What was this?

[deep]

My apologies for the no-meaning title.

To get to the point; today I noticed something I never seen before. It was about 7.30 pm, cloudy, and the sun already had set behind the hills that overlook my favorite lake.

I was fishing the main channel of the river, pretty close to the river mouth, and a trickle of water was coming into the lake through the river. (If Wayne P. is reading this, it's Sugar Hollow.)

I saw small white bubbles break the surface, not continuously, but in bunches, i.e. a small group of bubbles would come up, it'd stop bubbling, after a while another group would come up again. It occurred along a line, so after a while, there was a trail of bubbles. The bubbling would stop after sometime and the trail disappeared soon thereafter. And then this whole process would reoccur a little distance away.

All this bubbling was happening about eighty to ninety feet away. I cast a 0.5 oz rattle-trap past the bubbles, counted it down to five feet, and ran it through. In about fifteen casts I caught six bass and missed one. All were around 10-12 inches. So these bubbles were related to schooling/ feeding bass?

I have never seen the "shad boil". So I don't know if this was something like that. This lake has stocked trout (rainbow and brook), bluegills, crappies, warmouths. I don't know of any other fish species. All the bubbling stopped after the fifth bass, the bite stopped after the sixth. If it's of any help, the rattle trap was perch colored.

P.S. doubled up on one cast. That was pretty cool.

[deep]

is there carp in your river? when their rutting around on the bottom feeding you will see that.

I don't know. I have never seen a carp there anyway.

[Grey Wolf]

is there carp in your river? when their rutting around on the bottom feeding you will see that.

I don't know. I have never seen a carp there anyway.

The carp are there , believe it.

[bilgerat]

I'm thinking it was schools of young bass chasing the baitfish. That explains the small size. Big bass tend to be loners. I've caught bass the same way by throwing a tube into the boil. I never got anything big this way but it's still fun.

[Avalonjohn44]

I was thinking snapping turtle.

[trevor]

I was thinking snapping turtle.

;D

[deep]

Nice link trevor. Caught one of those guys once, a huge one. Almost landed him, and was thinking what to do with him when he turned around and broke my 6 lb line.

So carp, or turtles; how do this relate to the bass?

[Hellbenderman]

More than likely, turtles, maybe carp, were making the bubbles as they scooted across the bottom, and the small bass have learned that turtles scare up a lot of little stuff like crayfish and the plant detritus that bluegills and shad feed on, which attracts them as well. It's a nice little arrangement for schools of small bass. It's like ringing the super bell! Follow the food!