Had another kayak tournament this weekend. Got to the lake early Thursday morning to start my prefish. Had my worst tournament of the year out there last year, so I really wanted to do better this time. The water was way lower this time, so it fished a lot different, but I had a fairly good prefish, catching fish from inches of water to out over 50' of water.

Funny thing about prefishing, if you do it right, things don't always turn out the way you planned otherwise it would be pointless. This was certainly one of those times. One of those places that I checked out "Just so I can mark it off my list", ended up being the place I had circled for where I was fishing Saturday morning. I was pretty surprised to only have 2 other kayaks at the ramp and had the whole area all to myself when 5:30 first cast came around. First fish of the morning 10 minutes into the morning, was a 20" walleye on a 6th Sense Catwalk, that was a first. Second fish of the morning pulled hard on a Ned and came off. Third one I was instantly cut off on the combination of concrete, metal, and zebra mussels with my dropshot. 4th bite was another 17" walleye that had a 5lb largemouth following it in. A boat cut right in front of me and caught a 5lb largemouth, and I finally boated a 16.25" smallmouth. Next cast was another 16" smallmouth, both on a Ned. A few cast later was a 17" largemouth. 

Next fish was an 18" smallmouth on the Ned

The bite slowed for a minute so I tossed a flutter spoon and whacked an 18.25" smallmouth.

Next bite on the flutter spoon was a huge bite, but it was instantly in the junk and the fish and my spoon was gone even on 20lb test, heartbreaker of a loss.

I rotated through baits for a bit before picking up another fish, this time an 18.5" largemouth.

Another bait change to a tube and I picked up another fish, a 19.25" largemouth.

I don't think it was maybe 9:30AM at this point, and I had 91", but that would be it, I had maybe 4 more bites the rest of the day and none were big enough to cull. Ended up in 3rd place, first was 92.75". I knew lack of bites/fish was a potential issue with this spot and it got me in the end. Still, I was going to swing for the fences and I did and it almost worked out. 

 

 

 

 

 

1 hour ago, The Bassman said:

Blade bait keeps putting up numbers and size. As long as I have a clean path through the water and a little breeze these guys are going to get a lot of game time.

I just watched a Randy Blaukat video where he said a blade bait is one of the worst baits in July. So despite your success your doing it wrong.

On 7/10/2022 at 12:05 AM, throttleplate said:

Snagged a huge carp in the tail meat area and fought him like a giant tuna and got him into shore.

You snagged a carp in the tail?  I bet that was interesting.

First brown bass outing of the season.  Gonna try again on Thursday.  Things fight like heck in the swift current of a river.  Even a 12 incher feels like a giant.

1 hour ago, gimruis said:

You snagged a carp in the tail?  I bet that was interesting.

 

Yes, 2nd time this year using a rip stop rapala with new oversized treble hooks. The hooks get a good bite in the meat by the tail fin and hold on.

These river carp will follow your lure and they swat at it with their bodies just maybe to mess with it not eat it and then they get snagged usually when i jerk it unknownly that a carp is around.

Some of these are huge 30 plus inches, scales as big as a quarter and when i am wading they get close and are kinda freaky. You must see them in your area on the river, lakes? They seem to run in packs just lazilly cruising especially in the ottertail river.

 

2 minutes ago, throttleplate said:

You must see them in your area on the river, lakes?

Oh yes, I see them fairly often in some of the lakes I fish.  Not so much the river I fish.  I've never caught or snagged one in my life though.  I always thought it would happen at some point, but it never has.  And yes, some of them are enormous.  One particular lake near where I fish has a bow fisherman jon boat with lights on it and they go around the shoreline at night trying to shoot them.

Just now, gimruis said:

Oh yes, I see them fairly often in some of the lakes I fish.  Not so much the river I fish.  I've never caught or snagged one in my life though.  I always thought it would happen at some point, but it never has.  And yes, some of them are enormous.  One particular lake near where I fish has a bow fisherman jon boat with lights on it and they go around the shoreline at night trying to shoot them.

 

Yeah they do that also on the ottertail. Last week at around 10:00pm a group of folks were walkin the shorline with bow and arrow with a special reel attached to the bow and were spotting with a 50000 candle power light the carp.

1 hour ago, DitchPanda said:

I just watched a Randy Blaukat video where he said a blade bait is one of the worst baits in July. So despite your success your doing it wrong.

I saw the same video. Maybe my four buck lure has some kind of magic his ten dollar Megabass one doesn't. Always watch Randy just for kicks.

