On this trip to River Bend I decided to do a little experimenting with a few of my favorite lures. The first thing was to find the fish but this time with a proven fish catcher, the Zoom trick worm, that I had been so successful with on previous trips.
The trick worm, rigged whacky style, as you have read in my previous trips produced 40 bass on one trip and 30 bass on another. Today, almost nothing. That theory about fish having memory may have had something to do with it, I’m not convinced but maybe… I switched to the Yum stick worm shown above, again whacky style to see what that would do.
The water in River Bend is fairly clear and I could see the bass chasing after the lure and I managed to catch 3 small bass with it right away so, I thought the fish are here, let’s try some plugs. I had purchased two new lures, The Rapala Shad Rap and the Rapala shad rap jointed suspending lures in the bass color. I was thinking young bass fry might be the ticket. I tried them in the fast retrieve, slow retrieve and the stop and go retrieve with no results, not even a follow up. The lures suspend about 4 to 5 feet below the surface and I could watch them as they approached the boat from about twenty feet out. The weeds are about 8 feet deep, three feet below the lures. I was hoping that the would get the attention of some larger bass but that didn’t happen. I decided to move to another spot.
While trolling over to a new spot with the Rapala I managed to catch two small bass and missed two other hits. So, it does work, but in deeper water, the water here was about 25 to 30 feet deep. After a few more casts with the Rapala to the deeper water I got no more hits. O. K. , move on.
Using the Yum (green) in the new spot I caught another bass right away and I could see bass following the lure but moving away near the boat. The fish are here. So, I pulled out my fly rod with the Betts popper that I had caught the 8 bass with on my pond. I was casting from about 45 feet out to the shoreline where there were trees and bushes laying in the water. That got the attention of several bluegill and caught me a warmouth bass. I could see bass swimming in the area but they paid no attention to my popper. The bluegill were small and were just grabbing the white legs of the popper, but no hookups. I switched to the white wooly bugger, no takers.
I moved on to an area where reeds line the shore out to ten to fifteen feet from the shore and that parallels the shore for about 200 feet and I heard frogs croaking in there. I again switched to my fly rod this time using my i/8 oz Hula Popper in the frog color…no takers. I used the Betts next and got a fairly nice bluegill of about 8”. No bass. That can’t be right, I know that some bass must be in this area.
I switched to the Yum in the pearl/black color shown above, Texas style, weighted. I cast it out and just let it float down to the bottom. The lure never reached the bottom before I caught a small bass of about 14”. And I caught another and the another one after another for about five bass all about the same size. Then it shut down.
I moved again across the lake to a sheltered cove where I usually catch bass on most of my trips to the lake and where I took a bass of 3 1/2 pounds a couple of years back; being the biggest bass I’ve ever caught in River Bend.
I again tried the poppers, the Rapala’s, and the trick worm. The trick worm got me one small bass. I switched to the Yum, pearl/black, and caught five more bass right away.
And something funny happened. I was playing a bass in and he let go of the worm five feet from the boat, he got off. Then he immediately went after the worm again right in front of me! I hooked him this time and then I let him go. A few more casts later I was playing another bass in to the boat, he spit it out just as before, and before I could lift the bait out of the water, he hit it again! That’s twice! The bass must be hungry.
I think the moral of this story is, “ If you don’t have the right lure with you, you may go home empty handed!”. My suggestion is be prepared and experiment until you find the key. During this experiment I used a lot of time to find the right lure and the right method. I will never go fishing without a good worm selection. I forgot to mention that I also tried a “hard Nose” crawdad rigged Texas style along that stretch of reeds and did catch another warmouth and missed two other hits before I switched to the Yum. I have experimented with Yum Craws and lizards on other occasions as well and have done fairly well with them but at different times and under different circumstances. Read my files and you’ll see what I mean.
By the way, the trick worm shown is one that was pretty torn up and I repaired it according to an article that I read in “Bass Master” magazine, I used a soldering iron. You can see that the bait is now reusable and it saves you money. So, don’t throw them away, fix ‘em.
Tight lines
Jim