Headed from work at 5:30 pm to UL’s west shore, hoping to find acres of bluegill beds south of the marina. No such luck. Picked up a couple nice stragglers by the dock and along the dike, then a couple more in 300 yards of working down the shore where all the phrag. and Russian olives used to be…
Then, suddenly caught a bullhead and then a channel, both on a rubber-tailed ice fly with a TINY earthworm tipper. Funny..
No luck finding the beds and went back at dark to the marina. Some guys down the dike brought in a really nice channel. I stood by some rushes inside the marina and fished in the dark by the parking lot lights. Dabbling around in there, I started picking up panfish now that the evening boat-parking traffic had slowed. a nice bluegill, then a crappie, then a bluegill, then a small largemouth…just a few fish an hour…
THEN, I pulled out a 12" crappie from open water by the boat ramp, where I had cast on a whim. No repeats, though, but pulled another good one out of the bushes, to be accidentally released on the other side of the dock still on the swing.
Then, a grab and run looked like a small bluegill, but felt MUCH bigger. Imagine, a 16" largemouth in 2’ of water, on an orange “tiny worm” under a bobber, on a 3 wt flyrod with 4 lb test… Fun! And the very next cast, ANOTHER largie, almost as big! WHAT? These were tipped with berkley Powerbait “Maggots”
Once again proving that I have NO idea what I’m doing, I left with a hefty basket. For you religious folks, I let both bigger bass(es) go, and kept the perch-sized ones to eat.
I did discover that if you wacky rig one of those “tiny worms” (found in the “Southern Pro” section of Sportsman’s) on a small octopus hook, it catches fish. The slow sink under a slip bober was killing em, and it shivers when held inplace, and looks like a mini-Senko when pulled. A crappie Senko, yeah, that’s it!
And that both catfish and bass can easily find 1/4" pieces of worm or power grubs in that water. So weird!
Both the small bass and bluegills I ate still had eggs, and the big bass had a pouty ovipositor and a huge belly, so I don’t think either have spawned.