In the last 7 days I made it a goal to fish every day in the same lake and to try just about every style of lure at my disposal as an experiment.  This fishery does not see much traffic at all, and my son and I are the only ones I ever see fishing there.  We kayak fish this small lake.  It does not have hardly any bank access at all.  It holds nice bass in both size and numbers.  Average size is in the 2.5 to 3 pound range.  My PB for the lake over the last half dozen years is 6.38 pounds. 

 

I did dedicate a decent amount of time to each lure fished to hopefully get an accurate account.  I fished spinnerbaits, large and small soft swimbaits, large and small hard swimbaits, jigs with creature trailers, weighted and unweighted worms, soft and hollow body frogs, buzzbaits, walking baits, poppers, karashi's, shallow to deep crankbaits, lipless cranks, jerkbaits, and unweighted creature baits.  I fished the lake for a minimum of three hours each outing.  The temps have been high 80's to low 90's, with water temps in the upper 70's.  It is a very clear lake with a lilly pad and hydrilla field on one end with deeper water and a bunch of lay downs on the other.

 

I caught 86 fish, roughly 12 per day, and most of those fish came on only 3 different baits.  I did catch at least one fish on every bait I tried except the hollow body frog, buzzbait, and the walking baits.  The three most productive baits for this fishery in these conditions were a trout colored 6" bass mafia soft bodied unloaded swimbait with a weighted 8/0 gammy (there are no trout in the lake), oxblood colored unweighted 7" SK KVD finesse worm on a 3/0 gammy ewg, and watermelon crawfish colored (orange belly) Zoom Horny Toad on a 4/0 gammy ewg.

 

I could not buy a bite on anything white/bone colored except for one or two on a 12' bone colored 6th sense crankbait.  I am guessing the buzzbait and the walking baits were a no go due to the noise.  The hollow body frog did not get a single strike, but they demolished the soft body toads.  I caught just a small handful on smaller soft and hard bodied swimbaits, but probably 15-20 came on the bigger 6" bass mafia bait.

 

The most productive bait accounting for probably 40 of the fish was the unweighted texas rigged 7" oxblood colored worm.  Guessing that was because it pretty much looks exactly like a night crawler.

 

I also found that most of the fish caught...probably 80%...came from just outside the weedline.  About 50 yards from shore.

 

My 15 yo son fished with me, catching probably 2/3rds the amount I caught, and 90% of his fish came on a black and blue fleck 5" yum dinger.  He probably tried 5 to 6 baits in the 7 days.  He also had decent success with a bluegill colored squarebill.

What is a 'gammy'?

Also ty I got some ideas for new baits from this post.

1 minute ago, LokiDawg said:

What is a 'gammy'?

Also ty I got some ideas for new baits from this post.

Gamakatsu

41 minutes ago, Rockhopper said:

  It holds nice bass in both size and numbers.  Average size is in the 2.5 to 3 pound range.  My PB for the lake over the last half dozen years is 6.38 pounds. 

 

Sounds like a good week.

 

How was the size?

 

42 minutes ago, Rockhopper said:

I also found that most of the fish caught...probably 80%...came from just outside the weedline.  About 50 yards from shore.

 

How deep of water were you fishing in relation to water that didn't hold weeds? Hope that made sense.

3 minutes ago, HawkeyeSmallie said:

 

Sounds like a good week.

 

How was the size?

 

 

How deep of water were you fishing in relation to water that didn't hold weeds? Hope that made sense.

Biggest fish was right at 5 pounds.  Most caught between 1.5 to 3 pounds.

 

Are you asking how deep the water is at the weed edge?

2 minutes ago, Rockhopper said:

Biggest fish was right at 5 pounds.  Most caught between 1.5 to 3 pounds.

 

Are you asking how deep the water is at the weed edge?

 

Wow, that's a lot of good fish. Had to have been a blast.

 

Yeah basically, I was just trying to envision the area.

 

For example, the deepest part of the lake was 15 feet. But the weeds were in 10 foot of water.

 

It's one of the things I've been thinking about.

 

Let's say it's really hot out.

 

There's shallow water, say three feet that is fully shaded.

There's 10 foot of water, that has submerged weeds.

There's 15 foot of water with really no cover.

 

I've been wondering if I was a bass, where would I go.   

