Fellows - 8/30/11

[evnrude18]

Well, I decided to not go with my usual "chuck and pray" technique while on Fellows today and went with a specific plan of reading my graph and use what the fish are telling me throw to instead of what I wanted to throw. Funny how the latter works a whole lot better, even though I spent a lot of time cruising water, watching my depth finder (which is never the most fun). I find that from time to time, I think I know what will catch the fish based off of past trips and not necessarily what would be the most productive.

First boat to put in this morning, waiting when the security officer arrived a 6:41 am.

Water temp at 6:55 am in the back of the south branch - 76.8 degrees.

First two largemouth hit a Zara Spook around 7:30 in the bushes, back to back.

Third bass, on a buzz bait... around 8 am while letting the strong winds this morning from the south take me out along the west bank in the south arm towards the main lake.

Fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh bass were caught on crankbaits between 8 and 10 am. Two back in large and small coves with weed beds, in 1-2 feet of water. The other two were in 8-12 feet along structure changes on the bottom. Nothing fancy, just where 6 feet dropped off steep to 12 feet for example.

The crank bite seemed to die off and I wasn't seeing any more suspended fish on the ol' depth finder, so I hit the main points and used a football jig where, again, the bottom structure changes produced bass eight and nine. I caught #10 in the weeds, shallow, on the jig and then went with a weightless plastic set-up for more weeds fishing, which produced no bites.

It was almost noon and I was just about fed up with the strong south wind blowing my 14 ft Landau around like a sail boat. I decided to fish the last point on the south end of the lake, just before the marker buoys. I had a spinnerbait on one of my rods and thought what the heck. Wind like this wasn't going to allow me to finesse fish at that point. Two casts out over the point, and bass eleven was in the boat. I cast out past the buoys quite a few times and caught number twelve with a crankbait again... about a 13 inch largemouth with two other about the same size chasing the one I had hooked.

Water temp in the main lake area at 1:30 pm was 81.2 degrees.

All in all, the largest was 18 inches and caught only 3 total that were 15+. All others were 9" - 13". In today's case, the larger bass were deeper. Smaller bass seemed to be schooled up together in shallow water.

Won't be back on the water for another week or so... thought I would share the info if anyone is planning a trip soon. I prefer to throw a worm, but today's wind made me change up the gameplan and it still produced good fish!

(Sorry no pics, cell phone took a dive this morning while my wife was trying to call me.... Verison here I come...)