05-11-2010, 09:00 AM
Freida and I fished between rainstorms tonight for about an hour and 15 minutes. The bass were active and I fished lipped crankbaits for most of the fish. I don't tend to fish crankbaits all that often other than rattle baits in prespawn but I'm trying to get more confidence in them as search baits. I started off at a common post spawn area and caught two nice keepers there. One on a medium diving crankbait and one on a carolina rigged lizard. When I caught the first one I figured that there were more there and switching baits did the trick. The area is a flat that drops off into the creek channel. Both were on the flat but near the edge of the flat. I could see some fish moving bait around on the flat which is about 10-12 feet on top. The crankbait just barely bumped bottom. I then fished a point where the channel comes right up next to it and caught two more nice keepers there on the crankbait. both of them were in between 2 and 5 feet of water, not far from the bank. I also stuck what felt like a heavy fish that moved off and then pulled free. I would have liked to have seen that one! I went back to fish the point with a carolina rig and stuck one fish but the line parted on the hookset. I hadn't fished that point in many years but plan to go back to it soon, maybe in the morning. The rain returned pretty heavy and so we went home. So, four keepers, one with a good belly on it in a little over an hour is good for me. There were lots of fish and bait in the water column where I was fishing and would expect that many more would be off and on those areas for the next few weeks. It was good to get some confidence on a bait that I usually don't fish much. Most hits came after contact with the bottom of a pause in the retrieve. The water temp was 70 degrees and there was some color in the water but it's cleared a lot in the last few days. I was down on my dock for a few minutes earlier in the day and saw something interesting. A bass that was close to 2 lbs or so had hit something behind my lift and when I looked in the water I could see that it had a big skipjack or gizzard shad that would barely fit in it's mouth still sticking half way out of it's mouth. There was no way that that fish was going to swallow that thing whole. It went under and I never saw it again. Here are a couple of pics.