Saturday was a beautiful day to be on the lake. Being "spin" day for the tourist industry it's a great day to hit the lake with the Non Res fisherman packed/packing up for the trip home Saturday morning and the new batch have yet to arrive.
All things considered, when I start to fishing an area I usually start deep and work shallow, trying a variety of lures to check the entire water column. We were picking up fish in the 15-20ft areas. These were smaller bass with perch, rockies & sunnies intermixed. As the boat drifted from 15 to 8ft my wife got into a substantial smallmouth, a 3lb+ fish. Sadly the 10lb line broke just as I was getting the net. Wife Is pee pee!! It didn't help with me exaggerating the size of the fish a bit either.
I put the dropshot rod down and grabbed the tube rod, deciding to fish the first drop-off to see if the bigger fish were shallow. I found my Title SHot jigs and attached the lightest one (aprox 1/4oz) and put on a Wacky Worm Inc. 4" flippin' tube in their color: "Coffee". I picked up several largemouth in the almost 2lb range with the tube. I do like the Title SHot jigs. However, my two weight selections were bought for flippin', not slow swimmin' tubes. I will have to purchase some of the 1/16 and 1/8th oz. offerings to experiment a bit more. I like the plastic anchor system on the jig, but tubes don't have much "meat" for the jig's anchor to hold onto, resulting on the tube head pulling out after a few hooksets. I'm sure this anchor works great with solid baits...but tubes will need to be modified a bit. Looking at all the senko & grub "discards" in my discard pile in the boat, I think I've got the answer to that problem. Stay tuned.
I decided to go slow with the senko over the first drop-offs. Even though the rockies were all over this bait the bass liked it too. Here is a 2lb 9oz largemouth that liked my smoke hologram Yamamoto.
As the day progressed and with my wife keeping her tally, she announced she was going to catch 20 bass. Well....OK..... I guess I'd better pick some good spots.
Coming into the last spot of the day my wife is at 18 bass. I have never taken her to this spot before... "I only need two bass to reach twenty" I'm reminded. "No problemo" I respond.
Nineteen gets released. I'm killin' the rockies with my senko. Then as the watermelon w/black & gold senko falls......tick!
3lb 10oz largemouth.
Twenty gets released. As I'm getting things organized and feeling quite happy I notice a substantial bend in my wife's rod, not unlike when you are stuck on bottom. "Is that a fish?" "Yes, but it must be a big sunnie" "It's staying down, that's no sun fish" "Maybe it's a pike" "It's not moving enough for a pike"
At this point I decide to get the boat into deeper water, remembering loosing the biggest smallmouth I'd ever see, a fish with the tail the size of my hand that took me to school two years ago.
My wife played the fish perfectly, and despite a somewhat rookiesh swipe with the net the first time I got twenty-one in the net.
Number twenty-one: 3lb 8oz
DropShot'r
