Just got home. It was a good night, learned a lot, got frustrated a lot, but overall good. The lake had just been sprayed with weed killer in the past week and the fish were a bit ‘off’ from the people I talked to. That’s consistent with what happened at another nearby lake a couple weeks ago. This lake gets tons of milfoil on top of pondweed and tapegrass(eelgrass). Last year the milfoil was matted or very close in anything less than 8’. There were good defined weed edges along the dropoffs. That was the plan to fish, but almost all of the milfoil was gone leaving sparse bits of dying pondweed and some green flowing eelgrass.
I actually fished all of the baits I had preplanned to fish plus one. The plan was to start with a toad and move to steadily slower baits until I figured them out. Well they were hitting the toad. With the weeds dying, the bass tucked up tight to shore in the remaining slop behind the bluegill beds. They were within the first foot of shore, so cast it onto shore and hop it out. That was the good bit. The frustrating bit was that it took a half dozen blowups before I stuck one good enough to get it back to the boat and even that one popped lose boatside. It took another half dozen before I put the toad down and fished something they would eat better. I went to a Texas rigged turbo fattyz (basically a magnum speed worm) in houdini and fished it in the eelgrass outside of the bluegill beds. A couple casts in a hit a 14” fish. As I was releasing him, I saw two muskies cruising about 50 yards away so I spent a half hour casting the big keitech (SIF 6.8). One followed it back to the boat on the first cast but then no more. Both were 40”+ fish. After casting for them for a while, the bass and everything else just seemed to disappear. Before that there were fish splashing in the shallows chasing fry and bluegills, there were bluegills eating bugs, and baitfish flopping out deep. After? Dead zone. I went backwards over the same areas I fished once with the toad and pitched the fattyz, a fluke, a beaver to the clumps and some brush, and I even threw a big Texas rig straight worm. Areas that had fish the first pass had nothing moving or eating. I went back to the toad to see if I could even find a few and lost a good one. It ate it, I gave it a two count to take up slack, and railed back on it. I had her for a couple seconds, enough to feel the weight and a hard head shake. Then nothing but grass. Definitely a better fish, probably 3 lb or so. At that point I decided to test the ‘all plastic’ rule and put on a yappa frog. It’s still plastic so technically within the rules even if not in the spirit of the rules. I only had it because it’s in the same box as the toads. I had to know if it was the fish, my equipment, the toad, or me. It only took two casts to find out with a double nose hooked fish. I left shortly after.
so what I learned tonight.
if I am going to continue to fish toads, I need to work on a few things. I fished it on both my mh and heavy rods, the heavy with braid. The mh wasn’t enough rod with mono on it. It casts and fishes great but there wasn’t enough to drive the hook home I don’t think. The heavy is a great rod (falcon expert amistad) but doesn’t cast an unweighted zoom horny toad well enough. It bombs fine, but for short, accurate casts it isn’t there. A lightly weighted hook might do it. I used a 3/8 oz weighted hook a bit since that’s what the keitech was on, but that’s too much for a toad. Bait monkey says I should think about a new rod, but my brain says fish a frog instead.
A Texas rig fishes well as a search rig. I would never use a Texas rig in that scenario. I would use a chatterbait or a swim jig. In this case, the fattyz fished through the grass pretty well. Some fine tuning and I could see fishing through a patch with the jig and come back through with a Texas rig fished just a little slower. I need to play more with pegged vs not pegged weight in different places. I have always pegged in the past but the fattyz was unpegged and since the water was clear I could watch it in the shallows and see how the bait reacted.
i need to fish a fluke more. I didn’t catch anything on it tonight but I didn’t fish it hard. I tried it fishing back through where fish were chasing earlier and it just looks so good in the water.
sunline supernatural is pretty awesome mono. I picked up some 12 lb for fishing topwaters and finesse jigs. The 12# is really thin, similar to red label 10 lb Fluoro. It was super limp though and cast incredible. I’m going to pick up some a little thicker and try it.
Will I do an all plastics day again? Probably not. It was a good experiment and I learned some things. When I’m fishing through some stuff I’ll think more about different things. A Texas rig for more than spot flipping for instance. I’ve still got work to focus on Ned, wacky, and shaky head setups. I had the spinning rod with a Ned tonight and made a couple casts, but I just couldn’t get into it. Maybe if it was a baitcaster.
