Big Indiana Bass

Go West Young Man

Met my buddy BJ out at the 'Coon for a little practice time yesterday. It had been several years since I bass fished out there, most of my time being spent chasing crappie the times I have gone this past year. After today I might have to rethink that approach.

We fished from 8:30-2:30, neither of us being much of a morning type person. Kind of scary what might have happened if we had shown up at 5:30 a.m. like most bassers do. Then again, we had a good layer of heavy cloud cover hanging around for most all of the day which acted like an extension of a morning bite, so it didn't really hurt us too much. Loads of traffic out on that lake being a holiday weekend, especially since everything got rained out Saturday and moved to Sunday, including the fireworks.

We ended the day with 11 keepers and about half a dozen shorts. Spent a lot of time mixing it up and covering water and just trying to figure out some stuff. Caught fish on both topwaters and underwaters ;~) When the boat traffic picked up along with a good breeze, we were able to catch several on spinnerbait also. Never really slowed down enough to toss slow baits as that wasn't the primary game plan. Ended up finding four good areas with concentrations of bass, enough to be able to move around in the morning and yet still be able to set down later if conditions dictate. No giants today, but absolutely nothing wrong with a double limit like the chunks below:

Friday Evening Tourney

I've been promising to fish a local jackpot tourney with a neighbor of mine for about a year now. I finally got around to fulfilling that commitment this weekend. The local lake has started up a jackpot tourney on Friday nights and with the Holiday I happened to have the day off. Based on my field trip that morning to 'Lake X' I was actually looking forward to fishing this one and seeing if the new 'plastic' would work on this lake. Bad news was that my neighbor's Statos had a broken trolling motor cable that hadn't been repaired yet from it's failure the previous weekend. As such, we had to fish out of the little tin rig with the 10hp engine againast the field of 'big glass'.

After registering my partner drew boat #3 from the chip can. I told him it didn't matter because we would be the last boat out. There was no way I was putting the tin can in the middle of a field of trigger happy shotgun bassers. When the starter called our number we just waved from the dock where I was tied up and chatting with another friend who was heading out for some hybrid striper fishing and another who was just getting in after bluegill fishing with his grand son. After everybody cleared out and the water settled down we fired the Merc and headed out.

First spot we pulled up to was a long point dropping off into the main basin of the lake. We started on the end of the point and worked our way around one side. My partner was throwing a jig and I had on the new plastic. Wasn't long before I felt a bite and swung on what turned out to be a nice 2.5 pound bass. This particular tourney has a 3 fish limit and all bass must be over 16" in length. First fish in and a solid keeper to boot - a good way to start. The new bait is looking impressive.

We hit a couple other spots to no avail before moving to a little drop that falls from about 9' into 16' with some trash in one particular stretch. Again the new plastic comes through after about 15 minutes on this spot with a very solid 3.5 pound bass. Two good bass in the well with just over 2 hours to go. Darkness is setting in so I decide to go shallow to see if anything is happening there yet.

I start chunking a buzzbait around rock and weed shoreline cover and start getting bite after bite on the buzzer. Problem is they are almost all small. They're not blowing up on the bait either, rather just sucking it in. This results in quite a few missed fish or fish that are lightly hooked and end up coming off. A couple appear to be pretty close to the 16" size limit but there isn't much I can do about that. They're just not hitting it well and I didn't pack any trailer hooks. What appears to be a bigger bass blasts the buzzer right at boat side as I go to lift it out of the water and short lines me. Our limit fish quickly escapes us - argh!

We move back out to deep water where we pick up a short fish or two but time is runing out. Finally with just 15 minutes to go we decide to buzz one more bank not too far from the marina. I get blasted on a rock point by a fish but it's another dink. Guess it's just not our night. Ten minutes to go and my partner is ready to call it. I say lets just work up to a dock I can see about 50 yds. ahead of me. We get to the dock, I buzz both sides of a large log I know is sitting there to no avail. I swing the nose of the boat out to get around the dock and head out. There is a small 10' opening between two boats, one tied to the dock and one just down. There is a nice little clump of weeds that edges a drop right along the bank that the pontoon boat is nearly covering. I know it's there because I shore fished the area a week ago with the little Touchdown worm and caught 7 bass from the small area. I can't hardly see a thing because it's almost midnight, but I fire one last cast to the bank and start the retrieve.

