Bicentennial Lake, various others - 8/12/2016

[CybrSlydr]

Brother and I hit up three different lakes today.  Arrived at the first lake around 10:45am.

We didn't stick around long because, A. it was really, really hot and B. there was a shelf out to about 30ft before a drop-off.  Unfortunately, the shelf is covered in grass so when we tried a deeper running lure, we would just get it caught up in the grass after about 5 revolutions of the reel.

The next lake we visited looked promising.  We saw submerged trees and other various bits that I've read bass love to congregate around so we tried our lures around those and met with no success. If you look on the right side of the picture, you see the green railing?  That's where we were before we moved to where I took the picture.  Tried all the lures and a spinner over here as well with no luck again. 

Thought I lost my spinner here - I cast it and let it sink to the bottom and it snagged good on something on retrieve.  So, I cut the line and tied on another.  My brother goes over and gets tangled up in the line I cut and ta-da!  The lure is free and he reels it in by hand.  lol  So I dodged a bullet there!

This is the final lake we fished, called Bicentennial.  It's another long and narrow one.  Being unfamiliar with the campsite layout, we ended up near the back-end of the lake and decided to fish there.  Couple of cleared spots on the shore with little to no tree overhang that we decided to utilize.

On my second cast of my shallow lure I managed to hook my first bass!

I've got a Medium 6.5' rod with 12lb test line, so it wasn't a very... difficult landing.  Pretty much just muscled it in because... I'm still new at this and finesse isn't something I have yet.  lol

It wasn't until I looked at this picture when I uploaded it that I told my brother - "It looks like I'm trying to attack the fish with the pliers"  LOL

All told, I was pretty happy with the catch!

So I handed the rod off to my brother who proceeded to try that same lure and a spinner for the next 45 minutes and not get a single nibble.  LOL  He was most unhappy - I can't really blame him because I would be too.  I catch one on my second cast and he can't get anything in 45 minutes?  Let alone the previous hours we've spent fishing.

I figure Bicentennial will be great for bass later on when it cools down as you can see it's quite shallow with a lot of grass and cover - though it'd be easier with a boat so we could fish those reeds and the like.

Here's the link to the full album - I cherry-picked the pics for this thread. 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/cybrslydr/albums/72157672270730116

 

[everythingthatswims]

And so it begins 

[inrll]

That place looks beautiful! I am in Northern KY and have told myself I would get up there for years and still haven't. 

Usually when it's this hot like this I have the best luck with soft plastics. On really tough/hot days downsizing to something like a baby senko can be just the ticket.

[CybrSlydr]

7 hours ago, inrll said:

That place looks beautiful! I am in Northern KY and have told myself I would get up there for years and still haven't. 

Usually when it's this hot like this I have the best luck with soft plastics. On really tough/hot days downsizing to something like a baby senko can be just the ticket.

Depending on how much you feel like walking to different ponds/lakes, there are over 350 I believe in all.  We're just hitting up the ones near roads because... we're still new and getting lost would be a bad day. 

https://www.aep.com/environment/conservation/recland/maps.aspx