Cape Fair area report Saturday 4-25

[holleybob]

My first trip of the year to TR was Saturday. Launched from Cape Fair. Had a fair day. Wind was brutal on my little aluminum rig!

Fished Wooley creek area from 7:30 till noon. 10 K's, 2 LM. Caught 4 K's from the same area in consecutive cast. Back corner of a dock, secondary point, 8-10 FOW. Like an idiot I moved and when the wind kicked in later I just could not fish it effectively.

Fished a shaky head with Zoom finesse worm in brown and ned in PBJ and Dirt with equal success. Only 3 keeps. K's were in 8-15, LM were 5-8 feet deep. I did not see any bedded fish although I was not targeting them.

One thing that stood out was whan the K's ate the Ned they ATE the Ned. I had to cut two off and send them back to the lake with a hook in their gullet. I hate doing that but they were not keepers and I'm no surgeon when it comes to removing gullet hooks.

Water was a light green stain typical of that area.

Pardon the fish pic. Noone but the dog in the boat with me and I was anxious to get him back in the water.

[magicwormman]

Good report and nine bass! That is the ONLY thing I don't like about the Ned rig. I finally went to cutting off the barbs and have found it's much easier to remove the little rig. I'm convinced that you will rarely lose a fish with barbless as long as you keep a tight line.

[Jim Elam]

That is right on majicwormman. Barbless is a solid option with the Ned. I'm convinced most of the Ks I catch on it would poop it out before they would spit it if I never set the hook!

I'm all about the slack line technique on this bait, but I try to have some contact with the bait every 5 seconds or so if dead sticking. Cuts down on the deep hook issues. Barbless loses very few fish if properly played.

[holleybob]

Jim I am coming around to the barbless idea. I dont fish competetively anymore, just for fun. Plus the fact that I left about $9.00 worth of Ned heads in the lake on Saturday. These fish are becoming expensive! I think I'm going to try that next time out.

Someone told me yesterday that if the wind blows hard the K's will tend to swallow the bait more. I dont know if that has any merit or not but it did hold true for me on Saturday.

[Donna G]

That is right on majicwormman. Barbless is a solid option with the Ned. I'm convinced most of the Ks I catch on it would poop it out before they would spit it if I never set the hook!

I'm all about the slack line technique on this bait, but I try to have some contact with the bait every 5 seconds or so if dead sticking. Cuts down on the deep hook issues. Barbless loses very few fish if properly played.

That helped me, too. I hooked several deep keeping a slack line. Now, I still keep a slack line but check it frequently. Have been lucky enough not to gut hook any since I started doing this.