RichZ's Bass Blog

Jimfish & I took the opportunity today to fish a lake we haven’t spent as much time on as we’d like. Bantam is one of those places that it’s just no fun to fish on a weekend because it’s just too busy. Since we were both mostly weekend fishermen in recent years, neither of us got there very often.

But we’re both retired and loving it now! And that means that we can hit places like Bantam on a cloudy weekday when the skiers and tubers and sailboats, etc. aren’t likely to be out in force.

It was windy when we launched at 6:30, and the forecast was for it to get worse.

It did.

And the fishing started out slow.

Very slow.

Other than a small pike that Jim got fairly early and a handful of tiny rock bass that bit my drop shot worm, we were fishless a little after 9AM, and had decided to put the boat on the trailer for a change of venue.

A funny thing happened on the way to the ramp. I decided to check one last area. And within minutes, Jim had a fish nail his PanHead. He failed to get a solid hookup, but we’re encouraged enough to continue on down the bank. It wasn’t too much farther on when Jim did hook up and put a good fish in the boat. A minute later, I got a decent smallie on an Ozmo.

Game on!

I won’t say it was fast and furious, but we caught fish pretty much all day from then on, by concentrating on shallow water with either an Ozmo or a PanHead jig. We caught fish off docks and boat lifts. We caught fish from lily pads, and we caught them from sea walls and small breakwaters.  We even caught a few off pretty much nothing at all.

By the time we were tired of fighting the wind and were ready to head for home, we had 20 bass and a few toothy critters between us. Only a couple of the bass were under a couple pounds, and the biggest was just under 5. Despite the less than ideal conditions, we ended up putting together a pretty good day one the water. Damn, this retirement deal is fun!

Here’s some fish porn…

Got up late, did a few chores around the house, then took a leisurely ride to Hatch . Got there at 9:30. Water really high from all the rain over the last week. Especially yesterday. But it was gin clear for the most part. The pond weed is about 90% gone, and the milfoil looks gorgeous. The milfoil was all leaning downstream, as the current was rolling trough place harder than I’ve ever seen.

Caught a lot of fish, but there were a lot of 11-1/2 inch shorts, quite a few 12 to 14 inch keepers, and only two that were even within shouting distance of 2 pounds. Did manage to get buried in the weeds by a bigger fish, but it was long gone when I finally got my TitleShot out of the milfoil. Had a decent look at it before it got me tied up, and it wasn’t all that much bigger anyway. Maybe a 3-1/2. Maybe less.

Caught most of my fish on the green pumpkin Ozmo, rigged on a TitleShot head. Also caught 8 or 9 on a green pumpkin Sinking Slug-Go, and another 10 or so on a black & blue PanHead jig. including the biggest one I actually put in the boast. But like I said, it wasn’t all that big to start with.

Fishing Hatch today, felt like fishing it in the old days, when little guys was about all we caught, except for the occasional “near pig”. The last few years, it’s been fishing much better, and most trips I’ve managed a limit or two of 2 to 3 pound fish, and at least one bigger fish, with the occasional true pig. Don’t know where all the decent fish were today, or why they weren’t biting, but I’m confident that they didn’t all disappear in the week or two since I last fished here.

No fish porn today. Never actually caught anything worth taking a picture of.

Seems like every year there’s at least one day where the only way to get bit is to fish where one trash fish (defined as anything other than the target species) or another is active. I had a day like that today. Doubled. Two different patterns, two different trash fish species.

I went to Tyler Lake, and found out it’s a much more enjoyable place to fish on a weekday than a weekend. The biggest problem with fishing Tyler is that it’s a little bowl, and the residents all seem to own monster competition style ski boats. So when you go there on the weekend, unless it’s pouring rain, you get chased off the lake by the ski boat traffic by about 8:30. Today, I didn’t see one (other than on their lifts) until 2:30, and even then, he blasted around the lake twice and put it away. Have I mentioned lately that I love this retirement stuff?

OK, back to the trashfest. Slept in this morning, and got to the lake at 9. As is my usual pattern here, I started up the bog side of the lake. Tried a spinnerbait, swim bait and creature bait, but other than a couple big pickerel on the swim bait, I didn’t find any activity until I started twitching a golden shiner colored 5.75″ Fin-S Fish around the bush and pads. Once I got on that, I couldn’t go more than two casts without a bite. Unfortunately, most of the bites were from tiny pickerel, but  every 3 or 4 pickerel, I’d get a bass.  Nothing over 2 pounds, but at least I was getting bit. Moved off shore to check a favorite cabbage (broadlead pondweed) bed, and lo and behold, there’s almost no pondweed there. It appears to have been supplanted by North American milfoil. Which at least today, doesn’t appear to have any fish in it.

Back to the shoreline with the Fin-S. Lots more pickerel, and a few more small bass. Need to try something different. Put the electric on high, and move across to the rocky side of the lake. A little swim bait, a little creature bait, a little drop shot. Stop right there! The drop shot couldn’t get wet without getting bit. Unfortunately, most of the bites are from rock bass, with a pickerel mixed in here and there. But I’m also getting a bass every 6 or 7 casts, and they are much better average size than the dinks I was getting along the bog.

The water temp was just under 70 when I started, and worked its way up to 75 by the time I got off the lake at 4pm. I tried deeper and weedier a few times, and I tried throwing other lures on the shallowest rocks a few times, But if I wanted to get bit, it looked like I had to put up with those nasty little rock bass (although some of them weren’t all that little), and throw a motor oil Ribster on a drop shot rig, right up into a foot or so of water. I don’t believe I got a single bass today from more than 4 or 5 feet of water, and all my quality fish came from less than 3 feet.

There were loads of empty bass beds out in 4 to 6 feet of water. But the only spawning that was actually going on was the rock bass, and the only bass that would bite were the ones harassing the spawning rock bass or protecting pods of fry, or whatever they were doing right up on the bank.

Between the rockies, the slime darts and the bass, I would bet that I got bit on at least 80% of my casts today.  But I never got bit where I wasn’t catching either pickerel or rock bass.

Trashfest.

But as long as I was picking up the trash, I was catching bass, and that made it a very enjoyable day. I ended the day with 56 of them. Most were on the small side, but there were 20 or so that I wasn’t ashamed of, including a half-dozen over 3, topped off by the weirdest shaped 5-1/2 pounder I’ve ever seen. It was a very short, girthy fish. Not potbellied, just real big around. It was so fat I thought it was 6-1/2 for sure. But the scale said 5.56, so I guess the girth was  deceiving because the fish was so short.

Oh yeah, I did catch one fish out deeper, when I hit an isolated, deep boulder with the drop shot. A 14″ brown trout.

Here’s some pics of the best of the non-trash part of today’s trashfest.