Month: March 2024

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The Scoping while Hoping Phase

It’s finally happening folks. I’m slowly getting sucked in and re-programed from hoping to scoping. Right now I’m in the “scoping while hoping” stage of the Livescope transitional brainwashing and I’m kinda like a kid in a candy shop with chocolate in all directions. One minute I’m slowly dragging a worm down the end of a point and the next minute I’m chasing a fish or a group of fish 20 yards away, reminiscent of a cat chasing a laser dot all over the house. I can see the draw of being 100% Livescope focused rather than methodically working my way down the bank without the use of any electronics and just hoping I run across a fish. It’s like the difference between blindly shooting into a scattered flock of ducks or selecting a target and focusing on the perfect shot.

Yesterday evening kinda sealed the deal for me when it comes to scoping as I completed the whole gamut of catching fish from top to bottom. Most of the week I caught fish pitching the worm to fish I was scoping, and they were chasing the worm the bottom where they would pop it…..or not. I think the hookup ratio was about 1-10 this week pitching the worm. Another way I caught fish this week was throwing the Keitech/Damiki rig over brush or pitching it to random fish I’d see while scoping but yesterday evening we got into a flurry of surface activity at dusk, and I got to use the 2.8 Keitech/Damiki for fish right below the surface. That was a new experience for me, and we had fish surfacing all around the boat at times. If the fish didn’t show themselves on the surface, I could scope out their location and we could cast to them. It was pretty cool to watch a group of fish a foot below the surface and see my bait approaching them in a collision course. Because of the anticipation, swinging on a fish can be premature at times and yesterday evening I found myself missing as much as connecting. Definitely a faster paced environment when dealing with schooling fish on the surface but a lot of fun with the scope.

I fished from Monday through today this week, and I had some decent sacks to show for it. The staging locations often frequented by the older generation of 4-5lbers in late winter or early spring has now been taken over by the younger generation of 1-3lbers. Numbers-wise that’s cool but size-wise it is lacking this week. The big girls are in transition from staging to spawning and they may get just a bit harder to find at times as I’m not a bed fisherman, so the size of my fish may be down for the next week or two. On the bright side, numbers will be up and there are going to be plenty of aggressive fish all around the shores of our lake for the next few weeks. If you are a bank fisherman, it’s your time to shine and there are plenty of parks that you can stretch a line on some shallow bass from the shore.

It seems that the bulk of the fish are still oriented to the bottom but there are a lot of fish hanging out over the top of the brush or in small groups, just kinda cruising around the brush piles. Since we have bottom oriented fish and suspended fish right now, we have options, and lots of them. I only needed 2 options this week, but I also threw the chatterbait and spinnerbait around a bit in the wind with no joy. It was the worm and Damiki/Keitech combo that did it for me this week. The good thing about the Keitech bite is that I’m no longer dragging it on the bottom at the speed of a three toed sloth but using it similar to the spybait in the summer, with a very long cast around a point, a ten-count drop and a slow, steady retrieve. Just like the spybait, the rod just kinda loads up when using finesse gear and a fish hammers the bait with that long cast. Here’s a video I made from spring a few years back and the slow rolled Damiki pattern.

In the past I’ve had good success with dropping my shaky head straight down under the boat when I’ve seen suspended fish chase my bait down on the 2D, so it only makes sense that I could have success pitching my shaky head to suspended fish I’m seeing with the Livescope. That pattern worked well for me with the shaky head as I cruised down the bank, I was either throwing the shaky head at targets on my mapping or pitching the shaky head to targets on my Livescope. Time after time I watched the suspended fish on my Livescope chase the worm down and the more aggressive the fish chased the bait determined whether they would strike the bait or not. Sometimes they didn’t let the worm get to the bottom before grabbing it. I caught a few this week that grabbed the worm on the drop.

