FISH CATCHING TRAVEL

Weather

76/65  Cloudy with a 20% of showers.  Wind 20 – 30 out of the SE.

Tides

M   11      Low   2:44 AM     0.0
11     High   2:20 PM     0.9

Solunar Times

• Best Times    2:27A – 4:27A
•                         2:56P – 4:56P  (They got this right on today!)
• Good Time    8:41A – 10:41A

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The Bang O Lure Puts Them in the Boat. The best balsa baits, period!

Since Don at Bagley Baits was kind enough to send me a couple Bang O Lures I have been itching to get back to Coleto after a week off, and today was it.  Cloudy and warm with the fish shallow, it was almost perfect.  To say the wind conditions were not very conducive to topwater is putting it mildly.  The wind was forecast at 20+SE and they were right on, except when it gusted higher.  It really restricts where you can efficiently throw the Bang O Lure, or many other baits for that matter, when it is that windy, so I basically fished coves facing NW which had at least some protection from the wind.

The plan was to fish the BOL around isolated deeper brush, and the first place I fished I missed one and then it got to windy as I got to the mouth of the cove so I picked up the buzzbait and promptly missed 2 that blew up on it.  The addition of a stinger hook cured that and the next 3 or 4 made it over the side.  But that was not the plan, it was throw the BOL so I stuck with it.  Fishing it is one of my favorite spring techniques and today it worked like a charm.

She came up with it wedged sideways in her mouth, awesome.  Love it when one like this sucks it under.

The lake is still on the rise and quite off-color.  But there is tons of new cover with fish bedding everywhere, including about a million tilapia.  Even I might be able to shoot one with a bow, they are everywhere.  So after fishing several places the pattern was clear, just hop from the back ends of coves to back end, hoping for some clearer and calmer water.  And one important point, if one side of the cove was deeper with the other flatter with isolated grass, the grass was the ticket.  Some of the fish were in as little as a foot.  It also took a little while to get the cadence down but once I did the bite was on.

It was awesome to watch them roll up out of nowhere and eat it.

Before I get to the punch line let me say this about the Bang O Lure.  Where it beats the Rapala balsa minnow all to hell is you can actually cast it fairly accurately in higher winds.  It is not so light and that contributes to much more accurate casts, which is necessary for this technique.  The other part of fishing the Bang O Lure is good optics.  Today with heavy cloud cover and off-color water the yellow Cocoons gave me the contrast absolutely necessary to see both the bait and the strike, in spite of the dark water and heavy ripple at times.  And for me it is best on a medium heavy rod with 12lb fluorocarbon line.

There is one thing about fishing the Bang O Lure when fish are shallow, you will get bites and you will see most of them, the question is whether you put the hook in them.  Today I only had one blow up on it while it was on top, the rest rolled over on it when I pulled it under.  After the cast you need to twitch it on top, the goal is to make that same sound you hear when a shad flips.  Then jerk it under with a little harder jerk and wait for them to roll up and eat it.  It requires absolute concentration.  It never ceases to amaze me that you can miss them even though you see them.

There was probably 15 like this today.  A good solid topwater bite.

Today they wanted it twitched a little easier a couple of times then pulled under a couple of inches.  You want to twitch it under and take up enough slack to have a fairly tight line, but not enough to restrict if from floating up freely.  It is just plain awesome to see them roll up out of nowhere and eat it.  When I say it requires concentration I mean it.  Occasionally you will see what the Shoedog calls a “disturbance in the force”, which in the Bang O Lure’s case means a funny looking boil or swirl around the bait even though it does not look like a bite and you do not see the fish, but trust your eyes, he is there.  Often I jerk it under a little more aggressively after I see that.

And if one misses it throw it right back in there.  As long as he doesn’t feel the hooks they will often come back for it.  When I do miss one and throw it back in I like to leave it sitting just a minute longer, then jerk it under pretty aggressively, often provoking a pretty substantial bite.  It is hard for me to put in words all the scenarios that can and do happen fishing the Bang O Lure on top.  Now is the time, the best topwater fishing of the year is happening right now.  And you can use other baits and catch fish, but nothing beats the excitement or results of fishing the Bagley Bang O Lure balsa minnow.

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I got this question and comment from Johnny, a regular around here.

I have been having trouble keeping fish on rattle traps. Have tried changing hooks to bigger hooks but this hasn’t helped. Do you or any of your readers have any suggestions? Any help will be greatly appreciated!

