Big Indiana Bass

Back out to Waveland this afternoon for a few more hours. Was curious to see how well things were holding after weekend traffic and tourneys. Arrived around 12:30, just in time to get launched, run across the lake and get caught in a thunderstorm. Sat it out in the corner of the lake while it poured. Fortunately it blew over quick and I had brought my rain gear. Cleared out nicely after the storm though. Even pushed quite a few boats off the water which didn't hurt any.

So I captured some graph pictures to give you an idea of what I'm referring to. This first one is a shot of a main lake area where I'm graphing what I believe to be bass in an "activity zone" (click all pics to enlarge). This is a pretty quick way to try and get an idea of what depth you need to be fishing, or at least it makes for a really good range to start in on a lake you might not be familiar with. With the cloud cover and heavy rain, these fish were a little shallower than what I had found on Thursday under pretty high sun and hot conditions. In this particular shot you can see the activity layer is right around 7'-10'.

So once you figure out the activity zone, which BTW should only take about 5 minutes of graphing across any main lake or primary cove mouth, you then want to start looking for structural elements that coincide with the appropriate depth. In other words, structure that tops out at or breaks very near the exact depth of the fish you are graphing. Here is an example of one such area on the lake that I graphed and caught a picture of. You can see coming out of about 10-12' of water, I suddenly encounter a nice break that tops out at 6' before dropping back into about 8' of water where it then gradually sloped up the flat into shallower water. Areas like this act as both migration routes as well as stopping points for bass filtering out of the shallows on their way toward deeper water. In this case I just swung out and around to get lined up on the break and then threw parallel as well as at a 30-45 degree angle across the drop. Sometimes the angle of the cast can make all the difference in the world as to how many bass you'll catch. You really want to first understand how the structural element is layed out, and then you need to try different presentations from different angles to figure out how to trigger a bite. BTW, this spot was loaded with bass :)

So the final tally was another 38-40 bass, of which nearly 30 kept. Shad are continuing to filter out toward the main lake and were much more prevalent, both on the depth finder as well as visually. A few isolated bass starting to bust on the schools, but these are mostly smaller fish right now. The better fish are still grouped on the structure spots. Interestingly, drop baits worked as well as crankbaits today. I caught a lot of bass on both. On one spot I caught 10 nice bass on soft plastics in just 15 casts. Some of these spots are so small and specific, if you can throw repeatedly right on top of them it is almost guaranteed you'll get bit. They were really popping the drop baits when they hit, too. Very fun. Of course the crank was faster, especially on the deeper areas or on sections that are a little larger and might run for a length.

Speaking of cranks, just an opinion here but a post that caught my eye on another board. The question being how do you set the hook on crankbait fish. Lots of guys sound like they let the fish do the setting, or don't like to put much pressure on a bass at all. I say hogwash. While I don't drop and set on a crankbait fish like you would a worm or jig, once a bass has engulfed my crankbait and I realize it, I like to put a good heavy swing set on his butt. Really get that rod doubled over and some pressure to the fish. From there you can play him however you want. For some reason people think you don't set hard with trebles, and I'm not sure where that comes from or the reasoning behind it. To me, you need to put some good pressure on the hookset with trebles. You're only applying 'X' amount of force to the fish on any given hookset, and with trebles, that force is divided by the number of hook points in his mouth. Unlike a jig where if you hit him with 10 pounds of force on a single hook, that is what translates to the fish. On a crankbait, if he has 3 of the 6 points from two trebles in his mouth, then that same 10# force is divided by those 3 points (in principle), ultimately resulting in just over 3 pounds of force per hook point. So I say swing hard and double the rod over. You'll land more bass and look real impressive all at the same time.