My favorite target area this week was probably docks. Sometimes they were around the docks and sometimes they were in between the dock. I just had to throw the worm around or look at my Livescope to get an idea where they were. The shallow docks were really in play this week as well as those empty slips and a few spud poles. It seemed like the dock bite was more prevalent in the afternoons, so I mainly spent my morning on points with the Livescope, focusing on brush piles out on the ends of points. I was either sitting off a point and throwing the Damiki swimbait around the brush or throwing the worm up into shallow water rocks and then heading to the docks in the early afternoons. That’s not to say there aren’t fish on the docks in the morning hours, I just think it’s better around the docks in the afternoons. Perhaps it’s the black floats heating up in the sunny afternoons or it could be the shade that the docks provide. Either way, the docks probably produced the best numbers, but the rocks and points produced the best quality for me this week. My worm choice was the Zman big TRD on a 1/4 ounce Boss jig head and my swimbait choices were a Trixster Kamikaze head or Lanier Bait Damiki head with a 2.8 Keitech.

The lake level is about 6 inches above full pool and the corps have throttled back their generation periods. The water temps kinda dropped back down a bit this week and when I left the water today it was around 56 out in the creek. Right now, is a good time to be on the water as there’s a lot of active fish and we should have some very nice spring days ahead. Here’s a few of my memorable fish this week.

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Out of the Shadows

Things are right on schedule in the creek right now and we’re quickly approaching another spawning season for our bass population. I haven’t seen any spawners here in the back of the creek yet, but the water has been cold and stained so I don’t have much visibility around our dock and out in the cove. We’re still about 10 days away from the next full moon and those 10 days should be good overall when it comes to feeding fish. The bite window for the fish is getting wider and wider and this week there was a good mix of 2-4lbers eating in a lot of areas in the creek. The biggest task for me this week was finding the bigger fish and putting a pattern together to find where the bigger females hang out, especially early in the morning hours because that’s when I’ve been struggling for the big fish bite. The rocky secondary points in the sunny afternoons usually provide a bigger female or two and a little spike in my adrenaline, but where to find those same females early in the morning has been my biggest question this week. I think I found my answer about mid-week when I noticed that my bigger morning fish usually came from the deep dark shadows where I’m pretty sure those predatory bass instincts are just waiting for something to invade the dark shadows of a steep rock bluff. That was my target this week.

This week it’s been more about mapping than it has been about scoping. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve pretty much had my scope on all week, but my eyes have been more fixated on making casts in a certain zone rather than a certain target. I’ve made some progress with scoping this week and I was pretty proud of myself yesterday afternoon when I was picking bass off the top of brush, “cast to catch” with the scope. I have yet to catch a 5+ scoping but I’m sure that will happen very soon. This week it was mainly about the shaky head, and I had the opportunity to get out early in the morning a couple days during the week. I’ve been throwing the little Keitech around early in the mornings this week but random long casts with the Keitech/Damiki head hasn’t started producing random large fish yet. That bite is just around the corner for me but for now the shaky head is still producing the best bang for my buck. The key has been to fish it slow and the 10 second rule is in effect. If you’re not familiar with the 10 second rule, it’s the amount of time between the time the worm hits the bottom and when you first move the worm. Short hops and 10 second pauses between hops. These fish are like cats when it comes to worms, they’ll sit there and stare it down and if it doesn’t move, they’ll pounce on it after a few seconds pass, especially if other bass are in the area. These spotted bass are very competitive when it comes to a possible food source, so the more bass there are around your bait, the better chance you’re going to get bit. Unfortunately, most times the bigger bass are smarted and let a smaller more aggressive bass get the meal, and I wind up hooking a 2lber while a 5lber is escorting my 2lber to the boat. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard the phrase: “Dang, you see the one that was with him!” That’s usually my luck, I’m bringing in a pesky little buck bass while that big momma is following the buck to the boat.

