December 20, Indian Creek arm

[Quillback]

Put the boat in at about 9 AM, brought my buddy Mike with me.  We were hoping to find some smallmouth action.  Cloudy day with an on and off breeze.

We dragged jigs around for a while, not getting any action, but saw top water activity and started walking the dog.  We caught spotted bass and had a few striper encounters.  You always hear the phrase "The wind is your friend", well for the top water bite it was not our friend.  When the water went calm, the activity picked up, when the water got riffled you'd hardly see any activity.  We also learned that the fish, both spots and stripers would feed in a few locations, so we established a milk run, fish an area until the bites stopped, go somewhere else and give them a chance to forget about us, return and get a few bites.

The spots would hang near the edges of the timber, the stripers would come through periodically moving fast.  Saw a few stripers swim right under the front of the boat chasing shad, they were flat out moving! 

I hooked 4 stripers on top water, first three got off, finally boated one at the end.  I wasn't planning on keeping any so not too upset and them getting off, none of them were wall hangers.  To me the most fun is getting them to blow up on the top water and getting that initial hard pulling surge.

Spotted bass were really fat, they are a fat fish to begin with, but these boys were flat out obese.  They are gorging on shad of which there are plenty back in Indian.

No smallmouth brought to the boat, had one jump right over my TW, that was the only one I saw.  Probably had a few others blow up on it.  Fish were having a hard time zeroing in on the TW, had more misses than connections. 

I wish we had a few more days of the kind of weather we had yesterday.

WT - 53

 

This post has been promoted to an article

[jeb]

At least none of the stripers robbed you of an expensive lure! Sounds like a good day on the water.

[Ozark Flyer]

I agree.  Sounds like you had a great day on the water.  I fished the white river arm yesterday.  Similar conditions.  Totally overcast...Dead flat calm (mostly)...Fish were working...I could stand another week of that.  But it’s not to be...winters coming.

[Quillback]

55 minutes ago, jeb said:

At least none of the stripers robbed you of an expensive lure! Sounds like a good day on the water.

Nah, I  never lose lures to stripers. 

[Riley_Lopez87]

Can tell me if this is a laregmouth or spotted @Quillback

[slothman]

Looks like a largemouth to me. 

[Champ188]

Yep, a LM for sure.

[Quillback]

For sure, and a nice one!

[96 CHAMP]

On 12/21/2017 at 5:29 AM, Quillback said:

Put the boat in at about 9 AM, brought my buddy Mike with me.  We were hoping to find some smallmouth action.  Cloudy day with an on and off breeze.

We dragged jigs around for a while, not getting any action, but saw top water activity and started walking the dog.  We caught spotted bass and had a few striper encounters.  You always hear the phrase "The wind is your friend", well for the top water bite it was not our friend.  When the water went calm, the activity picked up, when the water got riffled you'd hardly see any activity.  We also learned that the fish, both spots and stripers would feed in a few locations, so we established a milk run, fish an area until the bites stopped, go somewhere else and give them a chance to forget about us, return and get a few bites.

The spots would hang near the edges of the timber, the stripers would come through periodically moving fast.  Saw a few stripers swim right under the front of the boat chasing shad, they were flat out moving! 

I hooked 4 stripers on top water, first three got off, finally boated one at the end.  I wasn't planning on keeping any so not too upset and them getting off, none of them were wall hangers.  To me the most fun is getting them to blow up on the top water and getting that initial hard pulling surge.

Spotted bass were really fat, they are a fat fish to begin with, but these boys were flat out obese.  They are gorging on shad of which there are plenty back in Indian.

No smallmouth brought to the boat, had one jump right over my TW, that was the only one I saw.  Probably had a few others blow up on it.  Fish were having a hard time zeroing in on the TW, had more misses than connections. 

I wish we had a few more days of the kind of weather we had yesterday.

WT - 53

 

This post has been promoted to an article

Nice fish quillback