Two cranks in and a big fish explodes on the bait. I say big fish because it sounds like one of those bites where you'd swear someone threw a brick in the water. I can't actually see the fish but within seconds realize it is a nice fish by the way it is bulldogging. My partner hears the commotion as I tell him to get the net and a flashlight. I fight the fish to near the boat and we're hoping it's not a big ole' catfish. The fish finally surfaces and the light hits him - it's a nice bass!

I get the fish somewhat close and back on top and my partner does a big stretch job to get the net under him, still one hand holding the flashlight, the other the net. We get him in the boat, my partner unhooks him and pops him in the well and says "Let's go! 6 minutes to check in". Fortunately we're within a quarter mile of the marina and we make our way across the water and get checked in with a minute or so to spare. Coming across the water I can feel the old tourney competition juices firing up.

We get our weigh bag, load up with water and slip our fish into the sack. We know we've got a couple pretty solid fish and a halfway decent chance at a check. We check the board as we turn our bass over to get bumped. A little over 8.75 is leading. Ahead of us another team weighs in a solid sack at just over 10 pounds. I know we don't have that beat with our 3 fish, but can we knock off that 8.79 on the board? The guy bumping our fish says no need to check any of them on the board, they're all obviously above 16". The weigh master takes them and moves to the scale - the moment of truth. The digitals settle at 9.33. After a couple more guys weigh in the results are final. We lock up 2nd place out of the little tin machine. The winnings buy my wife and I dinner tonight and allow me to place an even larger order for more of the new plastics :)

Lake 'X' Field Testing

Made a trip over to 'Lake X', one of our field testing sites that we use to test "new" baits, develop and refine techniques and check out setups. I also got the chance to bring Asshat along as repayment for some of those river smallie trips he took me on this spring. Bite turned out to be pretty good, and I learned a few things in the process. Even on a less pressured test lake the bite can go bad at any given time based on the fish and the conditions just like any other lake, or the fish can become conditioned to the presentations they do see regularly.

First fish of the day and real early into the trip was this nice 20.25" beast. Didn't bring any scales but based on length and overall body condition he had to have been pushing the 5 pound mark, perhaps a few ounces shy. I'm not complaining either way. My next best was a 19.5" fish that was also very solid. Both those bass came on a relatively new bait I'm testing around here so I'm sworn to subtlety and lack of details at the moment :) I can tell you it is a fairly new plastic bait just hitting the market and gaining some popularity in other parts of the country. Can't wait to try it out on some other reservoirs around here now based on what I saw yesterday.

Not to be outdone, Asshat had another beast of equal or larger proportions just slam a big spinnerbait. After maintaining grip of his rod and some strong runs that tested the drag system of his 20 year old Shimano, the brute cleared the air as best a big fish can and spit the bait back at him. It was going to be released anyway, and Asshat was happy with the experience in general :)

Beyond that we had several 16"-18" fish on topwaters along with the other baits mentioned. Don't think we had anything on jig or deep crankbait though. All told a great way to spend 4 hours of my day.  

When the Old Becomes New Again

A few weeks ago, KVJ was hanging out at the qualifier on Brookville when one of the better sticks on L. Waveland ran into him and got to chit chatting. At some point he looked in KVJ's box and saw a certain colored Poes crankbait and mentioned that that particular bait was the "hot" bait over on Waveland right now. When KVJ told me that I just had to laugh. What are the odds that an 18 year old kid just happened to have the "hot" Waveland color of a particularly old bait? Pretty good if he fishes with me a lot - LOL.

Bass fishing is a funny sport. We all like to figure out a secret bite, or a hot color that the competition hasn't quite dialed into yet. I'm no different than anyone else and that mentality is a big driver for why I still fish as seriously as I do. When we do figure it out, however that comes about, we'd like to believe that we've found something new. In reality, much of what we do is nothing more than the old coming full circle and being "new" again.