Even though the worm accounted for the bulk of my fish this week it’s a good idea to keep the little swimbait very handy and ready to cast. Last Friday I was approaching a secondary point to fish around a brush pile and as I was picking up my rod, I heard a splash and saw a big swirl out over deeper water, at the end of the point. I thought that maybe it was a loon, but I made a cast into the swirl area with my little swimbait and immediately hooked up with a solid 3.5lber. On my very next cast into the same area with the swimbait the rod loaded up again but this time it felt like a dump truck fell on my swimbait. It was a great fight to the boat with finesse tackle and the little Trixster Baits Kamikaze head with a 2.8 Keitech. It’s my biggest so far this year. Here’s a picture.

In my last report in early March, I embedded a video showing the target areas I frequent during the early spring when fish are staging. The lake is full of these areas and the lake is full of bass so any of those secondary points and underwater outcroppings can come into play in the early spring. Good mapping with color shading at different depths can come in handy this time of year when looking for those bigger female stagers. Here’s the Staging 101 video again and another good staging video I made to help explain staging bass on Lanier.

Another area that produced pretty well for me this week was docks. I’ve been seeing a steady increase in dock activity over the last few weeks, and it seems that the bass have started hanging around the docks. One day they might congregate out in front of the dock and the next they’ll be cruising in between the docks in open space. In the afternoons they could be inside the shade patches, inside the empty slips or hanging out next to the spud poles. You just need to make the casts to see where they are or refer to your Livescope and target what you see. Once again, the worm was my choice and the deeper docks produced the best for me, and a big bonus was deeper docks with big chunk rocks around. For some reason, these bigger bass have been hanging out in deeper, shady area around docks with dark chunk rock or a rock bluff early in the mornings. If you find all those elements, there’s probably going to be a big bass hanging out there. You just need to be the first one to get there and catch that big girl before another angler hits that area. If there was rocks and docks with deep water, I probably fished it this week and succeeded. The biggest key to my success in these areas was to fish the worm very slow. I watched these fish react to my worm on Livescope and sometimes they just hover over the top of the bait in some kind of standoff or stare down and then after 4-5 seconds, maybe more, they suck it in. That’s why I’ve been working the worm very slowly. It’s not an ideal situation if you suffer from some kind of attention disorder because some of these strikes are so subtle and infrequent it’s like watching paint dry at times. I get bored and I get frustrated. Yesterday I lost 2 fish that were over 4lbs at the side of the boat and that kinda rattled my cage for a minute but I bounced back and caught a nice fish to end my day. It’s good rewards but slow fishing with the shaky head at times but I haven’t found a better pattern yet.

Yesterday evening I took Lisa out in the creek after our dinner, and we spent an hour or so running a few docks that were out of the wind. We were both using a big TRD in the same worm color and I had just replaced our very last worm on Lisa’s shaky head. She had a nice fresh worm and I had and old chewed up worm that had been through quite a few fish. I started us off with a nice 3lber from the end of a dock and right after I released my fish, I saw Lisa’s rod load up and I knew it was big. It was a nice fight for Lisa and I think it’s her biggest this year so far. It was a great catch and a very nice way to end the week. Water temps were around 60 degrees in the creek yesterday evening and the lake is a little less than a foot above full pool and dropping because the corps is generating several hours a day now. Here’s Lisa’s big 4.7 from last night and a few other memorable fish from my week. It’s a great time to go out and drag a worm around!

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Death on the Aqueduct

I’d been in the Navy for all of about 4 years when I first started fishing the California aqueduct. I was married and living in Hanford, California and my son Derek had just been born. We drove an old Mazda Rx3 wagon with Derek in the back, in the car seat at less than a year old. The car below wasn’t actually our car, but the picture resembles it right down to the color. It had a rotary engine under the hood and boy did we put some miles on that car.

