Last evening I decided to go out just for bass.  I took three bait casting outfits with me and my standby spinning rod and reel, the Cardinal, with the Blue Fox spinner.  I would not use the spinner until all else failed.  On my bait casters I tied on a Yum Craw in red speck brown, a Gary Yamamoto stick worm in green/white, and a Culprit 8” ribbon tail worm in red watermelon.  I stayed in one area the whole time, and area where I can usually count on catching something.  For two and one half hours I did not get a single hit.  I decided to go to the spinner.

I did not move the boat, I just got out the spinning rod and started casting in the exact same area.

On my second cast I caught a small bass, about 1  lb.  After a few more casts I caught three small crappie.  Then a second small bass of about the same size.  And one nice bluegill.

It was getting dark about this time so I decided to make a few more casts with the spinner on the way back.  I landed my spinner in a low hanging branch and that took me about five minutes to get it out of the branch and untwisted.  Another  reason why I don’t like night fishing especially when the fish are usually laying under low hanging branches near the shore.  And, the fish I did catch were no further than two or three feet from shore as was the seven pounder that I caught a few days before.

I got to where I keep my boat and tried one more cast.  I was just about to take my spinner out of the water when a big fish came up out of the water enough for me to see it was a large fish but I couldn’t be sure of what kind of fish it was as it was almost dark.

Well, just a few more casts…and Whammo!  it was the cat that you see here.  I estimate it to be about five pounds.  Of course I let him go right after taking the picture.

The moral of this story is don’t give up and use the lure that is paying off until it is no longer effective for whatever reason.

I like to experiment and sometimes it really pays dividends but if I’m not catching anything I will go back to my tried and true lures, i.e., the ones that are paying off at that particular time and place.

You’ll notice that I haven’t been using my fly rod lately.  That’s because the fly rod has just not been effective for me lately…but come fall and the fly rod will be out again.  I could be catching bluegill with it and maybe some cats but I really want to focus on big bass this time of year.  There are bass flies that work but it’s been too slow for me.

Tight lines.

Jim

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