Recently, I had an opportunity to take a couple of friends out and spend some time chasing largemouth! We haven’t had as much time to fish together in recent years due to all of our living locations. Recently, they came for a week to my neck of the woods on vacation, which was all the reason I needed to take a few vacation days to go fishing!
I figured that to save time and get more casts in, because I had a few things to get done before I could hit the water, we would just go on the chain of lakes where they were staying. I hadn’t been on the lake yet this year but I had heard it has been fishing very tough. Well I wasn’t too worried I knew that with the amount of time I’ve spent on that body of water we should be able to catch a fish or two. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
We started fishing offshore rock in about 10 feet of water. I started by trying to throw a Rapala DT 10 but then realized they were still safe in there boxes at home. So I pulled out the old risto rap, while the other guys threw football head jigs, and Carolina rigs.
We spent the better part of the day offshore fishing rock humps, rock points, and scattered wood. We hit waypoint after waypoint where I have had success in the past but couldn’t buy a fish! As the day drug on, I knew it was time for a change. So we switched tactics and went deep in the thick weeds just as a last resort. We didn’t do any better there. There were a few fish that hit at frogs and swim jigs but none of which came in the boat!
I can’t say we didn’t have fun that day, but I did feel like I let the other guys down by not putting them on any fish. The next day I had to work, and just kept thinking about how we got our butts kicked the day before. The only thing that made me feel better, was knowing I had the next day off to try and get some redemption on the fish! I decided instead of beating a dead horse and possibly being extra frustrated that we should go try a different lake!
We fished with lots of the same baits, only this time I remembered the Rapala DT 10s, and we threw a drop shot rig in the mix. It was a good thing we threw in the drop shot rig because it struck first! We hadn’t been on the first rock hump more than five minutes when we boated the first bass! What a relief, not another fishless day! It wasn’t long before the first decent smallmouth was in the boat. With those first few fish we had something to go on! We continued to fish rock humps and small rock piles with some success on most of them. However, when we found rock with weeds directly on the edge of it we had even more fun! If you could keep from catching the weeds, which is where the Carolina rig really produced, you just expected to get bit when you hit the rock! There were plenty of fish, and some toothy species as well that were just inside the weeds and would hit almost immediately!
The majority of our fish fell victim to a Carolina rig but we did have a fair amount of fish eat our DT 10s, football heads and drop shot rigs.
I can’t say that we had amazing numbers or caught the biggest fish that we could have, but we had a blast! I think I can say that we all learned somethingS both days we were out: First, was how to use a drop shot rig which helped us catch the first fish of the day. Next was how to properly set the hook on a Carolina rig to increase your hookup rate. Lastly, every day spent fishing is a learning experience and memories are made.