One of the places you would frequently see the old blue wagon was on the side of the access road along the aqueduct. It wasn’t uncommon for fishermen to park right at the edge of the aqueduct and fish right outside the car. The bait of choice was usually cut frozen anchovies and we usually set out a rod apiece with a 2-bait rig and a 1–2-ounce weight. There was usually some current in the aqueduct and you needed to get the bait down on the bottom, out around the middle of the concrete channel, the further the better, so to speak. If you didn’t have a sufficient weight, the current would just wash your bait to the edge and back into the shallow water. We would usually bring the playpen and set it up so Derek could play, and we would fish right beside the car. My neighbor told me all about the aqueduct and places we could fish, as he was a fisherman also, but much older than myself. He was retired and I can’t recall visiting with him much, but I was a younger and very busy with life at the time. He did share a good fishing spot with us, where the channel took a turn, and we fished that spot along the aqueduct often for stripers and catfish. The paragraph below is from Wikipedia and gives a little more of an explanation on the aqueduct that I thought was helpful. I believe you can click on the links for more info.

The aqueduct begins at the Clifton Court Forebay at the southwestern corner of the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta. The aqueduct then heads south, eventually splitting into three branches: the Coastal Branch, ending at Lake Cachuma in Santa Barbara County; the West Branch, conveying water to Castaic Lake in Los Angeles County; and the East Branch, connecting Silverwood Lake in San Bernardino County.

There was one time in particular that I made a visit to my favorite fishing spot along the aqueduct very early on a Saturday morning looking for a few catfish and if I was lucky, a striper or two. I pulled off the highway and onto the access road that ran along the edge of the aqueduct. I could see my favorite fishing spot was occupied by a small Winnebago type RV camper along the edge of the road. The access road was wide in that stretch and there was plenty of room to get by the camper, so I decided to go on downstream a quarter mile or so before stopping and setting up shop. When I stopped and started unloading gear, I could see the camper just up the road to my right and an open stretch of road to the left, so I had the whole area to myself that morning. I had a small cooler with ice, and I kept my frozen anchovies in the cooler until I cut and used them to bait my hooks. I had 1-2 rods out at one time, and both were baited with cut anchovies and anchored to the bottom with a 1–2-ounce weight after a long cast out into the middle of the channel.

It was very peaceful in the early morning hours and almost immediately I caught a 4-5lb catfish which was perfect eating size, so I put it on ice in a larger cooler in the back of the wagon. A few minutes later another rod doubled over, and I had another very nice catfish to add to the bounty. As soon as I reset the rod, I caught some motion to my right and when I looked towards the camper up the road, I saw a blonde lady in a robe come out of the camper and start walking around as if she were looking for something. She glanced down the road towards me and then went back into the camper. I didn’t think too much about it and I went right back to watching the rods. Soon after another rod doubled over and this time it was a striper that was about the same size as the catfish already in the cooler, so I added the striper to the mix. It was turning into a very prosperous morning, and I was thinking about how good those fish were gonna taste after taking a dip in lake Crisco.

It wasn’t long until I heard a noise up the aqueduct where the camper was parked, and I saw the blonde lady come out of the camper again only this time she was fully dressed. She once again wandered around the camper a bit and then she started walking my way. At that point I kinda knew something wasn’t right because she seemed so out-of-place in that area. She looked to be in her late 30’s or early 40’s, very pretty and dressed in attire a little too nice for aqueduct fishing. As she approached, we greeted each other and then she asked if I had seen an older gentleman in the area since my arrival. I hadn’t and I let her know that there was no one in the area that I had seen since pulling up, so she thanked me and slowly made her way back up the road to the camper. I continued to fish but I knew that something was wrong, and I started putting the pieces together. The aqueduct can be dangerous in certain areas, and this stretch of the aqueduct was one of those areas. The reason being is that just below the waterline there is a very thick and very slick moss that sticks to the steep concrete bank. If you have the misfortune of falling into the aqueduct it is not easy to get out, as it is maybe 10 feet deep and there is current that will sweep you away. There are no structures or cables running across the channel for a person to grab ahold of and you are at the mercy of the aqueduct. If you can’t swim and you fall in while by yourself, it’s game over, so it can be very dangerous for some. After putting the pieces together, I kinda knew that someone was missing, and I contemplated leaving but the fish were biting, and curiosity was getting the best of me so stayed and kept fishing.

