Another bass opener has come and gone, and this one proved to as good as any. I got to spend the weekend on the water with the wife. We went into the day figuring most of the largies would be post spawn, and the ones we caught were. The biggest Beck caught looked like it was sucking in its gut for this photo.
The majority of our fish came either on inside weed edges or in scattered weeds in less than 7′. Our best bait for the day was a 5" Outkast Stickworm in either watermelon/red flake or junebug. We had them Texas rigged with no weight. The key was to dead stick them as well. The fish weren’t looking to chase anything down.
We did try cranking some deeper weeds with no luck. We also tried swim jigs, spinner baits and shallow cranks but couldn’t turn anything on the moving baits. I would expect those baits to pick up soon as the fish start really putting on the feed bag. The water levels are up and the weeds aren’t. The last time this happened the weeds didn’t grow the same and changed the summer bite a bit.
There were quite a few muskies cruising the shallow sand. We saw a couple that were HUGE. I wouldn’t mind finding them in a couple weeks. The weather was great, but that meant more boat traffic. By noon each day it got so crazy out there we gave up and called it a day. The accesses were full and we spent a while just watching and enjoying the free comedy show!
Great report! I’ll be on the water 4:45 tommorrow, looking for some of those big bass.
Mike,
thanks for the great report!!!
So many fish and so little time…
keep those reports a comin….
Jack..
Mike, I’ve always wanted to see the muskies up shallow like you guys talk about in the spring so maybe we’ll see them today. How sick is that, it’s 3:42am and I’m checking IDA while eating cereal waiting for my brother.
mwitham
Thanks for the update Mike!
Nice report!
Nice looking bass Mike. Were you finding concentrations of fish or were they starting to spread out a bit now?
Awesome report, what was your biggest of the day?
Where you casting to fish you where seeing our just the general area where you thought they would be?
Mike,nice fish.Hope to see you down our way next spring.
Ryan Hale
Steve,
The fish were spread out, but groupd in certain areas. You wouldn’t pull 2 fish bang-bang, but we had 50 yd stretches were we would catch multiple fish.
Dan,
The wife and each caught 1 over 4lbs. Together we caught another 6 that were over 3lbs. I was actually weighing them trying to get used to my new cull system. It was a pretty good day for us Sunday. We did see fish on beds, but most were smaller 2lb fish. We were just casting to inside edges.
YEAH good day on the water nice job Mike