George came into town last Saturday so he, Greg, Ken, and I squeezed into Greg’s Alumacraft and hit a lake that Greg has been on, but we other three hadn’t. Since it was forecasted to rain in the afternoon, we got up early and were on the water by 8am.
We started at some lily pads not far from the boat launch. It was quiet for quite a while until Ken hooked the first fish of the day, a 14″ bucketmouth. He hooked it on a super fluke in the baby bass color. I’ve had that color for years and never caught anything on it. I was glad to see it worked.
After that, it got quiet again so we moved to another patch of lily pads on the other side of the lake. This time I scored on a KVD coffee scented ocho worm. It was about the same size as Ken’s.
We spent quite a bit more time in those lily pads and we got a bunch of nips, but nothing we could keep on the line. We finally gave up and motored to a point made of grass.
That didn’t net anything (ha, get it, “net”) so we decided to head toward the island on the lake. We ended up on the West side where it formed a little bay. I caught my second fish of the day on a white super fluke and Greg landed his first fish of the day, a Northern.
A short time later, George got on the board.
I got two more bites–one on a white super fluke and one on a worm–but lost them both due to a faulty snap swivel. However, Greg was able to land a small bass. The funny thing was, he found a hook in its mouth. He recognized it as one of my super fluke hooks. He caught one of the fish I lost earlier!
When things slowed in that spot, we headed toward the other end of the lake. On the way, I spotted a hump about 5′ deep on my Navionics app. We used the GPS to try to get on it, but ended up in about 15′ of water. I sent a jig in the direction the boat was headed and felt all kinds of weeds. It turns out we stopped short. But this is when it got fun. In the next half hour to 45 minutes, Greg caught three Northern, Ken caught three northern, and I caught two and lost one. All were caught on a variety of different baits.
Even though we were landing a bunch of fish, we moved toward some more grass. I landed another northern small Northern there. Greg was throwing a spoon and caught this monster.
Eventually, no one was catching anything so Greg switched to wax worms and a slip bobber. He would catch another sunny and a small perch before we needed to take a break from sitting, so we went back to the launch.
After stretching our legs, we motored past the hump to the South end of the lake. We hit some lily pads in a little bay and I landed several more largemouth, all the same size as before.
With clouds moving in, we decided to head toward deeper water. I felt a weird tap-tap-tap while reeling in a white swim jig with white grub trailer. I set the hook and assumed it was another Northern. To my surprise, I pulled in this nice 15″ beauty.
Knowing we were winding down, I made that my last cast of the day. We lost count, but we landed 20+ fish in the 6 and a half hours we were out. A pretty good outing.
On Sunday, I discovered that it was the super full moon at 6:32am that morning. I’m hoping that wasn’t the only factor to our success. We’ll find out soon because Greg wants to head out there again in a few weeks.
Great catches! Sounded like a really fun day.