The blonde lady went back to the camper but this time she didn’t go back in but stayed outside the camper milling about. It wasn’t long till a big white work farm looking truck came into view beyond the camper to my right and I saw the young lady wave the truck down. There were crops growing in the fields adjacent to aqueduct and sometimes the workers would drive the access road to look at their crops. I saw an older gentleman get out of the truck and have a short conversation with her. They walked to the edge of the aqueduct and looked up and down the bank. The man saw me, got back into the truck and came to where I was. He again asked the same line of questioning that she had asked earlier. He told me that a man was missing from the camper, and he was going to get help. At that point he went back to the camper and the young woman jumped in his passenger side. They left together, heading for the main highway and I knew things were about to get busy, I just didn’t realize how busy it was going to get. Another half hour and one nice striper later I saw the white work truck return with a California Highway Patrol in tow. Both the vehicles stopped at the camper and there was a 3-way pow wow next to the camper. All three of them seemed to be looking at something down at the water’s edge and I wondered if there was fishing tackle down there that was hidden from my view, but there was definitely something they were all interested in down near the water. A few minutes later a local Sherriff’s car showed up and 2 uniformed deputies got out and joined the group. I watched as they all looked down the road at me and one of the deputies headed towards where I was fishing.

I thought that I was going to get asked to leave the area by the deputy, but to the contrary, he asked about how the fishing was going. After I told him that it was going great and I was having a good day, he told me that a man was missing and once again he asked if I had seen anything. I gave him the same answer as before and he basically told me to have a good day as he headed back to the group. I probably should have left but I was fully committed to the mystery at that point. It wasn’t long before a few more Sherriff vehicles pulled up and then another on the other side of the aqueduct directly across. Pretty soon a Sherriff’s helicopter landed on the other side of the aqueduct and shut down. There was a conversation between the pilot of the helicopter and the Sherriff’s deputy from the car and then the deputy got back in his car and drove away as the helicopter took off from the opposite road. There was a big crowd gathered at the camper by now and at times I could see the group or members of the group looking down at the water’s edge across from where the camper was parked. There was definitely something down there that piqued their interest and I saw one of the deputies pull out a 35-millimeter camera and start taking pictures of whatever it was that they were looking at.

This is where it got weird, but if I’m lying, I’m dying. A churro looking cart or some kind of small ice-cream truck showed up out of nowhere. The next thing you know, there are a least a dozen people, 6-8 vehicles, a helicopter flying overhead and a small ice-cream truck all around the camper area, with me down the bank a quarter mile watching the show. I may have caught another fish or two during all the excitement but after another hour or two, one by one they all started leaving. Pretty soon the helicopter left as well as the vehicles and that dang churro ice-cream truck disappeared as quickly as it appeared. I watched as the young lady got into the car with one of the deputies and they pulled away leaving the camper all alone sitting by the side of the road. I fished a bit longer, but curiosity was getting the best of me, so I packed everything up to leave. While no one was around I wanted to see what it was that everyone was looking at down at the water’s edge, so I stopped right by the camper and looked around the bank in the area they were all looking. At first, I was looking for something in the water at the edge, but I quickly realized what they all were looking at, it was finger-like marks scratched deeply into the green moss. It was as if someone had taken both hands and dug deep scratches into the moss, in a clawing fashion. It was clearly the clawing marks from the fingers of hands just as plain as day and there were a few in a 4-5 foot span. I kinda got a cold chill down my spine when I saw that, and it kinda hit home at that point, as I got back into the wagon and drove away. This was way before cell phones, and I was really anxious to tell my wife when I got home. As I pulled into the driveway, I noticed that 2 Sherriff’s vehicles parked in front of the neighbor’s house along the curb at the street. I thought that it was weird because they were older folks, and I wondered what was going on over there. When I went inside the house, I asked my wife what was going on at the neighbor’s house and she told me that my neighbor was missing and presumably drowned in the aqueduct in the overnight hours.