I started fishing tourneys on Waveland about 20 years ago, and began to get really dialed into the bite out there a few years later. Back when KVJ was celebrating his first birthday and still crapping his Pampers, my partner and I were whacking the competition on Waveland in the days of double team limits and a declining fishery. We were often accused of cheating, but we simply put in our time and figured out a couple bites that the competition hadn't. We also learned the lake like the proverbial "back of our hand".

One of those bites was the deep crankbait bite, and we threw those exact same colored Poe's baits back then. They were the "hot" baits at the time, but others before us that we learned from did very well deep cranking with a particular color Mann's 20+. We were just more specific with our presentations, trying to replicate the approach of one deep cranking newcomer to the national tourney scene, David Fritts.  Having been tipped off to this bite last year by others who've fished out there with me, guys getting on Ebay and buying up these "hot" baits now as well as using other deep cranks aren't doing anything but replicating what us old timers knew was a "hot" bite out there over two decades ago. And, of course newer baits like the Strike King series of cranks and Rapala's DT series work well too, it's just that everyone has those baits because you can get them right off the shelf of your local tackle store, and they're new and they're popular. That's one reason why some guys are taking these baits and getting custom paint jobs on them. Still, they do catch a lot of fish right out of the box "as is". I guess my only gripe is with those out there now pretending to have discovered this "new" bite.

The cool thing to me is that the crankbait bite is still just as "hot" in 2009 as it was in 1989. Even cooler is that the specific holes, or more correctly the "spot on the spots" haven't changed over that same time period. Guys try and get all secretive and place brushpiles out there now days, but those brushpiles really just get in the way and detract from what is actually holding the fish there. Fortunately the brushpiles break down and disappear after a few years. In the mean time, they're easy to find and I'll gladly add them to the GPS unit and fish them for bonus bites while they're still attractive to fish.

My long time tourney partner, Bryan Johnson, and Jim Huguenard, his draw partner for a tourney on Waveland today just reiterated the above point. Jim caught his first ever Indiana limit and Bryan was right there with him, the boat combining for nearly 22 pounds of bass today (2nd and 3rd place respectively) fishing some of the same "20 year old holes" I showed to Bryan. The best part for Bryan due to his work schedule is that he didn't need to take any time off prefishing or burn up any weekend time with the family. I simply gave him some lineups and marked a few spots for him and the two went out there and executed. BTW, Josh McDermott ended up popping the boys for the second year in a row out there ;) I showed Josh a few spots out there last year, but from the sounds of it he didn't need much in the way of deep spots as the shallow water morning bite was on, and Josh is a shallow water specialist.

Speaking of shallow water, a lot of guys don't realize just how easy it is to figure out where you need to concentrate your efforts when hitting a lake. Everybody gets all wrapped up in the dock talk and the patterns and get to hopping here and there, but 10 minutes with a graph would be so worth their time. The screen shot to the left (click to enlarge) is one from Waveland today and is pretty self explanatory. When you see shad schools balling up and trails of marauding bass sitting out over the drop and in intercept position, good things begin to happen. The key though is focusing on the depth of all this activity, in this case 6'-8'. Fish aren't pinned down on the break, or slid down toward the bottom of the drop. They're all up and active. This shot was from late in the day when the boat traffic had the shad pushed down, but you can bet it was an even shallower zone of activity first thing this morning before the boats started piling in. Bottom line is that within 10 minutes of hitting the lake, you could have easily determined that most all the good stuff was going to be coming from shallow water today and then adjusted your game plan appropriately. It would have been really easy to fish too deep today and miss out on all that activity if you weren't paying attention. Take home message is time spent idling is time spent wisely.

Father's Day Trip - Lake Barkley (Monday)

My wife and I just got back in from an extended weekend trip down to Lake Barkley, Kentucky over the Father's Day weekend. I had purchased and set up a guide trip for my father, and it was a good excuse to make the long drive down to visit family. We went out Monday morning from the Lake Barkley State Park Marina where I met Dave Stewart of Bass Buster Guide Service. The following are some comments and observations from the trip.

