HEY EVERYBODY!!! It’s started!

The Neko bite has started!!!!!

Seriously though, between the jerkbait and the Neko rig I caught 40+ bass in about 3 hrs this morning. One of the best days I’ve had in the last two years. It was literally every or every other cast with both the lures. Fished main lake points. Biggest fish was a four lb butterball.

Fish were on beds today but weren’t aggressive yet. The next week should be really good for bed fishing.

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Nice one. I’m on board with the jerkbaits. Not so much the neko.

gimruis wrote:

Nice one. I’m on board with the jerkbaits. Not so much the neko.

Gimruis – You need to join the club. I was a little slow to the game, but last year it put a lot of fish in the boat for me. Including some of the biggest of the year. I know you like to throw mostly moving reaction type of baits, But during parts of the season the finesse plastics will way out fish them.

I’m heading out to the lake in a few hours. It will be interesting to see what stage the fish are in on the lake were going to. Planning on lots of weightless plastics in and near the reeds. Not sure if we will mostly catch pre spawn male fish. Bedding male and female fish, or male guarders, but I’m sure we will find out soon enough.

fishthumper wrote:

But during parts of the season the finesse plastics will way out fish them.

No doubt about it. Its a necessary evil at times. And vice versa with moving lures at other times.

Hey Mahto what water temp did you observe this morning and approximately where were you fishing?

gimruis wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>fishthumper wrote:</div>
But during parts of the season the finesse plastics will way out fish them.

No doubt about it. Its a necessary evil at times. And vice versa with moving lures at other times.

Hey Mahto what water temp did you observe this morning and approximately where were you fishing?

Look on his graph. It answers both questions

72-74 degrees. Fishing in northeast metro.

Had a couple smaller bass up on beds and fighting only other bass under the dock this weekend. Boys couldn’t get them to bite all weekend long, and they only seemed to care about other bass coming thru, the sunnies, crappies and rock bass all got a pass. Safe to assume these were smaller males making and protecting the beds for what is to come?

Been a busy spring, but I finally get to go chase the greenies tomorrow night for league. Will definitely have one tied on. The lake we’re fishing is one that you have to be ready for anything. One year it’s dropshot and neko on offshore stuff, the next is slop fishing. Can’t wait!

BigWerm wrote:

Safe to assume these were smaller males making and protecting the beds for what is to come?

Probably. They aren’t interested in eating when they are on beds, they only bite to defend or out of agitation. Some people sit on a bed for hours trying to make one fish bite. I don’t. I make one or two casts and then move on.

Monday night leagues is little and big green, I expect to see both a deeper and shallower bite. The neko and a jig will be tied on

BigWerm wrote:

Had a couple smaller <strong class=”ido-tag-strong”>bass up on beds and fighting only other <em class=”ido-tag-em”>bass under the dock this weekend. Boys couldn’t get them to bite all weekend long, and they only seemed to care about other bass coming thru, the sunnies, crappies and rock bass all got a pass. Safe to assume these were smaller males making and protecting the beds for what is to come?

That tells me the females haven’t laid eggs in those beds yet. The second eggs are in the beds the bass will exhaust themselves chasing out bluegills because they are notorious egg snatchers.

Bearcat89 wrote:

Monday night leagues is little and big green, I expect to see both a deeper and shallower bite. The neko and a jig will be tied on

Unless the fish on Green are way ahead of those here, I’d think the Shallow bedding bite will be the best bet. But if the spawn has been over for awhile there its possible some of those post spawn females will already be set up deeper and ready to bite. I always hate that short post spawn time period. Seems like those mostly larger females always take a few weeks to get past that post spawn funk and back into the feeding mode. Good luck to you out there.

Just throw a Bluegill swim jig and catch the pre spawn cruisers and any that may have already spawned out. Then if you see one on a bed throw a drop shot or wacky worm on it.

We are almost to the spawn here in the north metro. As I mentioned earlier bass are just getting to the beds without much spawning happening yet. The 4 lber I caught was prespawn and on a weed line in about 7 feet of water. So I’m guessing most of the big girls are staging just off the spawning grounds on weedlines. But that will change quick with this heat.