That was the second cold chill I got down my spine as she shared that with me. I told her that I was there when it all happened, and I told her about the younger looking blonde who was in the camper. My wife said that according to our neighbor’s wife, he was alone when it happened and there was no one there to help him. She said that according to the Sherriff he may have got caught up in the current and swept away, as he was older and not a good swimmer. At that point we decided to keep the part about the mystery blonde lady to ourselves and be good neighbors in a tough situation. Eventually they recovered my neighbor’s body from the aqueduct and if memory serves me correctly it was 2 days later and 7 miles down the aqueduct from where he fell in. Sure enough, he had drowned in the aqueduct. There are big “DANGER” and “PELIGRO” signs up and down the aqueduct, calling out the dangers of the swift current, but it seemed like every year we would hear about drownings.

I continued to fish the aqueduct for a few more years while I was stationed at the air base in central California before moving on in my military career, but I’ll never forget fishing the aqueduct and that morning.

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It’s Time to Move

I’m finally getting on the water with the new boat and getting it broke in. The motor cleared the 20-hour inspection and it’s time to do some serious fishing. I got a fresh new injection of cortisone in the knee so that should be good-to-go for a few weeks…I hope, because the next step is another replacement, and that means 2 months of down time. Also, I’ve finally gotten the chance to play with the FFS and it’s been everything I thought it would be. My early morning ditch fish have been totally on FFS and I’ve watched the fish see my bait and react to it, start to finish. I thought that was pretty cool. Man, there is so much to learn though. I can tell already that I could get sucked into just using FFS all day and just absorbing every detail of what I’m seeing. How the fish react to my bait in real time and the graphics of the event is amazing. I can actually see the fish’s tail wagging as it swims after my bait! We’ve come a long way from the old flashers and watching for that little red dot to pop up.

Speaking of flashers, years ago, like maybe 40 years ago, it was late winter, and a buddy and I were returning to the ramp after a day off fishing a lake in central California. Right before we got my buddies Bass Tracker back to the ramp we had to cross over a small point, and we still had the flasher on as we idled over the point. I happen to look down at the flasher and I saw it light up with something between the boat and the bottom. I didn’t really know exactly what it was, but I knew something was suspended below the surface in 25-30 feet of water on the crown of the point. Once we trailered the boat my buddy Sonny was going through the rituals of prepping the boat for the long haul back home and I was dying to take a topwater rod down to the point and make a couple casts around the area I saw the fish on the flasher. Sonny told me to walk down and make a couple casts with a Zara Spook, so I headed down to the water’s edge on the point. I threw the Spook into the area where I saw the fish on the flasher and no sooner than the Spook hit the water a big largemouth just exploded on it. I fought that fish to the bank just as the sun was setting and it was a great way to end the trip. I thought it was the coolest thing to see the fish on the flasher and then catch the fish just a few minutes later. We’ve come a long way with technology since I was in my early 20’s and the flasher was the latest and greatest technology.

One thing that was noteworthy about that big bass was that he was out on the end of that point in 25-30 feet of water feeding and it was a warm evening in late Feb. My guess is that was staging and feeding up for the spawn. The same thing is starting here on the lake and the fish are starting to get their mojo back and some are thinking it time to start chowing down around those staging areas. Don’t get me wrong, there are still plenty of fish in the ditches munching on threads and blueback but then there are the meat eaters. Here’s a good example of some meat eating up on the staging points. This is a bigger fish I caught on a secondary rocky point in the creek last week. Check out the regurgitated fish I found in her mouth. That’s one meal she didn’t get to finish but a good example of the type of meal these fish require when staging and pre-loading for the spawn.