The first thing I noticed right off the bat was how incredibly quiet Dave's 200hp Evinrude E-Tec was. I've always been a fan of Johnson/Evinrude engines, and when Bombardier bought them out and retooled the line up, I paid extra to make sure I got one for the Triton. Dave was in a 19'10" Ranger and that Evinrude was a heck of a power plant. I never actually GPSed his running speed, but needless to say it was a very impressive ride. I'd certainly be looking into one myself should I ever decide to get back into a larger boat.

One of the next things I noticed that I thought were really cool were the rod sleeves Dave used on his outfits. I'm not sure if his Ranger rod lockers had built in rod holders at one time or not, but if so they were removed. The brightly colored sleeves were actually called "Stick Jackets" and worked like a charm. They're extremely flexible and no-hassle when it comes to sliding over your rod blank, and affordable on top of it. Again, another item I'd be looking into should the need ever arise.

On to the fishing. We were the recipients of a blue sky, 97 degree day with barely a breeze in the air. On top of that, we never had the Corps pulling water while we were out, so as you can imagine, the ledge bite suffered. The fish were definitely there as witnessed by Dave's Lowrance 520c, mostly grouped up in about 16'-20' of water, but they certainly weren't in a feeding mood for the most part. The one good side to that, if there is one, was the lack of wind and current meant the lake was nearly dead calm and made running everywhere a pleasure. 

We started out fishing some main lake and secondary points adjacent to creek and river channels. I got to throw a super-sized shakey head setup to begin. This was pretty cool as the custom 5/8-oz head had a built in 6/0 hook and was rigged with a straight tail worm of about 10" or longer (I didn't actually measure it). Unfortunately a problem quickly surfaced as Dave told me to slow down and stop moving that worm so much - fish slow!

Anyone who has ever fished with me knows that fishing slow really isn't my style. It's the reason I almost never fish worms in the first place, though I've gotten a little better at it over the years. Still after a couple reminders on the first spot Dave took away the shakey worm from me :) 

So on the next spot I get to instead throw a football head jig. Sweet - this I can do. "You need to slow down. This is the draggin' technique", Dave quickly scolded me. Now in all fairness, Dave just wanted me to catch fish and was being helpful, and perhaps this was one of those "when in Rome, do as the Roman's do" kind of things, and I swear, I tried to slow down, like painfully slow for me. So we were both trying to do the right thing, but me and slow just don't go together. Call it a character flaw. If Dave got to collect a dollar for every time through the trip he reminded me to slow down he would have made a nice little pot of money on the side.

After the first several ledge spots it was obvious that bite wasn't happening, so we moved into some creeks and fished worms around some isolated cover areas for late post-spawners. This garnered us about 8 or 10 fish, but they were all small. We moved around trying to find some larger fish but it just wasn't happening, plus Dave was probably getting tired of me getting hung up in the brush from fishing my Texas rig too fast in the cover :) So we rolled back out onto the main river to see if they had staretd pulling current yet. Nope. Damn!

Back into another creek, but this time we started checking out ledges farther back into the creek but that wouldn't necessarily be reliant on any current generation. With about 2 hours left in the trip, Dave finally triggers a bite on his super-size shakey head. The fish actually bit half the tail off. Good sign.

Dave rerigs and throws back in and gets bit on the drop. Very good sign. I'm no dummy and immediately get the lineup down and wing the football head jig to the ledge. I get to move it a few feet when I get popped and set the hook into a decent fish. Now we've got something going, a group of fish that has decided to move up and feed. Finally.

Dave's job of finding and triggering the bite now done, he puts his rod down, keeps the lineup and lets my Dad and I have at it. My Dad is chunking a Carolina rig while I stick with the football head. My Dad gets one, then I get a couple more, then we double up. This is what I was finally waiting for and was the kind of bite I was hoping I could get my Dad into. We work the spot for nearly an hour, but the bite dies down about 30 minutes in. Still, it was a frenzied half hour and really lifts everybodies spirits up after toiling for 5 hot hours in the baking sun. As we head in it's all smiles after that flurry of activity that boats about 15 or 16 decent bass between us.

At dinner that night, plans are already being drawn up for another trip with Dave, this time in late spring when the big females are up and the weather is a little cooler. Stories of big fish and lots of them when they move into the "yellow flowers" has the wheels turning, but for now I'll just sit back and enjoy what was a great way to spend a couple days of "down" time.

