Great Start
With all the recent discussion of grass, we decided to abandon continuing our deep water searching and scope out the grassy flats instead. I had gone over a map of the Chick the night before and had marked three areas that had steep breaklines adjacent to fairly shallow flats and had access to long light periods. We hit our first spot around 2:00, a small cove on the opposite side of the channel from the west end of Patten Island. With deep cranks, worms, and jigs, we caught a bunch of bass between 10'-14' along the outside weed line. When we got to the grassy flat at the back, the action stopped. I figured they would move up into the grass at dusk, so we packed up and headed to another cove. This one was also on the west side of the channel and on the map it looked fairly similar to the first one. However, it had an added bonus...it was loaded with laydowns whose ends bordered the breakline. The bass were on the same pattern as those in the first cove. We caught a lot on the laydowns at the mouth and along the break in 8'-12', but as it tapered and gave way to the flat the action stopped. By the time we finished up there it was after 6, so we decided to skip the third spot and head back to the first for the evening bite. However, the bass were not in the grass yet, so we moved outside of the cove to kill some time fishing the main channel ledge. I caught our best two of the day there, a 4.3 and a 3.12, in 22' on submerged wood with a jig. A barge passed while we fished the ledge, so we decided to crank up the big motor and go back in to see if the wave action had stirred them up...that concludes the "Great Start" part of my report emoAngry!
Bad Ending
You guessed it...dead batteries! There was not enough juice to turn the big motor over, but the trolling motor was still pretty strong and we had a paddle. So at 7:00, we began the long troll to Wolftever. I haven't checked the generation schedule yet, but I would be willing to bet that there was some activity between 7pm and midnightemoAngry! But that is not the bad part of the story, nor is having to troll and paddle for five hours against wind and current. Surprisingly, the local "brotherhood" of fisherman are not very brotherly. I expected the pleasure boaters to zoom on by, but it was shocking to see how many guys would turn their back or even crank up and leave as we paddled towards them. To make matters worse, as darkness fell we found that the trolling motor could not be used with the running lights. So we had to abandon trolling and take turns passing a 3' paddle back and forth while keeping an eye out for approaching boats. Fortunately, very few boats were running in the channel. In fact, most were busy hiding behind the glow of a blacklight, pretending to neither see or hear us. Within fifty yards of the entrance to Wolftever, we had our only near accident. The running lights eventually got so dim that even the gnats left, and I had to wave off a boat that came within feet of using us for a launchpad. As we passed under the bridge, the fisherman in the group of boats around it just stared as we fought with the current. We trailered in silence at a little after 12am.
Oh yeah, all bass were caught on either a Mann's 20+ in chartreuse/blue back, a Fat Free Shad in citrus shad, a 3/8oz Jewel jig in black-n-blue, or a T-rigged Zoom U-Tail in junebug with a 1/8oz bullet. As far as numbers go, we only had four over 15" but caught a total of 27 bass, 1 cat, 1 drum, and 2 bluegill
.
With all the recent discussion of grass, we decided to abandon continuing our deep water searching and scope out the grassy flats instead. I had gone over a map of the Chick the night before and had marked three areas that had steep breaklines adjacent to fairly shallow flats and had access to long light periods. We hit our first spot around 2:00, a small cove on the opposite side of the channel from the west end of Patten Island. With deep cranks, worms, and jigs, we caught a bunch of bass between 10'-14' along the outside weed line. When we got to the grassy flat at the back, the action stopped. I figured they would move up into the grass at dusk, so we packed up and headed to another cove. This one was also on the west side of the channel and on the map it looked fairly similar to the first one. However, it had an added bonus...it was loaded with laydowns whose ends bordered the breakline. The bass were on the same pattern as those in the first cove. We caught a lot on the laydowns at the mouth and along the break in 8'-12', but as it tapered and gave way to the flat the action stopped. By the time we finished up there it was after 6, so we decided to skip the third spot and head back to the first for the evening bite. However, the bass were not in the grass yet, so we moved outside of the cove to kill some time fishing the main channel ledge. I caught our best two of the day there, a 4.3 and a 3.12, in 22' on submerged wood with a jig. A barge passed while we fished the ledge, so we decided to crank up the big motor and go back in to see if the wave action had stirred them up...that concludes the "Great Start" part of my report emoAngry!
Bad Ending
You guessed it...dead batteries! There was not enough juice to turn the big motor over, but the trolling motor was still pretty strong and we had a paddle. So at 7:00, we began the long troll to Wolftever. I haven't checked the generation schedule yet, but I would be willing to bet that there was some activity between 7pm and midnightemoAngry! But that is not the bad part of the story, nor is having to troll and paddle for five hours against wind and current. Surprisingly, the local "brotherhood" of fisherman are not very brotherly. I expected the pleasure boaters to zoom on by, but it was shocking to see how many guys would turn their back or even crank up and leave as we paddled towards them. To make matters worse, as darkness fell we found that the trolling motor could not be used with the running lights. So we had to abandon trolling and take turns passing a 3' paddle back and forth while keeping an eye out for approaching boats. Fortunately, very few boats were running in the channel. In fact, most were busy hiding behind the glow of a blacklight, pretending to neither see or hear us. Within fifty yards of the entrance to Wolftever, we had our only near accident. The running lights eventually got so dim that even the gnats left, and I had to wave off a boat that came within feet of using us for a launchpad. As we passed under the bridge, the fisherman in the group of boats around it just stared as we fought with the current. We trailered in silence at a little after 12am.
Oh yeah, all bass were caught on either a Mann's 20+ in chartreuse/blue back, a Fat Free Shad in citrus shad, a 3/8oz Jewel jig in black-n-blue, or a T-rigged Zoom U-Tail in junebug with a 1/8oz bullet. As far as numbers go, we only had four over 15" but caught a total of 27 bass, 1 cat, 1 drum, and 2 bluegill
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