Pool 8, Quality not Quantity

I fished pool 8 today for a few hours after the storms finally left the area. We headed to south goose island to fish the vast acreage of lilly pads and grass flats that lies out there. I only managed to catch four fish and my dad had one. He also lost 2 very small fish, and i caught a gar.. Even though we only caught 5 fish, they were all keepers. there were 2 14″ers(one was my dad’s) and i also caught a 16″er, an 18″er and a beautiful 20″ largemouth to end the nigh.most of my latest bass have been caught on brovarny or rc tackle swim jigs in bluegill or similar color patterns however, we have seen fairly good numbers of bass gobbling up baby brush hogs along weedlines or jigs flipped along cut banks

Today, all the fish except one (my dad’s) were caught on swim jigs. it was a pretty fun night. the 20 incher was caught in thick lily pads where i saw a huge splash so i casted, there was a wake and he nailed it. I pretty much had to horse her out of the junk using only 14 lb mono line. I was very pleased with the fish.

Also, earlier today, my dad and I took his boat out for a test run and we hit target lake and north gravel pits. i caught one small northern and lost something huge (not a bass, almost looked like a 5-6 lb walleye) that i could only see for a split second and could not identify. I caught a small smallie and my dad caught an even smaller smallie in the gravel pit.

Here’s a beauty 18 inch largemouth caught on a swim jig today. the lighting makes it tough to notice, but this fish had black blotches all over it.

heres the beautiful 20 incher.

2.

Thanks for the report and pics Cade. But please stay away from lightening. I just read an article in the latest Field and Stream magazine [July issue] about a guide who was sruck by lightening and luckily survived but was terrible living through the pain. Nice fish Bud.
Thanks, Bill

thanks bill, even a chicken with a brain the size of a quarter finds its way out of the rain as my baseball coach said last thursday. We didn’t leave the landing, or our house for that matter, until the skies were clearing up and the weather channel radar said it was gone. it sprinkled again for a while, but then it cleared up, as you can see from the pics. yeah i have always been afraid of lightning. I got stuck in a storm once with my friend a couple miles away from the landing. there was nothing we could do but keep going full throttle and pray to the good lord.

Nice fish, bro! Hey, I finally made my first trip to Goose (well, first since I was really little) with my brother a few weeks back. We caught them in the slop. Definitely some good water down there. Do you run into shallow water a lot with your boat when you’re trying to check out different spots around Goose?

Lol, i run THROUGH shallow water, not into it. Most of the spots i fish are less than 7 feet deep so its relaively shallow. My boat can go in water around 10 inches before it starts getting real tough (I have to be on plane of course)
I didn’t get to fish a ton today, we were on the beach on the river. I fished when we were putting the boat in at goose and got a nice 16 incher within minutes of fishing. At the beach i caught a 13 incher and putting the boat on the trailer again i got a 14 incher. that was it for the day. Not bad for a total of maybe 20 minutes of fishing for the entire day.