Fish Catching Travel
(Sorry for the late post – life keeps getting in the way.)
After a few days out West it was time to get back to the business at hand. I thought it would be the Gulf but the Shoedog sent me a text saying he wanted to catch some bass. I guess catching a few big ones lately has him wanting more. So with hope in our hearts we hit the ramp early on Friday.
Day 1
It was pretty cold, though the forecast was for a nice day. Of course the wind was blowing pretty hard, what’s new with that one, so I headed to one of my favorite coves in hopes of fishing it before the wind began to blow right in it. We wasted about an hour before I finally caught one on a Swim Jig. It was on the point leading out of the cove. Shoedog threw spinnerbait and topwater, but they were just not having it.
The water temp up lake initially was 50 degrees, though it was 60 degrees in the main arm below the discharge. To make a long story short, we hunted and pecked the rest of the day. We never did get on them like we should have.
It was flat cold and the wind was blowing when we started Friday morning.
It was one here and there, but we just could not get a solid pattern going. We threw topwater, which they did not touch, spinnerbait, and the swim jig. The water temp really did not seem to rise much over most of the lake until late in the day.
The reason I keep throwing the Swim Jig. But it can be a curse.
Looking back on it I really did not fish that well. Sometimes you are catching just enough fish that you get tunnel vision, and I had it today. It should have been clear to me that the fish were doing something else. You know I keep saying listen to the fish, to bad I did not take my own advice.
For the day we ended up with 16 fish, 4 on spinnerbait and 12 on Swim Jig. Now that is not a bad day, but it could have been much better. Something had changed, and it was the next day before I removed my head from my rear end and it was game on.
Day 2
When we got to the lake the water temp had risen about 5 – 7 degrees over the whole lake. We started down lake, throwing the Swim Jig, but I could tell after a while that while they would still eat it, it was time for a change. It was almost 10 and we had only boated one fish.
We decided to change tactics all together, and boy was that the right choice. Sometimes you have a gut feeling, and you need to listen to it. We had talked about fishing crankbait, the Strike King Red Eye Shad, a rattle bait, so we headed to the windiest bank we could find. One quick point on the Red Eye Shad. What separates it from other baits like it is that it vibrates on the fall, unlike other baits like the Rattle Trap and Hot Spot.
The wind was blowing right on the flat point separating the 2 arms of Coleto so we started on the point and let the wind blow us down the bank headed to the Coleto arm. I stayed with the Swim Jig and Shoedog threw a shad colored Red Eye Shad. We immediately started catching fish, but when he had me down 4 to 1 I switched to a KVD 2.5 square bill in a funny red color. From that point on it was game on.
In the next hour we fished from that point to past the last of the 3 coves on the left in the main arm. We went from 1 fish in the boat to 19. We caught 18 without picking up the trolling motor. A nice steady retrieve had them just knocking the crap out of it. If there was grass we ran it right over the top, if the bank was bare we threw it right on the bank and bumped bottom. As usual with a crankbait, the wind made all the difference.
After that run we hunted and pecked as we moved up lake, catching one here and one there. As we got to one of the big coves above the bridge we decided to fish it all the way to the back even though it was shallow. That turned out to be a great decision. The water temp in that cove was 50 degrees on Friday, when we got to the back end it was 68! And guess what, the fish were there.
This fish was special. Finally moving to the real back ends of the coves.
Not only were the bass there looking to bed, but there were Tilapia, a sure sign of things to come. In that shallow water we caught on both swim jig and spinnerbait. As it was getting late we quickly hoped over to the back end of another big cove, and they were there too. Even though our lake is still down, the fish were back in the last couple of feet of water.
So folks it is time, the spawn is on, and the water in the back ends is significantly warmer than the main lake. So just making a couple of changes, throwing the crankbait down lake and checking out the very back ends of the pockets, led to a much better day. Where we only boated 16 Friday, we easily boated 35 or more on Saturday. On thing to remember when fishing that far back, nice and easy and quiet. We were seeing fish in the holes in the grass, and there was the occasional bed, so any real shallow water tactic should work right now.
I have one more report from Monday, and then I will be caught up. I did find a new way to catch them, not really new, just new here. It will be the subject of some of the next report, it is a cool and fun way to catch them. So if you like to catch fish, Coleto is the place to be. For me though it is just about enough bass fishing for a little bit. I am dying to get to the Gulf, especially with the warm weather we are having. Looking back at last year I caught some good trout on topwater with conditions like this.
Thanks for all your comments, I will try to respond to some of them with the next post, which I promise I will start on right now. Thanks for reading my stuff.
Good Luck and Tight Lines
