09-11-2008, 12:12 AM
[font "Times New Roman"]Do you ever set out to do one thing and find yourself doing something completely different? That’s what happened on my trip up to Sunnyside. A friend and I headed up for the 4th-6th with the intent of fishing bass on Cold Springs. We set camp and headed down to cold springs to find three boats beating the line of reeds that I had done well on last time I was up there. So we went exploring and headed on down to Haymeadow. We found it to be void of any other anglers, a lone coyote patrolling the dam. We launched and headed south toward the dam chucking spinner baits. My buddy had a hit almost immediately, the fish jumped, this was no bass, but a plump and by now very aggravated rainbow. We landed her despite her best escape attempts (heading right for the prop, dirty trick). Figuring it was fluke we kept chucking the spinner baits with no luck. [/font]
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[font "Times New Roman"]Well I am not that hard headed so we decided to switch to throwing my new favorite jig, the Power Bait Atomic teaser. We would chuck these little guys out and let them sink into the weeds, twitch them a few times, and whack! Half of those cast brought another feisty rainbow. The other half resulted in feisty weeds. The weeds were quite a pain, matting on the surface in many areas and causing me to have to clear the prop on my trolling motor many times. No matter how shallow I ran it, there was no escaping the weeds. I think in a few weeks cooler temps will knock them down to a more reasonable level. We also caught a fair number of small bass on these little jigs, the largest being maybe ¾ lb. We would head to the dam and let the wind push us north paying special attention to any area where we could not see the weed tops, indicating deeper water. That was pretty much the pattern over the trip. I tried some other techniques for the bass with little luck. I did manage one very nice bass on a buzz bait right at sundown as we headed off the lake Friday night. Most of the trout were 14-16 inches with the largest being about 18. There were plenty of small bass all around and I did miss a few nice topwater strikes from nicer bass than the one pictured. But the trout were eager to bite and kept me pretty pleased. We caught a fish each every 15 minutes or so. The action was good. [/font]
[font "Times New Roman"]The bugs were not nearly as good to us, as soon the sun even though about sinking the mosquitoes came out. I was prepared and had the bug repellent and it worked pretty well. I had spoke to a dude at camp who said he was fishing Cold Springs and had great luck for nice “lunker” bass. He had a stringer full to prove it, 1.0 to 2.5 pound fish, fat for their length. “Caught them on my luckiest bait. My lucky rooster spin bait” he proclaimed proudly. Upon my request he let me leer upon this, his “luckiest of baits”. It was in fact a chartreuse Stanley spinner bait, ¼ ounce. But hey call it what you like. He kicked my ass on the bass. [laugh] [/font]
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[font "Times New Roman"]We too had kept some fish, about six of the smaller trout each day, they made an awesome campfire dinner, and much better than the canned stew that was the original plan. Did not notice any trout rising the whole time, as we had a few weeks back on Cold Springs. I did however, through the clear water, see a trout slashing at little bass. That’s what lead to me using the GREEN Berkley jigs… always thinking. An awesome trip! Hope to make it back in the next few weeks before it turns too cold to want to camp in a tent anymore. [/font]
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[font "Times New Roman"]Well I am not that hard headed so we decided to switch to throwing my new favorite jig, the Power Bait Atomic teaser. We would chuck these little guys out and let them sink into the weeds, twitch them a few times, and whack! Half of those cast brought another feisty rainbow. The other half resulted in feisty weeds. The weeds were quite a pain, matting on the surface in many areas and causing me to have to clear the prop on my trolling motor many times. No matter how shallow I ran it, there was no escaping the weeds. I think in a few weeks cooler temps will knock them down to a more reasonable level. We also caught a fair number of small bass on these little jigs, the largest being maybe ¾ lb. We would head to the dam and let the wind push us north paying special attention to any area where we could not see the weed tops, indicating deeper water. That was pretty much the pattern over the trip. I tried some other techniques for the bass with little luck. I did manage one very nice bass on a buzz bait right at sundown as we headed off the lake Friday night. Most of the trout were 14-16 inches with the largest being about 18. There were plenty of small bass all around and I did miss a few nice topwater strikes from nicer bass than the one pictured. But the trout were eager to bite and kept me pretty pleased. We caught a fish each every 15 minutes or so. The action was good. [/font]
[font "Times New Roman"]The bugs were not nearly as good to us, as soon the sun even though about sinking the mosquitoes came out. I was prepared and had the bug repellent and it worked pretty well. I had spoke to a dude at camp who said he was fishing Cold Springs and had great luck for nice “lunker” bass. He had a stringer full to prove it, 1.0 to 2.5 pound fish, fat for their length. “Caught them on my luckiest bait. My lucky rooster spin bait” he proclaimed proudly. Upon my request he let me leer upon this, his “luckiest of baits”. It was in fact a chartreuse Stanley spinner bait, ¼ ounce. But hey call it what you like. He kicked my ass on the bass. [laugh] [/font]
[font "Times New Roman"][/font]
[font "Times New Roman"]We too had kept some fish, about six of the smaller trout each day, they made an awesome campfire dinner, and much better than the canned stew that was the original plan. Did not notice any trout rising the whole time, as we had a few weeks back on Cold Springs. I did however, through the clear water, see a trout slashing at little bass. That’s what lead to me using the GREEN Berkley jigs… always thinking. An awesome trip! Hope to make it back in the next few weeks before it turns too cold to want to camp in a tent anymore. [/font]
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