Pool 10 Sunday

Sunday Morning I had the opportunity to fish with a friend from Texas. We started out throwing to an opening through a lily pad field and immediately started catching fish. I was fishing a white spinnerbait while Walt threw a Pop R. After awhile I tried throwing a soft jerk bait with limited success, I did manage to catch a couple on it though. When the bite slowed down we then started looking for side channels with current and wood. We flipped worms and spinnerbaits and caught alot of fish on wood. It seemed scented worms worked better than unscented as Walt caught more fish behind me. All told we estimated that we must have caught around 20 over 14 inches with about another 20 under. We were’nt able to land any real hawgs today with our biggest fish being around 17 inches.

I’ve never fished a plastic jerk bait until today. How do most of you fish them? (please no just jerk them replies) I tries twitching them to make it dive and tried a little “walk the dog” action with little success. Several times I had fish swirl at the bait without hooking up.

Below is a picture of Walt with one of the bass he caught on topwater at the start of the day.

THW WIFE AND I ALSO GOT TO FISH POOL 10 SUNDAY. WE WERE PART OF A SMALL GUYS AND GALS FISHING TOURNAMNET. WE HAD 13.14LBS FOR 6 FISH. OUR BIGGEST WAS 3.91LBS. WE CAUGHT ALL BUT 1 FISH IN SLOP. THE SLOP SPOT WE FOUND DIDN’T HAVE ANY ALGAE BLOOM AND THE WATER WAS REALLY CLEAN. WE DID CATCH ONE KEEPER AND MANY SMALL FISH ON SOME MAIN CHANNEL POINTS. WAS A GREAT FISHING WEEKEND.

Well, I just JERK ‘EM!

Seriously, it is like anything else, there are plenty of ways to fish them. Depending on how bouyant they are, you can “walk the dog” with them or if the sink faster like the Yamamota series, you can twitch to the top and let fall, repeat until you are back to the boat.

The key (at least that I have found) is when you see your line begin to move (slow retrieve) or you feel the hit, take a long pause… then, jerk the lips off ’em! Otherwise, you will miss a lot of fish.

Glad to hear you had a great weekend fishing!

I was up on 7 and 8 Sat and Sun… boated my biggest of the season… 19.25″ 3.9 lbs… For those who have read my previous postings… I found her in the SLOP… I guess you all were right, the HOGS live a slower life out of the current and in the $%^&*(

I fished pool 10 on Saturday and Sunday morning. I saw the guy/gal tournament take off and saw a couple of the boats later in the morning. I went the rocks and current way and had a blast on mostly smallmouths. My 10 year old son and I boated about 60 fish total fishing around 3 hours each morning. The size was down with the average around 12″. Big fish was only 16″, but the action was well worth it. A six fish sack would have been around 10 pounds. Most fish caught on crankbaits and skirted twin tails fished texas rigged. My son also caught fish splitshotting a twistertail.

Interesting, after fishing wood and current we did stop by our first spot (lily pad opening) and fished the slop around it with no success. By noon we also couldn’t buy a bite in the open area either. It’s good to know that the slop bite is coming alive though. It’s my favorite way to fish bass.

When fishing the plastic jerk bait I was impressed with the darting and erratic action of the bait. Do you find that pausing the bait while retrieving it can trigger strikes? I wonder if maybe I was fishing it a little to fast causing the fish to miss.

The action is kinda similiar to another lure that that’s been the object of scorn by many, the Banjo Minnow. Makes me wonder if these baits came first or if they just made their own versions of the Banjo Minnow.

My success has ONLY come with a very pregnant pause… Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, P-A-U-S-E, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, P-A-U-S-E… SLAM!