What Triggers A Good Bite?

Like many anglers, I don't get in too many weekday trips except when fishing from the bank. I catch my fair share from shore, but I am obviously limited to particular spots that I just have to try and make the best of while maximizing whatever potential they offer. Today however, I was able to sneak out in the boat to the local reservoir for about 3.5 hours this afternoon. Conditions were pretty conducive to catching bass, at least most guys would tend to think they'd be biting. Heavily overcast with the threat of rain, just a light breeze, warm and muggy. Combine that threat of rain with a weekday traffic pattern and things are pretty good from an anglers perspective. We saw two jet skiers, one panfisherman and only one other bass fisherman. This meant we basically had the lake to ourselves, along with all the "good" holes.

The end result was a pretty decent day with about 30+ bass including several nice fish and one real solid one. This is a lake I fish regularly, have caught hundreds of bass from there already this year, and yet have only caught one other fish of this quality from it in 2009. They are obviously in there, so was it just my time? Were weather conditions just very amenable to a good fishing day regardless, or does the lack of pressure put good fish biting on good spots, only to change feeding patterns when the typical weekend traffic hits?

Inquiring minds want to know....

 

It's "Lights Out" at L. Waveland

"Lights Out" is what happens when you start finding bass stacked up on breaklines like the picture above regardless of the lake. I just happened to be on Waveland today when the bite went down. Find a spot like this and get a bait down in their face and good things happen fast, like limits as quick as you can boat the fish and recast. You have to do some looking and have a little patience, but the payoff is pretty good (see below). Actually, there were quite a few bites happening out there. The shad schoolers are doing their thing and I caught many fish targeting them. The YOY shad are about 1" long and running in large schools near the surface, so spotting them is pretty easy if you're paying attention. The frog bite is starting to develop good also with the increase in weeds. Then there are the break fish which are starting to take up summer homes. Lots of bites for lots of boats.

On another note, Geist is kicking out some really nice sacks again based on the winning weights from several clubs that were there this weekend. Teammate Bryan Johnson put a near 14 pound sack on the scales to win the PO Pluggers club tourney out there Saturday. Those fish came on buzzbaits and Stupid tubes. Buzzbaits and jigs also accounted for a 12# and an 18 pound sack that were weighed in a different club tourney out there. Plus, there is a deep bite going on the lake if you know what areas to target.

Snuck Back out to Waveland

Just for a few hours on Sunday. Wanted to pick up my season pass card which they weren't able to find on my last trip out. Place was packed again with trailers out to the tennis courts. I got on the water by 2pm and spent the first hour or so just idling around and graphing, seeing where people were fishing and looking for new stuff. Far too many people feel like they have to fish the entire time whenever they make a fishing trip. I frequently learn much more by just driving around with the graph on. I added a couple brushpiles, two new areas and a new lineup on another just by keeping the big engine on for quite a bit of the time today.

After the last tourney boat headed in for weighin, I finally snuck back out to one of my favorite areas to play around with a new outfit and to try and catch a few. In less than 30 minutes I had a 15-16# pound limit secured off the one hole topped by a 4.25 pound big bass (pic included below for you Jim). Left all my other areas alone after that and just played around on some new stuff trying to find something different. Caught about a dozen more bass and just enjoyed the search. There's just not many places you can go to in Indiana and pop fish like that in the middle of the day on a lake thats been beat on all weekend by anglers. Sure makes up for the disappointment of Glenn Flint and the missed trips to Geist and Morse after moving out west.

Another Waveland Report

Just how good is the bite at Waveland right now? Reggie Gibson sent me this pic and report yesterday from his trip on Tuesday.

"Two keepers on crankbait. Had the perfect day...30 plus keepers. Best 5 would have weighed 20 plus pounds."

Look close at the picture and notice the crankbait situated between the mouths of the two bass. Two fish on the same bait, same cast - two really nice fish at that. Also notice the melanosis on the fish to the right. Very obvious tail and upper back markings which were quite common on many of the bass we caught on Sunday.

Memorial Day Crappie