rod. Like any other bite you have to figure out just where in the mats the fish are. Some days they are way back in them, others they are out on the edges. Sometimes they're in the thickest crap you can find and other times they are sitting under small open pockets. The faster you can figure out their exact placement for the day the better off you are. There is a lot of unproductive water out there when the weeds come in good. The other key of course is that you usually have to give the fish just a couple seconds to engulf the frog and turn down before setting the hook. Misses are fairly common, some days being worse than others. This is why you also need at least a MH rod due to all the vegetation you'll tend to bring in along with the bass.

I wanted to look around and find another bite or two since I had one of the Jr. Bassmaster contestants with me, scouting the lake for their final tourney of the season later this month. So we went looking for a little bit more open water bite, something a little deeper. So out came the worms and jigs as we scouted drops and weedlines. We ended up finding two more good areas holding fish willing to bite drop baits. Texas-rigged worms and jig-pig combos were both pretty productive. Some of the jig hits were downright aggressive, the line getting "popped" and jumping big time. There was no mistaking the bite. Worm bites were a bit subtler, often feeling like getting caught in the weeds. You had to apply pressure until you felt the fish move or the weed stem tighten.

In the end we finished with about 2 dozen bass in under 3 hours, 8-10 of which were keepers. One of these days I'll get out there early enough to put in a good 6-7 hour trip. I think the topwater bite will just get better as the water continues to clear. Not a lot of rain in the forecast this week so perhaps next weekend will be the magic day. 

Back Seat Bassin'

Back when I started fishing tournies here in Indiana there was no such thing as a Co-Angler. Everybody was either a boater or a non-boater, and you were all competing against each other for a single set of checks. Non-boaters tended to have the toughest road to haul because they tended to get relegated to the back of the boat, though others would get right up front with their anglers and both rub elbows from the front casting deck. Boater-boater pairings were settled with a flip of the coin and brought their own set of difficulties, like who's fish to go to first. Obviously the boater who won the coin toss would try and also push for starting on his water. Ah, the good old days.

Somewhere around the late 80's B.A.S.S. started up with their Top-100 Series of tournies, where non-boaters fished against other non-boaters for their own set of checks. I fished one of those on a place called Chickamauga Lake in Chattanooga, TN. All non-boaters in those tournies were relegated "by law" to fish and compete from the back of the boat. It actually evened the playing field to a large degree on both ends of the Ranger. It took a while, but out of those first tournies eventually evolved the now well-adopted Angler/Co-Angler format that is so prevalent today.

This format has made a science out of being a non-boater. One of the best anglers to adapt and succeed at that format right here in Indiana is Rod Yoder. Rod has won more than his share of tournies from the back of the boat and is pretty forthcoming with many of his baits and techniques. He has his own little tackle website where he sells a lot of the stuff that he uses in tournies. I've mentioned his jigheads before thast I like from an efficiency standpoint when bank angling. Here are several links to his tourney wins and tactics:

IBF Inv. 2005

Bassmaster Series Regional Win

Bassmaster Nat'l Championship

BFL Monroe Win