Good friend Rick Vogelbacher of Rick's Ultimate Bass Fishing just sent me this pic from his recent St. Clair trip over the holiday weekend. Details are below.
We started fishing around 6:30 am on our first spot. The water surface temperature was running about 63 degrees, and the wind was coming out of the southeast at light clip. Here’s some basic statistics for the day.
Our best 5 bass weighed around 21 lbs.
We caught between 50 and 70 bass with a even mixture of smallmouth and largemouth. No largemouth bigger than 3 lbs. Also 5 muskie, 3 northern pike and several rock bass. Two near misses on walleye at the boat (dinner).
Baits that caught fish were: tube, creature bait, spinnerbaits, crankbaits, wacky worm, shakey heads with worms, & Jerkbaits
When we left the Metro Beach state park where we launched, it was a unbelievable sight around 3:30 pm. The traffic going into the park was two lanes wide for at least two miles long. Plus I didn’t see any parking left in the park for them. It was crazy to watch that many people flock to the park. Boat traffic was a little crazy by the time we came in too.
Weekend Report: Thoughts on Adjusting
Finally getting around to posting a report from this past Sunday. These past two trips have been good examples of making adjustments out on the water. It's pretty tempting to try and stick with what's been working, in essence forcing a bite on the fish. This usually doesn't work real well. I'll always try and repeat something I had going the previous trip, whether a day before or a week before since it was the 'last best thing'. However, if it doesn't seem to be working and I feel like I'm not getting enough bites, then it's time to look for what is working.
I had a decent trip just a couple days before, having made a switch from the floating worm to the Chatterbait, a switch the fish seemed to like. Naturally, I had both baits tied on again for this most recent excursion. I started with the floating worm, but was only able to generate 1 bite in the first 20 minutes or so. Just didn't seem like the thing to be doing, so I switched to the Chatterbait figuring that would be the deal. Another 20 minutes go by and only 1 more fish - time to make another change.
When making these changes you have two options. One is to change the area of the lake you're fishing, the other is to simply change baits and keep fishing the same stuff. I knew there were plenty of bass in the areas I was fishing, so I chose to change baits, in this case switching to a shallow running crankbait. Works the same basic water and depth as the other two baits, but is still something relatively different. Didn't take long to figure out that this was what the fish wanted this day. In the next 3 hours I ended up catching 61 bass, my 8th trip this year of 50 bass or more and moving me within a couple dozen fish shy of 900 for the year.
So the message here is to not be afraid to make a change if things don't seem to be happening out on the water, either in baits or in areas. This is especially important if you're out there on the day of a tourney and trying to replicate what you did in practice a day or two (or the week) before. I've seen lots of guys go down with zeros on tourney day because they were being stubborn and didn't make the adjustment. It's certainly no guarantee, but neither is toughing it out and hoping that whatever you're currently doing will eventually pay off.
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