By the way we are having our annual Invitational Tournament this Saturday, April 16th at Coleto Creek Reservoir. If anyone is interested, they can check out the Coleto BassMasters page on Facebook for further information.

Thank you!

First here is the link to the tournament information if any of you are interested.  Looks like fun to me.  https://www.facebook.com/Coleto-BassMasters-166315410059747/?fref=ts

I belonged to the Lake Norfork Bass Club for years.  A part of the Bass federation our club won the Arkansas Championship like 6 out of 7 consecutive years back in the 70’s.  One of the former members was Rayo Breckenridge, the second Bassmaster Champion.  One of my fishing buddies in the club was John Story, founder of Champion Boats and later Viper Boats.

It was a tough row to hoe to win even a monthly club tourney.  My sad luck story was John gave a Champion boat to the winner of the club several years.  It was the total weight for all 12 tournaments.  I led off and on for most of the year, actually losing it the last tournament of the year.  What really hurt was the guy who beat me was the local Champion dealer.  How screwed up was that?

Now to your second question.  To keep them from coming off you might look at 2 things.  First, mono is probably a better choice than braid, it is a lot more forgiving if you are having trouble with them pulling off.  And maybe more important, the rod.  I like either a medium or medium light in graphite or a soft glass rod.  When combined with the mono it should help your problem some.  And any of the rest of you that have suggestions on this one let us know.  And thanks for your comments and participation, it is appreciated and let us know how the tourney comes out.

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And Jim dropped the following comment and question.

Good to read a report about my favorite lake Fayette. I am planning on fishing there again this coming Friday with my brother who is flying in Thursday from northeastern Ohio to get a break from the cold weather. I already have jerk baits tied on and hope to show him a good time.

I do have a question regarding Coleto though. I have a club tournament on the lake in a couple weeks and have been studying the lake with Navionics free WebApp. If you have never used it you should check it out. It’s just like being on the lake and looking at your sonar while sitting in the comfort of your own home. It’s a great tool to use to develope a prefishing plan. My question is have you had much luck fishing deep, 15-20ft, points? I read all your posts and reports on Coleto but haven’t seen much on deeper water fishing with Carolina rigs or football jigs. Now don’t get me wrong, I LOVE shallow water fishing with top waters, swim jigs and spinner baits, but I have been working on fishing offshore deeper points and have had good success. I just want to know if you have done it there and if you feel it is a good pattern to explore on the lake?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts and advise on this technique.

Best regards

Jim

I know it is a good pattern on Coleto, and should be even better as we still are lacking much grass in that shallower water.  That is probably why over the last few years I have stuck with the shallower baits, the fish were reachable and holding in that 5 – 10 foot range year round with all that cover.  Plus I have always been a sucker for the visual spending all that time on the clear highland lakes of Arkansas.  But I will say I have fished deep in both summer and winter off those points and it works.  It would take to long to talk about all the possible places so watch your email, I do have a few suggestions.  And thanks for the heads up on the app.

And good luck on Fayette, we love that lake.  It may be one of the most consistent fisheries around.  Not being sure how accomplished your brother is, we have had great luck with folks by fishing the Rapala Shallow Running Shad Rap.  On light line it is easy to jerk, and with shad clearly the primary forage on Fayette it rarely fails us.  Hope you put him on some good fish and good luck in the tourney.  It should take some serious weight right now, probably 20lbs plus.

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I was real happy with yesterdays results.  The Bang O Lure did it’s job and for a 6 hour trip it was successful.  Anytime you can put 15 – 20 in the boat on top is a good day.  In fact, if I could have fished those places I really wanted to but could not due to the wind it would have been a real killing, especially on the bigger fish.  Unfortunately the weather here is going to suck for a couple of days so it will be next week before I get back there to do it again.

 And for all you salt guys who are itching for reports that is about to change.  The upside is Shoedog is coming in Wednesday night and it will be 2 days out of POC topwater fishing for trout Thursday and Friday.  We will stay down there Thursday night to keep from having to make the drive back and forth, and get an early start Friday without having to get up so dam early.  Hopefully I will be picking up the LTS today and load the saltwater stuff.  All I have to say is I love spring fishing, fresh or salt.  So keep stopping in and thanks for reading my stuff.

Good Luck and Tight Lines