I’m still getting some nice fish on the surface popper but fewer and fewer small fish. Most of the fish I’m seeing on the surface in recent days have been larger bass and a few stripers scattered here and there. My strategy has been topwater and trolling crankbaits. Yesterday morning I saw a large school of stripers crashing the surface up lake and thought it won’t be long till they are moving into our creeks in large numbers. For now I’m still picking on the bass but I’ve got an eye out for stripers on the surface. Here are a few pictures from the last couple weeks.
Since my last post it’s been nothing but topwater for me. Still the same popper that I started with almost a month ago. I still haven’t changed it out. I’ve replaced about a foot of line down to the lure a few times, but it’s the same rod and reel combo and the same emerald topwater popper. Some days are better than others and it’s all surface sight fishing. It reminds me of fishing for speckled trout in the fall in the marsh. You cast your bait to where the fish surfaced and hope that he comes back for seconds. It’s worked well for me on points and humps during the days there is a little bit of breeze to put a chop on the water. Here are more pictures and a good video to give you an example of how I’m working the bait back to the boat.
I haven’t posted a report here in a while but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been out there wetting a line whenever possible. Summer provided us with some great trolling action for stripers and well as a lot of great bass fishing. The stripers came in and out of the creek all summer and we caught plenty of nice fish with larger shad trollers over the underwater forest at the mouth of the creek. Striper always wait in ambush around the deep water trees and picking a few off provided us with some great entertainment. We also had a lot of fun dropping and jigging stripers with heavy jigs vertically under the boat. When we got bored with the striper fishing we would troll deep diving crankbaits for spotted bass near the bottom on the points of the creek.
We’re now approaching Autumn very quickly and autumn for me means topwater, swim baits, wake baits and bucktails for stripers and bass in the creek. One way to tell what works this time of year for me is to go over my archives and YouTube videos for this time of year. Right now we’re having fun with the topwater bite and a new lure I made for the occasion.
The best pattern for this popper has been to find points in the creeks; the longer the better. I’ve been watching for surfacing fish around points and if I see any surface activity I go up wind of the point and cast the popper down wind for the best results. I try and stay off the trolling motor and just drift. On of the things I like about the new popper is that I can cast it a mile and casting down wind just adds to the distance. We you’re popping the lure back to the boat against the wind you get the maximum surface disruption and that’s what the fish are keying on right now. All the surface commotion mimics the spotted bass chasing, popping and feeding on bluebacks the have pushed up to the surface. Here’s some pictures taken during testing the bait.
I had another busy week this week and didn’t get out to fish much. We were able to get out for a while yesterday, Saturday the 21st. We decided to try and troll for a few stripers out towards the mouth of the creek, but I think the stripers are still hanging out deeper in the creek. It won’t be long till the stripers are at the mouth of the creek and out on the main lake. We gave up on the striper trolling after catching 2 dinks scraping the bottom with shad trollers. We switched over to bass and started casting cranks and spinnerbaits. We caught a couple more dink bass and decided to try and find some bigger bass by trolling deep diving crankbaits. We cruised over to the saddle dyke and started trolling along the rip rap in 25 feet of water. We marked several fish and I hooked up with a nice bass right away. We got the bass back in the water and started trolling again. Here’s a couple of videos to cover the rest of our morning. Right after the first video ended I got a treble hook buried in each thumb. I got the first one out right away, but the second hook took a little more work so I thought I’d share it. The second video is a little graphic with a some blood and pain involved so use a little caution if you’re squeamish.
I had a very busy week this past week and only got a chance to fish for 1 day. The bass were definitely getting harder to catch and we wound up trolling up a few nice fish with deep diving crankbaits. I’m just about done with the big striper skiff and it will be going in the water for the summer within the next few days. It’s just about time to start trolling for stripers so stay tuned for some striper and bass reports. Here’s a short video from last weekend and a couple of nice bass.
This week I fished on Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning and then again Saturday evening. This past week the deep diving crankbait in my Sand Key pattern was the dominate bait all week. The best location was rocky points in a 20 to 25 foot depth. If there was brush out on the point at that depth, there were generally fish in the area. I caught a lot of nice fish with some pushing 3-4lb mark on the deep diving crank and I found that working it slow was generally the key to the bigger fish. Trolling the cranks were successful, but casting, cranking the bait and working it back to the boat slowly was a better pattern. The slower the better with stopping the bait on occasion was the key. When the bigger spots hit the bait it was generally a good strike and some of the fish were hooked with both sets of trebles which would take some of the fight out of them. I caught fish all week on this pattern and figured the same pattern would hold true for a tournament we fished up on the north end of the lake on Sunday. As fate would have it, the crankbait bite was slower up on the north end but I was able to catch a smaller keeper and lost a very nice fish at the side of the boat that was barely hooked with a single treble barb. It was just that kind of day for us as I caught a few dinks but the fish were generally chasing and short striking it. We tried a variety of baits but the other 2 keepers came from the dropshot with my little dropshot worms in a crystal blue pattern. They seemed to really react to that color.
Water temps were moving up through 80 degrees and above. The wind was out of the north and the west later in the week and the barometric pressure was lower due to a front that moved over our area and stalled. The bass seemed very active, especially early in the morning. Here’s a few pictures from the week.