The biggest success I had with the bigger fish for the past couple weeks came from focusing on that 20 to 35-foot range out on the ends of points after the sun got up and back in the ditches very early in the mornings. I also had success around some of the deeper docks, mainly out on the deeper ends or the front of the docks like maybe some staging fish in deeper areas rather than the shallower areas of the dock. I would say that about 70% of my fish for the past few weeks were caught on a shaky head and the other 30% with a small swimbait on a Lanier Baits 1/4-ounce Damiki head or a 1/4 Trixster Baits Kamikaze head. I would also say that just about 60% of my bigger fish came from the shaky head out on the ends of points with the other 40% coming from the deeper areas of the ditches, like 40+ feet deep ditches. I mainly used the FFS of the ditch work and then turned it off, opting for using my mapping to show me the staging areas on the sunny afternoons. One thing that’s pretty cool and helps a lot with my mapping is Humminbird’s new VX mapping chip. You can do multiple contour color shading. I set my target area at about 20 feet to 35 feet in a nice shade of green and I concentrated on making most of my casts in that area when I approached a secondary point. As the afternoon progresses, I may focus on some more shallow areas of a secondary point but most of my focus has been these areas where historically bass stage in the early spring. Here’s a video I made a few years back explaining the areas where bass will stage in early spring.

Another tactic I’ve used in the past few weeks is following the loons when they are feeding early in the morning. The loons have been stirring up the bait which has been stirring up the bass in the areas of loon activity. It’s a good idea to pay attention to the loons, especially when they are cruising around in groups looking for bait. Working around the loons with a swimbait and letting it sink to the bottom is worth a try. If there are active bass in the area, I’ve been able to pick them up on the LiveScope and cast or drop the Damiki to them with a good success rate. Here’s a couple pics of my swimbait choice for the past couple weeks.

I can see that things are starting to change, and the fish have started to feed a little more as the water slowly warms into the 50’s. There have been a few exceptions when targeting these stagers on secondary points and every once in a while, I’ll pop a good fish up shallow. These fish up shallow that I’ve been catching are good shaky head fish and here’s my bait of choice when targeting stagers on secondary points.

I’m still using a Zman Big TRD on a 1/4 ounce Boss jig head, mainly because the Boss jig head has a great keeper for the soft plastic baits from Zman. I suggest changing the colors of the bait every once in a while, until you find a good one. Yesterday when I was out, I ran up north and targeted some points along the river channel and found a few nice ones on the shaky head. Usually I’m making very long casts with the shaky head, longer casts than the LiveScope can reach out to so I’m pretty much blind casting the staging areas to start with. Once I get closer, I can scope it, but the first few casts are blind casts. I can’t say enough about my worm rig for these bigger fish. This is my second year of using it for the heavy work and the Shimano Stradic 2500 coupled with a Shimano Zodias 7’2″ medium fast rod is the bomb. I’m using 20lb Cast braid, which, by the way, is the reason I can make these longer casts with the worm. The Cast braid gives me more distance than any other line I’ve ever used. I’m using an 8-foot Seagar fluorocarbon leader and joining it to the braid with my Jimberto knot.

Yesterday afternoon I was fishing a staging area just off the river channel and after a long bombing cast with the shaky head, I felt a little tap and set the hook on my first 5lber in the new Skeeter.

Right before I caught it, I was thinking about how long it may take before I catch another 5lber and sure enough, not long after the good Lord answered my question and blessed me with the one pictured above to make my day.

I’m sure in the coming days I’ll be able to mix in more moving baits like the crankbaits, spinnerbaits and chatterbaits but for right now I’m focused on the swimbait and the worm as my two go-to baits of choice. I can see that the water temps are rising ever so slightly right now, and the corps has started generating 10-12 hours in a 24-hour period. Because of the heavy generation periods right now the lake is trending downward and we’re just a hair below full pool. Look for things to continue to pick up over the next few weeks as we get closer to the next full moon and more fish move up to the shallower areas. Here’s a few fish from the last two weeks in the new Skeeter.