My trip Jun22-29

[danop69]

Came down for our annual week at TRL Jun22-29.  Sun was a complete washout for us as it rained nonstop all day and night.  Every morning (Mon-Fri) we fished from 5am until 11am at the latest.  We had found a couple of new areas that we wanted to try this year so we headed there first thing.  A little cut of the main lake just down lake from cow creek.  Being that there were a lot of flooded we decided to start pounding them with a jig first keeping a eye out for top water activity as well.

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Caught this 5.00 beauty up tight in the bushes about 7:30 or so and she hammered my jig and craw!  Also caught a really nice 2.27 SM on the point of the same pocket slow rolling a grub. Also caught a few on top with wakers and spooks.  Tried some of our deeper spots and could locate fish but couldn’t get em to bite anything.  Threw the grub, drop shot, jigging and flutter spoons and they were having non of it.

Caught this 3.70 in the same pocket in the same row of flooded bushes on Tuesday morning on the same jig and craw.  We caught more LM this year than ever probably because we were doing a lot more bank beating than we usually do this time of year but with all those flooded shrubs we couldn’t resist! Needless to say it was probably a good idea as these two fish are the largest that I have caught to date out of TRL!

We did fish our usual locations but had limited success with no consistency.  We did manage a few at each of our spots but just not like in years past.  I’m sure the high water and the lower water temps (saw anywhere from 76-82 through out the week) had something to do with this as the summertime pattern is usually well established by the time we get to the lake.  It wasn’t this year.  

We usually start our mornings looking for some top water action.  We fished our usual gravel run outs and main lake humps near deep water and could locate fish at all but getting them to bite was another story.  We did get a few every day on wake baits.  Also had many blow ups but they would just flat out miss it!  Was still a lot of fun though. We did have one morning when the whites blew up near the boat.  We managed 5 before they were gone on wake baits and one on a flutter spoon.

All in all it was a good week.  Did not catch the numbers we are used to but the quality sized fish more than made up for that.  I think we caught right at 50 fish over the week with about half of those keepers.  Pretty good ratio in my book.

Good luck to everyone.  Thanks for all the great reports over the years as it has helped up fine tune our tactics and our ability to catch those pesky TRL bass!

Dan

[m&m]

danop69, thanks for the information. Great pictures of healthy looking fish. 

Mike

[Champ188]

Were you fishing a tournament? Just asking coz of the jersey. 

[danop69]

4 minutes ago, Champ188 said:

Were you fishing a tournament? Just asking coz of the jersey. 

Lol!  No Champ.  I was not.  Just our little 3 person family tourney for the week.  I have just that one! Just dreaming I suppose!  Ha

[danop69]

Just to add more detail to my post.  The jig I was throwing was 1/2 oz gr pumpkin/orange with a zoom speed craw trailer.  And yes as others have posted I dipped both of the trailer claw tips in orange spike it.  This seemed to make a huge difference as I out caught my partners 2:1.