1 hour ago, The Bassman said:

I saw the same video. Maybe my four buck lure has some kind of magic his ten dollar Megabass one doesn't. Always watch Randy just for kicks.

That's kinda where I'm at with him. In the past few weeks he told all of us we suck at catching bass in the morning, don't know how to fish a frog, can't run a trolling motor, can't hold a spinning reel right, can't hold a baitcaster right and can't even judge the distance between lure and rodtip to cast correctly. I'm just glad my local bass don't watch him because they would know how much of an angling failure I am and stop biting.

Latest escapades, beautiful creek smallmouth and some Largemouth bass from my last boat trip. Including this 3.10lb stud. 

My dads coming for a visit next week and I’m taking him fishing on my lakes but his boat.  I heard one lake where I was planning to go was really low so I previewed it tonight.  Sure enough it is 3’ low.  Almost all of the woody cover around the shoreline is dry.  The grass was brown/dying and the fish wanted nothing to do with it.
 

The plan was to ride around the lake and see just how much timber was left in the water (my dad prefers timber) while power fishing here and there. The short answer is that I could count the amount of wood in the water with one hand and I caught fish on 3 of them. There were probably more fish on those trees if I wanted to slow down with a jig or worm, but I didn’t have a lot of time to cover 800 acres and I can only manage just shy of 4 mph. I think I’m changing plan of lake to take him since he wouldn’t enjoy this one.  In the meantime, a couple 15-17”, 2.5-3lb fish on topwater isn’t a bad couple hours. 
 

 

Got some of my first frog bass of the year on a jackall gavacho frog, white color. I missed the first fish that hit, only the second time I threw a frog all year. Second one missed the frog completely. I caught the third and forth one though. I am happy with that for less than a hour. Biggest bass 2.38lbs small but okay for spring valley, I don’t see many people catch fish here but they do from what I have been told. I refuse to believe that I am getting better at this lol, of course it’s my second year fishing here so maybe I should not doubt myself.

Went on a little hike with my daughter and I figured we might as well bring a couple rods just in case. Skunkville the first hour or so we were hiking along and fancasting every hundred feet or so. Then out of nowhere, boom. 21" LMB that appeared to be on the comfortable side of 5lbs. Ya just never know.

Every once in a while we do a fly fish only day on the river...

I've never posted in this thread before, but I had to post something about today. What a great day out on the water. I went to the Mohawk River in upstate NY (it's 5 minutes from my house) and decided to find a new spot. The Mohawk is a decent smallmouth fishery, but not so much for largemouth. So instead of beating a dead horse and continuing to try to find largemouth in the river, I decided to search for smallmouth. I found an area that had a 30-40ft sheer cliff that dropped into roughly 20ft of water. It also had numerous small waterfalls coming off of it. The bottom was rocky. Everything about this said it was the place for smallmouth, so I gave it a shot. I threw out a Ned rigged TRD craw and caught a rock bass. This was encouraging since most times I've caught rock bass, smallies were nearby. Then I caught a smallie that was just barely keeper sized. Then a small walleye. Then I caught this fella. I've never been a huge bronzeback aficionado, but after catching this guy, wow are they fun! I caught him (all of them actually) on a 5' ultralight rod and 6lb braid. I was convinced that this guy must've been 18-20" by the way he was fighting. Alas, he's 15", but so much fun. Add to that all of the wildlife I saw on the river (a bunch of different bird species and a deer drinking water out of the river) and it was truly a great day out on the water.

Got out with the new FishLab baits a couple times, a hour after work last night and 45 minutes before work this morning. Took the nymph to a creek where I thought it would shine. It got the bites but the fish were so small they could barely get the hook.

This morning I tried the lake by my house and got one on the nymph, 1 on the cranking shad, and 1 on the rat.

 

Finally cracked 4 lb. again with this 4.3. Blade baits still working good. This one could tell a lot of stories.

3 hours ago, KSanford33 said:

I was convinced that this guy must've been 18-20" by the way he was fighting. Alas, he's 15", but so much fun.

I experienced this just yesterday on a small river.  It was a 15.5 incher that tugged like it was a 19 incher.  I was using a shallow crank/wake bait and it hit so hard it almost knocked the rod out of my hand.  Unfortunately I never got to actually experience that 19 incher yesterday, but perhaps next time.

No pictures unfortunately but commenting in case people have recommendations or advice.

 

Ive fished The Pond 3 times this week, and the bite has been awful. First time I caught 3, mainly on the Texas rig. Second time I caught 3 on a wacky rig. Today I went and had a couple hits and hooked up on 3 fish, using a 4.3 Keitech with a flashy swimmer. All 3 came off at the bank. One was because it was wrapped up in some brush, so understandable. The other 2 were on open bank, just came off when I tried to lift them out of the water. 
 

