Big Indiana Bass

My wife and I just got back in from an extended weekend trip down to Lake Barkley, Kentucky over the Father's Day weekend. I had purchased and set up a guide trip for my father, and it was a good excuse to make the long drive down to visit family. We went out Monday morning from the Lake Barkley State Park Marina where I met Dave Stewart of Bass Buster Guide Service. The following are some comments and observations from the trip.

The first thing I noticed right off the bat was how incredibly quiet Dave's 200hp Evinrude E-Tec was. I've always been a fan of Johnson/Evinrude engines, and when Bombardier bought them out and retooled the line up, I paid extra to make sure I got one for the Triton. Dave was in a 19'10" Ranger and that Evinrude was a heck of a power plant. I never actually GPSed his running speed, but needless to say it was a very impressive ride. I'd certainly be looking into one myself should I ever decide to get back into a larger boat.

One of the next things I noticed that I thought were really cool were the rod sleeves Dave used on his outfits. I'm not sure if his Ranger rod lockers had built in rod holders at one time or not, but if so they were removed. The brightly colored sleeves were actually called "Stick Jackets" and worked like a charm. They're extremely flexible and no-hassle when it comes to sliding over your rod blank, and affordable on top of it. Again, another item I'd be looking into should the need ever arise.

On to the fishing. We were the recipients of a blue sky, 97 degree day with barely a breeze in the air. On top of that, we never had the Corps pulling water while we were out, so as you can imagine, the ledge bite suffered. The fish were definitely there as witnessed by Dave's Lowrance 520c, mostly grouped up in about 16'-20' of water, but they certainly weren't in a feeding mood for the most part. The one good side to that, if there is one, was the lack of wind and current meant the lake was nearly dead calm and made running everywhere a pleasure. 

We started out fishing some main lake and secondary points adjacent to creek and river channels. I got to throw a super-sized shakey head setup to begin. This was pretty cool as the custom 5/8-oz head had a built in 6/0 hook and was rigged with a straight tail worm of about 10" or longer (I didn't actually measure it). Unfortunately a problem quickly surfaced as Dave told me to slow down and stop moving that worm so much - fish slow!

Anyone who has ever fished with me knows that fishing slow really isn't my style. It's the reason I almost never fish worms in the first place, though I've gotten a little better at it over the years. Still after a couple reminders on the first spot Dave took away the shakey worm from me :) 

So on the next spot I get to instead throw a football head jig. Sweet - this I can do. "You need to slow down. This is the draggin' technique", Dave quickly scolded me. Now in all fairness, Dave just wanted me to catch fish and was being helpful, and perhaps this was one of those "when in Rome, do as the Roman's do" kind of things, and I swear, I tried to slow down, like painfully slow for me. So we were both trying to do the right thing, but me and slow just don't go together. Call it a character flaw. If Dave got to collect a dollar for every time through the trip he reminded me to slow down he would have made a nice little pot of money on the side.

After the first several ledge spots it was obvious that bite wasn't happening, so we moved into some creeks and fished worms around some isolated cover areas for late post-spawners. This garnered us about 8 or 10 fish, but they were all small. We moved around trying to find some larger fish but it just wasn't happening, plus Dave was probably getting tired of me getting hung up in the brush from fishing my Texas rig too fast in the cover :) So we rolled back out onto the main river to see if they had staretd pulling current yet. Nope. Damn!

Back into another creek, but this time we started checking out ledges farther back into the creek but that wouldn't necessarily be reliant on any current generation. With about 2 hours left in the trip, Dave finally triggers a bite on his super-size shakey head. The fish actually bit half the tail off. Good sign.

Dave rerigs and throws back in and gets bit on the drop. Very good sign. I'm no dummy and immediately get the lineup down and wing the football head jig to the ledge. I get to move it a few feet when I get popped and set the hook into a decent fish. Now we've got something going, a group of fish that has decided to move up and feed. Finally.

Dave's job of finding and triggering the bite now done, he puts his rod down, keeps the lineup and lets my Dad and I have at it. My Dad is chunking a Carolina rig while I stick with the football head. My Dad gets one, then I get a couple more, then we double up. This is what I was finally waiting for and was the kind of bite I was hoping I could get my Dad into. We work the spot for nearly an hour, but the bite dies down about 30 minutes in. Still, it was a frenzied half hour and really lifts everybodies spirits up after toiling for 5 hot hours in the baking sun. As we head in it's all smiles after that flurry of activity that boats about 15 or 16 decent bass between us.

At dinner that night, plans are already being drawn up for another trip with Dave, this time in late spring when the big females are up and the weather is a little cooler. Stories of big fish and lots of them when they move into the "yellow flowers" has the wheels turning, but for now I'll just sit back and enjoy what was a great way to spend a couple days of "down" time.