Banner Creek, Kansas – Bass Report

The Lincoln Bass Club headed to Kansas for the weekend. The action was pretty steady at Banner Creek. The bass are definitely in their summer haunts. I wasn’t able to fish Saturday, but did make it down to fish Sunday morning. I called one of my good friends Jeremy Hall from Topeka to come out and fish with me.

We hit the water around 5:30am. We weren’t sure where we should start so we headed across the lake from the boat dock and started fishing shoreline cover on a main lake point. We both started out with buzzbaits. Jeremy was throwing white, while I threw a black one. After 10 minutes and no hits I quickly changed to an Eakins Jig with a Paca Chunk Craw and Jeremy threw a jig head worm. We worked our way down the bank into the cove, where we started flipping around the many stumps. Still no bites.

We worked out of the cove and fished down the bank to the rip rap along the dam. I alternated between a Rick Clunn signature Lucky Craft lure and the Jig. Jeremy was throwing a Hand Carved craw type crankbait made by Custom Lures Unlimited. Once we made it to the rip rap action started to pick up. Jeremy caught a 14” bass on his crankbait. A little farther down the dam he caught another 14” bass. I don’t think I had a bite on my crankbait. About ¾ of the way down the face of the dam I started throwing a Venom Shakee Head worm. That’s when I started to get some bites. My first cast was a 15” bass and my second was a 14” bass. We were having trouble figuring out what the bass were doing. Most of the time most of the bites will come from certain depths. Well, I would catch one in 6 to 8 feet of water then on the next cast catch one in 2 feet of water. In about 20 minutes time Jeremy and I had 3 keepers each. We then headed south along the dam again.

After fishing the dam the second time I started throwing a Carolina Rig with a black/blue flake Venom Hollow Hog. We worked back down the bank to the point where we started. After a couple casts I hooked up with a 15 ½” bass. Several casts later I hooked up with a bigger bass that came off at the boat. A little later I caught yet another bass in the 16” range. Jeremy was also throwing a Carolina rig with a Zoom Brush Hog, but didn’t have any bites. He did switch to a Venom Hollow Hog, but still didn’t get any bites. All of the fish I caught seemed to come from about 8 to 10 feet of water.

Next we head to the west end of the lake to check things out. We really didn’t see anything we liked and I didn’t feel like heading into the stump field. We fished around another main lake with a Carolina Rig where I caught another 14” to 15” bass and Jeremy also caught one. About this time the heat was starting to pick up. It was near 11am and we decided to head back to the dam to finish out the day.

Along the dam Jeremy started throwing a spinner bait and I stuck with the Venom Shakee Head. Right off the bat I caught another 15 ½” bass while Jeremy had a 17.5” bass pound his bait. We each caught a few more while we worked the dam. About noon the heat began to take it’s toll. We decided to work our way north down the dam one last time and call it a day. I switched back to a crankbait. I took off the Rick Clunn signature bait and put on a Lucky Craft Skeet Reese, SKT Mini Shallow Runner in the chartreuse shad color. I caught everything from flathead, walleye to bass. Jeremy also caught a couple more smaller bass.

At about 12:30 we called it a day. I finished up with 5 a bass limit weighing nearly 11 pounds and Jeremy had 4 going nearly 8 pounds. It turns out we didn’t fish deep enough. Most of the other guys had 12 to 14 pounds, but the winner fished and extended main lake point in 14 to 20 feet of water. The smallest of his 5 bass was 19”. His total weight for his 5 bass was over 24 pounds. It was a great morning on the water and we all had a good time.