Air Temperature: 64-70
Water Temperature: 74-76
Water Clarity: Clear
Skies: Overcast with steady rain until 11:00, sunny with occasional clouds for the remainder of the trip.
Wind: 3-5 Mph NNW
Barometric Pressure: 29.99 - 30.03
The weather forecast last night stated a 30% chance of showers throughout the morning. When I got out of the shower this morning, I could hear the rain pelting off the glass of the skylight in our bathroom. "It must be a passing shower." I told myself. I arrived at the lake, and the rain had still yet to subside. I dragged my kayak and gear down to the lake, and the rain continued to fall harder. "Oh well, I made it this far, I'm sticking it out!"
When I got on the water, I began cranking a rip rap bank. After a short while of no action, I decided to drag a football head jig around. Nothing on that either. I tossed the drop shot in and quickly landed 2 small bass. I moved further up the lake, in search of some larger bass holding onto the outside weedline. I threw the kitchen sink at this one spot, and after 30 minutes without a bite, I became a little discouraged. Now, drenched to the bone, and freezing my you know what off, I thought about just going home. But I stuck it out, and I changed up my lure selection a bit. Even though the conditions did not call for it, I tried flipping a little bit, and landed one small bass on a sweet beaver. I tied on the squarebill and started ripping it over top of the grass, but couldn't buy a bite. I was tossing a green pumpkin deadbolt, wacky rigged, and had a few taps but couldn't get the fish to commit. I decided it was time to switch colors. Unfortunately, I ran out of the pumpkin seed deadbolts, on my last trip, so I had to resort to a pumpkin with black flake senko. Immediately, I began catching fish. Most of the smaller fish were at the transition from lily pads to milfoil. The larger fish that I caught, were on outside weed edges adjacent to deep water. Once I was able to form the pattern, I caught 12 more fish before I ran out of senkos, and managed one more on a green pumpkin deadbolt. I also lost a 3 lb class fish in the process, but made up for it with a few solid fish. Once the sun came out however, the fish seemed to shut off.
Bottom line is, color matters! Some may tell you that it is personal preference, or a confidence thing, but I think today's results proved the non believers wrong. I went from short strikes to hook ups, and all it took was a simple color change. The profile of the bait was right, the color just wasn't what the fish wanted today. For the day, I ended up with 16 bass, 2 on drop shot, 1 on a sweet beaver, and the other 13 on the wacky rig. Biggest was around 3 lbs, best 5 was approximately 11.5 lbs.
Here are a few pictures, unfortunately, due to the rain, I could only photograph a few fish, but I did manage to get my "lunker" for the day in there.
The "wacky rig" is a presentation that I have overlooked for years. When it first gained popularity, it seemed wildly pedestrian. We all had that friend growing up, that didn't know the first thing about bass fishing, and we dragged them along with us anyways. Well, this is how I picture that person rigging up a plastic worm. I finally vowed to give it a go this year, and I'm glad I did. This technique has produced a lot of fish for me in the past 2 weeks I have been using it, and has quickly become a "Go to" in my arsenal. You can never have too many weapons. If you haven't yet adopted this method, I strongly suggest giving it a try.
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