Nice Way To Break Out Of Funk!
This season had pretty much sucked for me so far! I got fish, but not the numbers I usually do, nor the size. I went out with the KMAN (Karl) to a new spot for us, fittingly on the North Shore. We started out at a pond that a few nights before, we absolutely killed it at! We caught at least 30-40 bass easily, ranging from your typical 1 lb rats to about 2.5-3 lbs lbs. They were biting everything under the sun, it was very fun!
We got an early start, but a little later than we'd have preferred, what are you gonna do? While it was a beautiful, warm and sunny bluebird sky day, we all know what that means for the fishing. It took an hour or so to figure them out, but we found the fish in about 8-10 feet of water. No size this time around, but we got about 10-12 each. Not wanting to waste the day anymore but not wanting to call it a day yet, we pulled up anchor and decided to move to another body of water not too far away that we've been wanting to try.
We arrived to the other pond to a mix of 90's and hispanic sounding music. Yes, the bucket brigade was in full force on the shores that we could see from the launch. Huge saltwater rods, bobbers floating all around in the water like tiny minefields during the war, orange and red buckets lined up and down the shoreline. Yup, it was disappointing to see and made us a little apprehensive about what we were in store for, but they were on shore and we were going out to deeper water, so it didn't really matter. I watched them off and on all day and they did not seem to be catching much, which made us feel even better!
We pretty much started catching bass right away. Nothing of great size, but the pace was continuous. It's mid afternoon now and the action seemed to start picking up pretty good. The dragonflies were flying all over the place and the panfish were popping at the bottom of lilly pads and picking off bugs on top of the water. There were several large stringy grass mats floating on the surface. Probably about 100 feet long and almost as wide or more and a few of them. It looked super bassy!
We had been throwing frogs a little to that point, but not at a regular clip. Probably my 2nd or 3rd cast into an open pocket between clumps of mat, BAM......my poor little frog got smoked! I set the hook and the fish wrapped itself in a bunch of the matted grass. I had heavy braid on and a great hookset, so I wasn't too worried about losing the fish. I patiently pulled in the line and Kman grabbed and dug through the slop. A quick weighing and the fish was a 4 lb fatty. While taking the hook out and taking a quick pic, we had drifted about 50 feet away. I threw Mr. Froggy out again and WHAMMO.......a huge looking bass completely breaches the water and turned it's tail sideways in mid air, like a great white attacking a seal. It was fitting, being that it was Shark Week on the Discovery Channel. This fish didn't get as tangled in the grass and I could tell it was bigger than the last. I landed the fish with Kman's help again and was thinking this may be a new PB for me, but alas it was not. The scales don't lie and it was what it was. A nice 5 lb plus fish with a tennis ball shaped belly, sweet!!!
We caught a bunch more fish, including a few 3's and a bunch of 2's. We took a few pics of the bigger fish. Kman has been catching nice fish all season, with a 6 plus lb'er under his belt from a few weeks ago, but this was a very nice way for me to break out of my own personal funk! I haven't written a trip in awhile, so I figured why not? Hope you enjoyed the ride and thanks for reading.
Yeah, searching/explorer around has produced some nice fishing spots Ted!
other than the two good fish, the frog bite was dead.
No, off and on and just near cover.
Did you guys throw frogs the entire morning?