The common theme in all of these was that each one was the first fish I caught at that spot, usually about 10 or so casts in. Then the spot just dies. No bites, swipes or anything on anything I throw. 
 

I’m used to getting bites and not getting the fish, that happens. But for all 3 to come off at the same time (roughly) is a weird occurrence. 
 

On top of all of this, I cannot figure the fish out. I’ve tried hopping, dragging, short stroking worms, craws, grubs and I can’t even get a bite. I’ve tried chatterbaits, spinnerbaits, swimbaits, crank baits and can’t buy a bite. The only thing I can seem to get hit is a wacky rig 4” Senko. 

Only thing I can think is the fish are locked down cause it’s been very little rain and in the 90s in SW Ohio for a week, then down in the mid to low 80s for a week. Fish may just have a case of lockjaw.

 

Any advice or reccs welcome, I’m going back to that area tomorrow to fish.

Started out strong with this small 3.40lb bass followed by this other one and 5 or so dinks. Bait of the day rage craw in bama craw I think, the green and orange color. I call it sunfish or blue gill, because that’s the colors I am trying to mimic. 3/0 owner twist lock hook, small tungsten weight that’s red but works, rage craw in that color lol. Dinks mostly came on 4.5 robo worm wacky rigged, mm3 color on a owner wacky hook.

On thursday wife and I went to Baldhill dam in North Dakota, an easy 65 mile highway drive away. This was our very first time to see and fish this dam.

It was a very entartaining day of fishing and a balancing act so as to not fall off of a rock or slip while it rained as we fished, the rocks were treacherous slippery. This rocky lined dam is the steepest and longest i have traversed to this day.

I caught walleye, not big but eater size, smallmouth, good sized pike and lots of black bullheads which were black as night and wouldnt stop munching on the gulp alive 4 inch minnow on a jig head.

Caught the sm on lipless crank chrome sided as with the walleye by casting out into the current and reeling in, lettin it fall a bit and jerking it whenever i felt it hit a rock.

The pike were caught on a berkley grass pig 6 inch on a weighted spiral lock keel hook 3/8 oz. I had to cast as close to the d**n wing curve and back and the first cast the tail got bitten off so i just casted again and it got hit again and i brought her in.

 

I got tired of casting so i rigged up a gulp minnow 4 inch on a jig head using a bobber to avoid snags and letting it float downstream with the current while bouncing off the rocks and all i caught were freaky looking black bullheads.

At 10:30pm we headed back up the rocks to the car. I have pics i took of the area while takin a break but no fish pics as it was just to knarley to try to maneuver the rocks with a pole and a camera without falling.

 

 

 

 

9 minutes ago, throttleplate said:

On thursday wife and I went to Baldhill dam in North Dakota,

 

 

 

Think I've seen that spillway before - right here

https://youtu.be/t0oEGrWc-fI

A-Jay

 

11 minutes ago, A-Jay said:

 

Think I've seen that spillway before - right here

https://youtu.be/t0oEGrWc-fI

A-Jay

 

Yes spot on. I casted using a plopper but no hits but i did catch the pike on a grass pig. i will be back to the dam in the fall/winter to attempt a big musky and for the walleye and smallies.

Fish were all deep today. Every bite came from deep outside weed lines. A popper at day break produced a few, along with frogs in the lilies later on. Big fish was

4lb 12oz and slugged a spinnerbait in 12’ of water late morning. 

22 minutes ago, Jar11591 said:

Fish were all deep today. Every bite came from deep outside weed lines. A popper at day break produced a few, along with frogs in the lilies later on. Big fish was

4lb 12 oz and slugged a spinnerbait in 12’ of water late morning. 

Great Bass and Killer Pics ! 

Congrats 

Btw, the deep weedline deal is the first offshore consistent bass locator & catcher I learned and still one of my all time favorite way to target them.

Nicely Done 

A-Jay 

49 minutes ago, A-Jay said:

Great Bass and Killer Pics ! 

Congrats 

Btw, the deep weedline deal is the first offshore consistent bass locator & catcher I learned and still one of my all time favorite way to target them.

Nicely Done 

A-Jay 

 Thanks A-Jay. This particular outside weedline is probably my most consistent producing spots on any of the lakes I fish. And the best part is, I’ve never seen another angler spend any more than a couple casts at it. Everyone motors right on past it to go beat the bank.