baby craw. full grown bass.

[paul.]

good day on the water today.  i really thought i'd see some good fish on beds and get to sight fish a little, but that plan pretty much fizzled.  snatched a few little bucks off the few beds that were made, but i only saw one small female on a nest.  played around with her a few minutes until she cooperated just to get back in the swing of sight fishing.  after another hour of looking and not finding, i abandoned ship on the sight fishing game.  i just don't think the spawn has really commenced hot and heavy yet around here.  it will probably be on big time with the next full moon though.  so i started chunking and winding.  rattlebaits, spinnerbaits, and swim jigs produced sparingly.  the big fish just weren't wanting to cooperate.  i was starting to get frustrated.  

 

then something rather unusual happened.  i discovered a huge bluegill bed which is odd on its own since usually the gills don't really get cranked up around here until the bass are at least halfway done spawning.  i figured some slab bluegill might make me forget the mediocre bassin' day so i tied a small plastic on my spinning rod.  normally i do really well with this setup but the gills just wouldn't cooperate very well either.  but then i caught a bass, and another, and another until i was catching small bass almost every cast fishing for bluegill.

 

that told me something.  they wanted small and they wanted slow.  i just had to find a big female.  figuring the majority of what i had caught were bucks, i had to assume the bigger females were still holding out in a little deeper water.  so i tied a baby craw with a 1/8 oz. weight onto my spinning rod.  backed out to a submerged fence row with timber and grass and there she was.  8 lbs. 1 oz.   really fun on the medium light spinning rod.  well, i can say it was fun now but at the time it made for some tense moments.

 

 

[OCdockskipper]

Beautiful fish, soon to passing those good genes to the newest generation.

[*Hootie]

8 hours ago, paul. said:

good day on the water today.  i really thought i'd see some good fish on beds and get to sight fish a little, but that plan pretty much fizzled.  snatched a few little bucks off the few beds that were made, but i only saw one small female on a nest.  played around with her a few minutes until she cooperated just to get back in the swing of sight fishing.  after another hour of looking and not finding, i abandoned ship on the sight fishing game.  i just don't think the spawn has really commenced hot and heavy yet around here.  it will probably be on big time with the next full moon though.  so i started chunking and winding.  rattlebaits, spinnerbaits, and swim jigs produced sparingly.  the big fish just weren't wanting to cooperate.  i was starting to get frustrated.  

 

then something rather unusual happened.  i discovered a huge bluegill bed which is odd on its own since usually the gills don't really get cranked up around here until the bass are at least halfway done spawning.  i figured some slab bluegill might make me forget the mediocre bassin' day so i tied a small plastic on my spinning rod.  normally i do really well with this setup but the gills just wouldn't cooperate very well either.  but then i caught a bass, and another, and another until i was catching small bass almost every cast fishing for bluegill.

 

that told me something.  they wanted small and they wanted slow.  i just had to find a big female.  figuring the majority of what i had caught were bucks, i had to assume the bigger females were still holding out in a little deeper water.  so i tied a baby craw with a 1/8 oz. weight onto my spinning rod.  backed out to a submerged fence row with timber and grass and there she was.  8 lbs. 1 oz.   really fun on the medium light spinning rod.  well, i can say it was fun now but at the time it made for some tense moments.

 

 

 

Love it! That's the one I've been looking for, like.....forever...lol.

CONGRATS!!!

 

Hootie

[A-Jay]

Sounds & Looks like a great trip and that's

Another Nice One Paul ~

Congrats

A-Jay

[Gotfishyfingers?]

WTG!!

[jbw252]

Great looking catch.  Congratulations.

[Darren.]

Another beauty!

[Gundog]

 Bravo Sir. It takes skill to wrangle a hog like that with light equipment. 

[Paul Roberts]

Neat story. Reminds me of a guy I've met a few times recently on my local ponds. He's been drawing blanks mostly, but I watched him catch a decent bass on a little Beetle-Spin like set-up. Next time I saw him, he had it tied on and said that's just about all he's been catching on.

 

Also... I often "speed test" smaller fish to see how willing to chase they are. And it often does translate to the larger fish too. 

[WIGuide]

congrats on the gorgeous fish!

[Smokinal]

Nice job figuring her out!

[RoLo]

 

Very nice bass Paul, for you this has been the 'year of the cows'   

 

Roger

[Dwight Hottle]

That's a mighty big bluegill Paul.

[fishingfuji]

Awesome!!! now that's what I call finding the pattern. Way to go

[J._Bricker]

Nice fish Paul, and I enjoyed the account of what happened even more! Continued good fishing, I don't think you'll put that spinning rod down any time soon, JB 

[basswrangler83]

Cool story. I'm going out tomorrow and the water is in the low 50's here (southeast Nebraska). Had no luck yesterday,  so maybe I'll try to go small tomorrow.