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My Saturday afternoon trip had all the ingredients for a disaster. Late to the water (not on till 1:30), unpleasant weather (85 degrees and little wind or clouds), and a slow start (no bites for first 1:45). Well, what began so poorly ended up as one of my best outings and delivered my biggest bass ever from RRR.
I had started out fishing some main lake features with nary a nibble. I ran to a creek that has been fishing good all year and started hitting some favorite spots. My preferred chuck-n-wind presentations got no love so I concentrated on working laydowns with T-rig plastics. I finally got my first bite in a laydown and it was a solid keeper. A few minutes later the same tree yielded a 3 lb class bass. I had caught another short fish when I arrived a a large laydown in deep water that was shaded. I have known this was a good spot but I really had no idea how to fish it effectively. Thanks to some sage advice from a known T-rig junkie I at least had a plan of attack.
I picked up a keeper after a few casts and kept working the tree. A few casts later I felt my line tighten and set the hook. I could tell this fish was a pretty good one and it had me solidly wrapped up on a big limb. In a fortunate coincidence, I had just watched a fishing show earlier in the day that said in this situation to give the fish line and let it unwrap itself. I ended up doing this twice. After the second time I finally pulled the fish off the log and saw it for the first time. It was much bigger than I had originally guessed. After a short battle at the boat I put her to hand I had landed my heaviest bass from RRR. It was 21.5" and weighed 6-4. After a couple quick snaps it was released healthy.
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(I know this fish doesn't look particulary big in the photo because of the bad pose, but for comparision I confirmed the weight of the fish in the pics below so you can see the size difference)
What started as a bad day just got very, very good. I ended up catching two more keepers out of that tree. I moved to a couple other shaded laydowns and pulled another 3 lb fish and a 2.5 lber.
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(3 lb)
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(2.5 lb)
I added several more keepers to my tally before time to leave. At the end of the day I had caught 14 fish of which 10 were keepers. I figured my best 5 was in the 16-17 lb range (I didn't weigh every fish) which were all caught in less than 5 hours. It goes to show you can never fully predict when fishing will be good. What an afternoon!
I had started out fishing some main lake features with nary a nibble. I ran to a creek that has been fishing good all year and started hitting some favorite spots. My preferred chuck-n-wind presentations got no love so I concentrated on working laydowns with T-rig plastics. I finally got my first bite in a laydown and it was a solid keeper. A few minutes later the same tree yielded a 3 lb class bass. I had caught another short fish when I arrived a a large laydown in deep water that was shaded. I have known this was a good spot but I really had no idea how to fish it effectively. Thanks to some sage advice from a known T-rig junkie I at least had a plan of attack.
I picked up a keeper after a few casts and kept working the tree. A few casts later I felt my line tighten and set the hook. I could tell this fish was a pretty good one and it had me solidly wrapped up on a big limb. In a fortunate coincidence, I had just watched a fishing show earlier in the day that said in this situation to give the fish line and let it unwrap itself. I ended up doing this twice. After the second time I finally pulled the fish off the log and saw it for the first time. It was much bigger than I had originally guessed. After a short battle at the boat I put her to hand I had landed my heaviest bass from RRR. It was 21.5" and weighed 6-4. After a couple quick snaps it was released healthy.
(I know this fish doesn't look particulary big in the photo because of the bad pose, but for comparision I confirmed the weight of the fish in the pics below so you can see the size difference)
What started as a bad day just got very, very good. I ended up catching two more keepers out of that tree. I moved to a couple other shaded laydowns and pulled another 3 lb fish and a 2.5 lber.
I added several more keepers to my tally before time to leave. At the end of the day I had caught 14 fish of which 10 were keepers. I figured my best 5 was in the 16-17 lb range (I didn't weigh every fish) which were all caught in less than 5 hours. It goes to show you can never fully predict when fishing will be good. What an afternoon!