9 minutes ago, HawkeyeSmallie said:

 

Wow, that's a lot of good fish. Had to have been a blast.

 

Yeah basically, I was just trying to envision the area.

 

For example, the deepest part of the lake was 15 feet. But the weeds were in 10 foot of water.

 

It's one of the things I've been thinking about.

 

Let's say it's really hot out.

 

There's shallow water, say three feet that is fully shaded.

There's 10 foot of water, that has submerged weeds.

There's 15 foot of water with really no cover.

 

I've been wondering if I was a bass, where would I go.   

Hydrilla goes from the bank to about 50 yards out and is submerged anywhere from one to three feet under the waters surface.  Lillys start about 5 feet off the bank and extend to about 20/30 yards out.  So 30 yards of weeds/lillys and an additional 20 yards of submerged weeds.  The weed edge puts me in 15 to 25 foot of water as I work around the shore line.  Mostly closer to the 15 to 17 foot depth.  This photo has to be earlier in the year.  There are a lot more lillys right now.

Good read and sounds like a fun place to fish.

I’m so shocked the spinnerbait wasn’t your most productive bait……..

 

Seriously tho, pretty cool experiment, thanks for sharing your data 

3 minutes ago, TnRiver46 said:

I’m so shocked the spinnerbait wasn’t your most productive bait……..

In all honesty I did not fish it much as I already know how much fish I can catch on it.

2 hours ago, Rockhopper said:

Hydrilla goes from the bank to about 50 yards out and is submerged anywhere from one to three feet under the waters surface.  Lillys start about 5 feet off the bank and extend to about 20/30 yards out.  So 30 yards of weeds/lillys and an additional 20 yards of submerged weeds.  The weed edge puts me in 15 to 25 foot of water as I work around the shore line.  Mostly closer to the 15 to 17 foot depth.  This photo has to be earlier in the year.  There are a lot more lillys right now.

 

Yeah that definitely sounds like some prime areas.

 

Thanks

1 hour ago, Rockhopper said:

In all honesty I did not fish it much as I already know how much fish I can catch on it.

Me too! I can catch Bout 3 bass per 2 calendar years on it 😂  

3 hours ago, HawkeyeSmallie said:

Let's say it's really hot out.

 

There's shallow water, say three feet that is fully shaded.

There's 10 foot of water, that has submerged weeds.

There's 15 foot of water with really no cover.

 

I've been wondering if I was a bass, where would I go.   

When water temps rise and there is a lot of vegetation, that sucks a lot of the oxygen out of the water.  The fish will still use the grass edge for cover no matter how far off shore it is to hide and ambush prey, but they will be a little deeper and sit right on that outside edge.

- OR-

They will be deeper offshore holding in any sort of offshore brush pile/tree/underwater island/rock pile or point and ditches. 

 

That is at least what I have found in my experience in the dog days of summer.

1 hour ago, Rockhopper said:

When water temps rise and there is a lot of vegetation, that sucks a lot of the oxygen out of the water.  The fish will still use the grass edge for cover no matter how far off shore it is to hide and ambush prey, but they will be a little deeper and sit right on that outside edge.

- OR-

They will be deeper offshore holding in any sort of offshore brush pile/tree/underwater island/rock pile or point and ditches. 

 

That is at least what I have found in my experience in the dog days of summer.

What rod was you throwing that bass mafia on?

16 minutes ago, F14A-B said:

What rod was you throwing that bass mafia on?

7'6" St Croix Mojo Bass "pitching/light flipping" rod.  It is a great rod for jig style swimbait hooks.  Fast with a solid backbone.  I run it with a Curado k and 20lb copoly.

4 hours ago, Rockhopper said:

When water temps rise and there is a lot of vegetation, that sucks a lot of the oxygen out of the water.  The fish will still use the grass edge for cover no matter how far off shore it is to hide and ambush prey, but they will be a little deeper and sit right on that outside edge.

- OR-

They will be deeper offshore holding in any sort of offshore brush pile/tree/underwater island/rock pile or point and ditches. 

 

That is at least what I have found in my experience in the dog days of summer.

Just learned something.

 

THANK YOU!

Cool experiment. You were disciplined, sticking with less effective lures to assay their effectiveness. I'm not surprised soft plastics ruled. Most trips, I launch with five out of six rods or six out of six rods with soft plastics.