I would definitely lock a bluegill swim jig in my hand. Don’t be afraid to throw a heavier swimjig in the deeper water. We wrecked them Saturday on them.

I would like to try the Neko but when I put the hook in it just rips out even with the o-ring. Any suggestions. Noticed a bit of a Ned rig bite as well some bass on the weed edges already.

I heard guys that throw neko rigs drink bud light.

Nice Carp!

Youbetcha wrote:

I heard guys that throw neko rigs drink bud light.

Yeah but we catch better bass!

mrpike1973 wrote:

I would like to try the Neko but when I put the hook in it just rips out even with the o-ring. Any suggestions. Noticed a bit of a Ned rig bite as well some bass on the weed edges already.

I hook the o-ring and a little bit of the worm too. It happens every once in awhile but usually don’t have an issue. I caught around 20 bass with two Yum Dingers today.

What hook are you using?

Number 2 VMC Neko hook

Maybe go to Zman plastic…..

mrpike1973 wrote:

Number 2 VMC Neko hook

I think you have to watch some YouTube videos on the wacky and neko. Something your doing can’t be right. A few plastics in a outing or maybe a pack is normal. But at the rate you go through them isn’t right. Are you doing super man hook sets ?

mahtofire14 wrote:

Fish were on beds today but weren’t aggressive yet. The next week should be really good for bed fishing.

Do you think that is the case for most the lakes in that area? That seems strange because for most of the lakes here in this area I think the spawn is over or real near the end. A lake I fished on Monday had almost no fish in normal spawning areas. This did not really surprise me because there were already a ton of small Male bass up shallow and a few making beds out there on opening weekend. Its a rather small shallow lake so the spawn usually happens a little early out there in most years. Yesterday afternoon we went to a bigger well know lake thinking the spawn should be going real well. Was surprised to find very few fish in the spawning areas. Not even many small males guarding beds or fry. The few beds we saw looked rather old and already silted in. The few larger females we caught were clearly spawned out. We checked and fished almost every spawning area we knew of ( A lot of them ) and found the same at all of them. The water temps were 78-80 almost everywhere. I know 4 or 5 Deg. of that was probably due to the real HOT day we had yesterday. But 78-80 seemed really warm for this time of the year. I think with the rather slow water warm up we had this spring that a lot of those fish waited till the temp was just warm enough and all moved up and spawned rather quickly and left. Thats fine with me. It just means that the deeper water weedline bite will kick in soon. I’m heading to Canada next Friday and by the time we get back my guess is the deeper weedline bite will be kicking in. Catching big Pike and walleyes in Canada while the post spawn funk is going on here sounds good to me.

fishthumper wrote:

The water temps were 78-80 almost everywhere.

That doesn’t seem right. I haven’t seen anything over 70 degrees once yet, and I’m fishing south of you. I saw 69 degrees in the west metro last weekend. Mahto reported 72-74 on Wed.

gimruis wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>fishthumper wrote:</div>
The water temps were 78-80 almost everywhere.

That doesn’t seem right. I haven’t seen anything over 70 degrees once yet, and I’m fishing south of you. I saw 69 degrees in the west metro last weekend. Mahto reported 72-74 on Wed.

a fair # of warm days since last weekend, Including a 92 Deg. day here yesterday. This was on new hummingbird units. Both units read within 1 deg. of each other. They have always been off by about 1 deg. from each other. I thought it was odd as well. It would go down to 78 when we crossed the main lake and go right back up to near or at 80 when we would get back into smaller bays.

80 degrees is getting WARM for June 1. Muskie opener in 2 days is not good if its already that warm.

gimruis wrote:

80 degrees is getting WARM for June 1. Muskie opener in 2 days is not good if its already that warm.

Our forecast here for the next 5 days for highs are 88 today, then 87, 87, 91, 85. That is rather warm for the 1st week in June. I don’t want a repeat of a few years ago. I think the long period of warm water that year really messed up the weed growth that summer. It was also a low water year like this year is.

I will be real sad if we hit 80 this weekend. Hopefully we get enough rain to keep temps down.