This week I ended up using a whole smorgasbord of baits, some that I remember having success on in years past and some new baits that I haven’t used this time of year with success ever before. Basically, until a good topwater pattern kicks in I’m just junk fishing and biding my time.

Last weekend was the annual 2-day MLF/BFL tournament on Lanier and a couple of my friends fishing in the tournament had some success on small spoons while pre-fishing for the tournament. It only made sense because a lot of the bait the fish are feeding on right now are small 1-inch baits in small pods out on the main lake and in the creeks. The small spoons are a good imitation of a dying bait and something we use in the dead of winter to catch fish in the ditches feeding on the same size baits. For those reasons I tied on a small War Eagle spoon the first thing early Monday morning and I set out in the creek to see if I could catch one early on the spoon.

On my first cast at my first stop my little spoon I was bouncing it off the bottom back to the boat and I caught a nice 2lber. I followed that up with another 2lber a few cast later. I was feeling pretty confident about the spoon and move to my next stop. The spoon didn’t work there so I moved further towards the mouth of the creek and on my first cast at my 3rd stop a big bass popped my spoon on the drop. My cast was out on the end of a flat that dropped off into the creek channel in about 30 feet of water and the bass turned out to be a very nice 3.5-ounce fish. I put the fish in the livewell and moved a little shallower on the point and a few casts later a bigger bass hit the spoon on the drop, and I netted a 4.1-ounce stud. I took a quick pic of the fish before I released them and moved on to the next point. Here’s a picture of my 2 biggest casting the spoon Monday.

After I caught those 2, I never caught another fish on the spoon for the rest of the day, but I did catch a few on the topwater Choppo, a chrome Sexy Dawg and the American Shad Duo Realis G-fix spybait.

Tuesday and Wednesday I fish from about 8 am till lunch and it was when the grind started. After a initial early morning bite it slowed considerably on both days, but I did manage a few fish here and there with the chrome Choppo, Azuma Z-Dog in a Casper Shad pattern and the spybait, both American Shad and Ghost Minnow. Here’s a few fish from the 2-day period.

On Thursday morning Jeff Nail jumped in the boat with me and we found a few schoolers here and there. I mainly threw the topwater stuff and Jeff was throwing a Jerk shad from Lanier baits or the Trixster Baits 4.25 in Tricky Shad. I think we had 6 fish total and most were caught on the jerk shad while I had 1 topwater fish on an Azuma Casper Shad walking bait. Here’s a nice fish that Jeff caught on a Jerk Shad on a hump we were fishing.

Today I made a lap around the creek around late morning and stayed out a few hours. It was very hard to call a fish up, but I was just swinging for the fences with the Choppo and throwing the spybait to end another grind for the week. Better days are coming and hopefully this little cool down we’re going to have next week yields some better surface action. Here’s a couple fish from this afternoon dodging rain showers. The chrome Choppo and the American Shad spybait accounted for these 2.

The lake is down about 2.5 feet below full pool, and the corps is generating for a few hours in the evening. The water temps in the creek are anywhere from mid to low 80’s. Hopefully we’ll see some water temps in the 70’s and a little better surface action very soon.