well i really did a bad job of keeping a log on the particulars of this trip and now it got lost along with the info from my last trip when my phone went in the drink. I'm gonna try to remember as much as i can to keep it accurate and if i can't recall oh well.
weather- partly cloudy in the morning with calm winds 0-10mph by noon it was blustery at 15-20mph and clear skies with no rain to be had.air temp unknown
barometer- unknown
moon phase- waning crescent with at 62 out of 100 for the astro table.
water temp-unknown
water clarity- 2-3 ft common with a slight stain to the water. clearer in some areas with a 5ft visibility but still off color to stained.
water level-68.85ft
started out the morning in line at the ramp. seems it was gonna be a crowded day at the lake with 4 boats in front of us at 6:45am. launched and headed down toward robbies tree. figuring the pattern to be similar to the previous week. look for busts in the morning and throw lots of top waters and go deeper and slower as the sun rises and the day heats up. tied on a devils horse hoping to elicit a big tuc into biting, worked our way along the bluff from robbies tree to retirement home bank but got nothing. there were no busts in the area as there had been the previous weekend. finally in the transition where it gos from steep bluff to more moderate depth i got a strike on the devils horse. turned out to be a nice 1.3lb 14in bass. fish one boosted our confidence that if we kept searching we could get more top water action. alas we continued throwing at shallow lay downs and cover for the next hour or so with not another look. ran down to boy scout point hoping to get in on a few busts but the place was dead. perhaps the other boats knew something we didn't since we still hadn't run into them and were nearly half way down the lake. cranked the point and along the sides of the point with no success. turned to a drop shot to try and get bit and started working the deep part of the point as well as down the steep sides of the point. got a hook up on the side in about 12ft of water, to our surprise it was a red devil! i was kinda shocked a red devil would hit a 6 in drop shot worm but it did and got the hook no problem. anyways at least it was a fish and my son was stoked to put it in the live well. our lake is catch and release on all gamefish so bass and tucs go free but red devils are invasive so they gotta get taken out. shhhhh they goto that farm somewhere ;) anywaysworked that point like nothing and after nearly an hour there we only had the red devil to show. ran down and hit condo cliffs and fished a shakeyhead along the bluffs. got another red devil,what the hell was going on??? hahaha was alternating cranking and dropshoting mixed with shakeyhead fishing trying to get some idea of where the bass were. still had no idea where the largemouth were but decided to keep going down the bank toward kemo'o pub and that when i hooked into something huge just behind the dive shop building between condo cliffs and kemo'o pub. threw out my havoc bottom hopper jr. in black emerald on a 1/4 oz vicious shaky head rig. and connected with a huge fish that immediately took off reel screaming! chased it to the back of the boat and had no though of handing it off to my son, it was way to much of a fight for him. he was still excited and jumping up and down just the same hahaha. i had my falcon cara t7 rod and diawa fuego reel spooled with 8lb yo zuri hybrid line and it was screaming drag out on the surges. i maneuvered around the boat trying to tire it out. saw the green and black of what i though was a really nice bass, after all shakyhead right???!! but as i got it to the surface finally it was DEFINATLEY not a bass. my son got the grips and i got it up and out of the water. i didn't know what it was at first but i measured and weighed it and it was massive for something I'm sure was supposed to be more like a red devil in size. figure a good size red devil may be close to a lb but this guy was going 2.12- 3.4 on my crappy rapala scale and boga grips suck for accuracy but it was over 3 on that! put him in the live well and started searching the smartphone to find out it was a jaguar cichlid. another invasive and another aquarium release run amok! well whatever it was it had to be a record so i kept it and besides its all about getting the invasives out of the lake so they don't compete with the bass, trust me this guy was more than doing ok food wise!! moved over to the saddle on kemo'o island and worked it for a bit with no luck. son fed the ducks then decided he was done for the day. we headed back not really stopping to fish along the way. he wanted to drive so i let him enjoy himself. got back to the dock got some pics of the fish in the live well and traded the lad out for lunch. wasn't sure what to fish or where to start but i was tired of the invasives so i upped the size of my crankbait and worms and ran back down to fish the saddle. finally got another bass on a crankbait but the saddle didn't produce any other fish on the baits i was tossing. ran up to north fork and fished some lay downs across from randalls point. i was using a 4"swimming senko in silver on a 2/0 vicious wide gap hook. first time i had tried that bait and i was really liking the action, falls like a senko but its got a swimbait knobby tail on one side and when you jerk it to you it swims just like a swimbait. really great to let fall then jerk then let fall. like a dying baitfish. anyway it skips great too on the spinning rod and i was skipping it into the forks of the lay down up deep against the trees and letting it sink with just enough jerks once in awhile to look like it was trying to get away and i connected with a nice bass. 1.6lbs 15in , he was deep and tight to the tree. maybe only this or a flipping presentation would have gotten him. fished more of the lay downs but none produced another fish. fished randalls point then morgans point with no luck. ran down the bluffs alternating cranks and a texas rigged berkley worm. came back up the other side of kinkaids with the crankbait running and gunning but no luck. i think this is probably where all the boats had been seeing as i had passed em on my way here earlier. ran back to the bluffs dam side of the saddle and shaky headed em with no luck. then drop shotted the saddle and got another red devil!! i just can't get over they were whacking the worms! it was getting late maybe 3:30 or so and i ran looking for trees in deeper water to skip my senko against. passed stan and found a nice lay down fitting my criteria just next to the effluent plant. got a nice 1.5lb 14in bass on the first cast. worked the rest of the cover with no success. ran back to stan showed him my fish and he said its a definite record never seen anything like it. decided to take him to a certified scale to weigh as soon as i was done. ran up to the bamboo cove where another lay down was that fit my emerging pattern. and first cast bam had one on but it came unbuttoned. cast back and worked it a bit, letting it flutter down several times ohhhh so slowly and bam hook up! 1.6lbs 15 in bass. and people wonder why they call em cookie cutter bass hahaha they are practically all the same size, like out of a cookie cutter sheet. worked the cove and several lay downs but no more luck in there. ran back to robbies bank area and fished the senko and worm with no success. finally hit several trees along the straightaway near the bridge but the senko failed to produce. this area has so much cover but never any amount of fish, its so odd. one here one there but never any decent amount..... odd. back to the dock. ran into chris baires and talked to him a bit about the wtb tourney coming up and then told him about my fish. showed it to him and all the people along the ramp were oooing and ahhhing. no one had seen anything like it that size. chris made a call and the hffa wanted it after i had it weighed, so i got it weighed and its currently sitting up at the middle school in a tank. it dwarfed the "large" one they thought they had hahaha. tough day by most accounts but a pattern of slow and tight to cover emerged later after the water heated up and wind came on. I'm not sure that this pattern would have worked in the morning but its probably worth trying the top water in the calm morning anyway hoping to get a lunker tuc or bass just the same.
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