The End of The Bronze Age 05/14/12

After last week's fast smallie action, I was looking forward to another day of nailing the little buggers.  I even brought a fly rod to see if some would come up for poppers.  I drove to my new spot and put in on dead calm water.  I started throwing a chartreuse Chatter Bait, but nothing happened.  I tried a lipless crank and a the little Squirrel 76 I still had tied on from my last largemouth trip.  Nothing much happened.  I finally got a fish to roll on a little topwater, but he didn't hook up.  Eventually I caught a couple of little guys on a craw worm on a shaky head.  Then I caught on on the squirrel.  I worked that bank for some time without much to show for my efforts.  I caught one on a Cultiva Mira Vibe lipless crank, but he was on the smaller side as well.  I was going to go around the bend and see what was down that stretch, but suddenly some wind arrived from nowhere and kept me from doing so.  I eventually gave up on it and drifted down to where I'd been fishing.  I ditched the shaky head for a regular old curly tail grub and caught a few more.  I don't know if any of them broke a foot in length.  I was feeling pretty sure that the fish had moved onto beds and that's why I wasn't finding them.  I moved down to a gravel flat with weed beds and finally hooked up with a better fish.  I love the markings on this bugger.

I fished around the weeds for a while.  I pulled one good one out of a pocket in the vegetation, but he pulled free when I got him into open water though.  I missed a couple, and caught a small guy on a Rapala Rippin' Rap in brown craw.

I needed to get home soon, so I ditched the reservoir for the river.  The first spot I fished I caught a few on the Rapala and a couple on a 3" Keitech Little Spider.  I then moved downstream to my favorite bass run.  There were fish all over the beds here.  The water was very low, and surprisingly clear.  As a result, the fish were very spooky.  I missed one on the spider and that was about it.  I started making long casts with the Rippin' Rap, burning it over the weed tops.  I picked up several this way, but they weren't super big.  I made a cast parallel to the bank when I saw a nice bass shoot out from a clump of grass and swim a good 6-8' at top speed to intercept my lure.  He leaped several times and put on quite the show.  It was the highlight of the day until I netted him and discovered that my lure had completely vanished down his gullet.  Blood was already streaming from the fish's gills.  I decided to let him die with dignity and didn't try to retrieve my lure.  I could get that back later while cleaning him.  I also didn't take a pic as I didn't want a visual of his grisly demise.  I deposited him in the car and tied on a Lucky Craft LVR mini in "brownie" as a replacement.  I decided to move up the run, and when I got to the water I spotted a nice fish on a bed.  There was a large tuft of grass between me and the bed, so I used it to hide behind while dragging a spider onto the nest.   He immediately went nose down and sucked it in. That thick little bass put up a nice tussle.

He was about the same size as the one that would later become a taco.  I continued up the pool catching smaller fish on both the spider and the LC.  Nothing huge, but it was fun.  I also caught a couple of these from a clump of weeds.

That was a first for me here.  I've caught them further downstream in Cutler, but never up here.  I don't mind, variety is the spice of life.  I ended up salvaging the day with 25 bass.

Total for trip:  23 smallmouth, 2 largemouth

Total for year: 353 fish