Early in the week we fished in the evening for a couple days and then I hit the morning bite late in the week. I’ve been concentrating on jerkbaits and crankbaits and I’m seeing the bite slow with both as the water warms. Water temps are in the upper 70’s to low 80’s when the sun is out. This past week I’ve been looking for bigger fish out towards the mouth of the creek on points. We’ve been finding a few nicer fish casting crankbaits around rocks. It seems that the bigger fish are out deeper but they are still moving up on points in the morning. Early in the week, in the evenings we found fish cruising the shoreline in the back of the creek right before dark, feeding on small gizzards. We had no problems with numbers but size was lacking. I decided to move out to the mouth of the creek to look for some morning fish and I found some very nice fish that were cruising the rock piles early in the morning. The Zee Shad medium diving crankbait around the rocks has been the key around the mouth of the creek. I’m seeing more topwater fish, both stripers and bass over deeper water so next week I’m going to paint some topwater Sammy type blanks in a few different patterns including bone and blueback.
Our top producing baits this week is still the crankbaits, both shallow diving square bills and my medium divers. The best color pattern is the Zee Shad pattern right now because there are still a lot of smaller gizzards cruising the shore line and the Zee or Zebra pattern has a close resemblance to the gizzards. We’ve also had some luck with my Sand Key and the Sexy Shad patterns in low light conditions.
Next week I’m going to use the Ultra-Spin with my twitchbaits in a pearl with blue highlights pattern. Last year in June we were catching quite a few fish with the Ultra Spin and I think this year will be no different. We’ll see what happens later next week with the Ultra-Spin. Also, I should be putting the big striper boat back in the water and going in search of stripers as well as netting some spottails and doing some dropshotting out of the striper boat. As far as the stripers go, I’ll probably break out the leadcore rods and start pulling some shad type baits around long points and flats looking for some shallow cruising stripers.
Here’s a few pictures and a video from this weeks fishing trips:
I’ve fished for the last 4 days, either in the morning or the evening and fished Bald Ridge for 3 days and went up the Tee and fished a couple of creeks up there. Water temps are moving through the mid to upper 70’s and I’m starting to see bigger groups of bass here and there. I haven’t seen much topwater yet and most of the bass we’ve been catching are relating to shore and bottom. We did pick off some suspended fish early this week trolling deep diving cranks through feeding fish in over 70 feet of water. Those fish were more than happy to hit a chartreuse colored crankbait. When we’ve been shoreline fishing we have picked up plenty of fish using the Zebra Shad pattern with crankbaits and jerkbaits. I’ve had very good luck for the past few days on a medium diving crankbait, working the bottom. Lisa has been using a little zebra square bill shallow diving crank and doing very well. I’ve been picking up fewer, but bigger fish on the zebra jerkbait. Last night Mercer and I went up to Thompson and Lathem and we found some decent fish with me using a medium diving zebra crank and Mercer caught the biggest fish on a Carolina rigged worm. The best bite has been from about 7pm till dark in the evening and 9am till lunch seems to be the best times for me in the morning. We’ve caught good numbers of fish over the past 4 days but you really have to deal with the dinks to get to the occasional bigger fish. Seems like the ratio has been 6-10 dinks before getting a good fish to bite. The bite is still semi shallow, but I can tell the fish are slowly moving out to deeper waters. We’re very close to topwater and dropshotting time. Here is a picture of the crankbaits Lisa and I have been using to catch the majority of our bass.
We got out on the lake early in the morning to see what the morning bite would bring us. Both Lisa and I had our Zebra Shad jerkbaits tied on and when we left the dock the surface temp was 68 degree and the water in the back of the creek was slightly stained. We made a few casts on a few points in the stained water but all we caught was a couple of dinks so we made our way out towards the mouth of the creek. It was a little slow to start with but once the sun got up a little and we found some clear water, the zebra shad started to do it’s stuff. We found fish around rocky points and in grassy pockets. I really believe the holographic dust on the little jerkbait really sets it off in the sunlight. We also noticed something about the zebra shad and why the little jerkbait pattern works right now. It seems that in a lot of the areas we are catching fish, there is a presence of gizzard shad, and the gizzards are around the same size as the zebra shad. Some of the bass we’ve been catching have been yacking up gizzards in the 3-4 inch size so we know we are matching the hatch with the size and color of the jerkbaits. We’ve came to the conclusion that the zebra shad has a close resemblance to the size of the area gizzards and the fish naturally react to it. We’ve caught fish on the shore and we’ve had fish chase the bait to the boat and whack it right by the boat in 30 feet of water.
We fished from around 9am till the rain rolled in around noon. We took a break and went back out when the skies cleared and the sun came back out around 6pm. We fished from 6pm till around 8:30pm and caught some nice evening fish on the same pattern. All tolled, we ended up boating 14 bass for the day and we had a few that shook the hook on the way to the boat. The jerkbait bite is still the #1 ticket for us right now and I think it’s a sure bet for a few fish while the gizzard population continues to patrol the shallows. Here’s a video of some of our fish on the zebra shad on 5-17-2014.
Not much to report this week. We only fished for three hours this evening, the evening of Mothers Day. Lisa wanted to fish for a while and use her new sexy shad jerkbait. There was a lot of boat traffic this evening and we found a lot of muddy water and mud lines out in the main channel of the creek. We primarily concentrated on areas out of the constant barrage of waves and muddy waters. We caught a lot of dinks, but every once in a while we would get a nice fish. I was working the zebra shad jerkbait and Lisa was working the sexy shad pattern. We found our fish this evening around the grass beds. We used floating jerkbaits and we worked them slowly through the grass beds and we found plenty of fish to keep us busy. The water temps were in the mid 70’s and the fish were very active later in the evening. Here’s a picture of Lisa and her best fish of the evening on Lisa’s Sexy Shad Jerkbait and a picture and video of my best on the Zebra Shad.
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