Stayed on the upper end of Pool 9 again yesterday and what I thought was an occassional largemouth bass on Thursday was just hoards on Friday.
The AquaVue would reveal bass, and some dandy’s suspended in every hole. I can honestly say I’ve never seen so many. Interestingly enough, the gill’s wouldn’t be any where around the bass but would show up as soon as they moved out for a few minutes.
I don’t normally use my camera much while fishing but today I wanted to see what might interest these fish, in a word— nothing – at least nothing I had with me. I used small jigs, jiggin’ raps, swedish pimples, lil’ cecils, rockers, even a plain hook with a gulp 3″ worm—not even a passing look. I didn’t have any minnows to try but the guys running tip-ups with some small shiners weren’t catching anything. Some of these bass were more than capable of even the largest shiners.
All of this in 3-5′ of water (which is what the whole place is) so I don’t know if suspended is the right word, but they were basically in the middle of the water column all the time.
I saw several that I’d have never got up my 5″ panfish hole.
I’ve seen bass before, and I’ve caught them regularly through the ice, but never have I seen this kind of numbers schooled up in one spot.
Is this a sign of something to come? Now if they just could have been walleyes we would still be there, but “dey was just dem dag gum bass”
The rest of the day fishing….for us…tough with 12 keeper gills among the two of us and we were among the first on and the last off. Maybe we spent too much time watching bass? 