Live bait rigs and mid week kimberling report

[top_dollar]

    Wt is about 82-83.  Been fishing main lake points and structure, mornings and evenings .  25-150fow, 25-40 feet down.  Live bait fished vertically as described below.  Im catching about a dozen or so per outing,  with almost half or more being keepers.  Pretty good ratio of keepers to shorts this year.  Lots of big fat 16 inch spots.  Finding smallmouth on the bottom in 25-35fow, some even up shallower.  Spots are mixed in with the smallies,  or suspended 25-30 feet down over infinity.  Catching most on live bait rigs. Jigging a 3/4-1oz spoon is also working very well, and catching bigger fish.   Only caught a few on a ds worm.  Lots of eater bluegills mixed in, and 1 5# channel cat. No walleye. gonna troll cranks for them today or tomorrow.

Heres what i do...

LIVE BAIT RIGS

Use a whole live night crawler threaded on a #4 baitholder hook.  Should be about 7-9 inches all stretched out in the water.   Ill sandwich a 1/16oz bullet weight between 2 bobber stops and 2 small beads instead of a split shot and either slide it down to the hook, or slide it up about a foot.  A med light or light power spinning rod, and 4-6# mono line.  Idle around main lake points from 25-150 fow looking for bait and fish on the graph between 25-40 ft.  Zig zag in and out of the channel and up on points and flats to see if they are suspending or near the bottom.  When the graph lights up, pitch the crawler about 25 feet and let it swing down under the boat, often times it stops sinking as one grabs it.  When it gets below you fish it as vertical as possible, even better if you can see your bait on the graph.  When the graph goes blank, reel up and move.

       If you dont do it often, you may wanna upsize and use a med light power rod with 6 or 8# line with a 1/8th oz weight, but i use a 7ft browning air stream, or a 7ft st croix panfish series (light power rods), spooled with 4# maxima, 1/16 oz weight and gammy baitholders.  Suspended fish in open water dont cause too much trouble, hence the light gear.  Ive caught channel cats pushing 10# on that setup.  Set ur drag right, keep ur hooks sharp, and trust your gear.

      Hold your rod with the tip about a foot above the surface.  When you get a bite, let the rod load just a bit, lean the tip towards the water an inch or two and lift firmly and steadily.  You dont wanna hammer em...good hooks will stick.  Its probably not gonna you many giants, but its a great/easy  way to catch awesome numbers of 12-16inch spotted bass and smallmouth.  Also, bluegills,  walleye,  white bass, and catfish are possible incedentals.  Hell one year we even caught a trout fishing a crawler off a deep dock in kimberling.   

Instead of a live crawler you can do the same thing with a drop shot worm, or a jigging spoon.  I always catch 10x more with a live worm, then a ds worm, but sometimes that jigging spoon is the way to go.  

JIGGING SPOONS

I think of them as a vertical jerkbait..generates that "get it quick!!!" Bite.  I normally use the regular sized C.C. spoon, its about 1oz or maybe a bit less. Very similar to the war eagle spoons which are also great.  I paint them to look like a shad, but leave some chrome. I also put a good treble hook on it, and feather the treble hook. I use a 7ft heavy power, SOFT tip rod.  Im talking parabolic rod soft.  You need LOTS of give.  I spool the rod up with metered braid fishing line (super helpful), and tie a 5 foot long fluoro leader (17#). I use an alberto knot, but a swivel works fine too if jist fishing vertically.  I fish it two ways....cast it out, let it sink to the bottom and snap it back to me in short but aggressive 2-3 foot snaps.  Its important to point the rod back at the lure after each snap, just like a jerk bait.  The other way i fish them is to drop it straight down to depth, using your metered line to know how deep.  Usually 25-30ft, then the short aggressive 2-3ft snaps, dropping the rod tip back to the water level after each snap.  This will maximize the erratic nature of the spoon. Jigging spoons are an absolutely imcredible tool on table rock.

 

DROP SHOT:

i caught more fish on a spoon yesterday then i have my entire life on a drop shot...im missing something with that technique. 

 

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[WhateversBitin]

I will have to try this. Since I prefer catching with my fishing, this was a great read. Thank you. 

[Rodmaker]

Great info dollar. Nice to see people post their techniques. 

[Greg nicks]

Very nice informative post. Keep them coming

 

[top_dollar]

Trolled cranks yesterday evening from 6-8pm for walleye.  Targeted gravel in 20-30 fow with cranks going 15-30 foot down.  No walleye.  3 spots amd 1 white bass.  Dang.  

 

[top_dollar]

Worm/spoon fish pics.  Just gotta chase them darn schools of spots around.  Fish on the graph = fish on the line.  Empty graph = tilting at windmills as they would say.  

I wasted too much time with that doggone drop shot..only caught 2 all week, both on a keitech leech. 

[top_dollar]

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[top_dollar]

Smallies were up on the flat gravel 15-25ft down on gravel mixed in with spots.  As soon as youd get out over deep waterit was all spotted bass schools.  Occasional lm, but only 2 or 3 all week.  

Bluegill are also on gravel points, eating well, biting the tails off of worms.  25-30ft down.  Look for that little squiggly line on your graph just off the bottom.  

[Johnsfolly]

congrats on finding a workable setup. Nice Fish!