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Anyone out there like to throw Flukes during the dog days? That is one of the few things I have not tried right now to catch these slow biting bass.
Anybody have anything that is working right now? My normal stuff doesn't seem to be good enough. Topwater, shakeys, and jigs are what I love using and have confidence in them.
Looking for some help, I'd really appreciate it. Two youngin's at home forces me to go when I can, which isn't as much as I'd like:)
God Bless, Carp
Hey, I'm over on the KY board, but saw your post in the headline section on the main page.
I love throwing a fluke. It's my second go to bait right after the eakins jig. I fish a buble gum fluke on a gamagatsu (i spelled it wrong) 4/o offset shank hook and let it sink about 2 foot or more and work it real slow with a spinning reel and medium action rod. Watermelon seed works good to. Throw it around cover.
The only problem is in KY on the lakes I usually fish, the water is below summer pool so there isn't much cover.
Blessed Fishin
I have been throwing a fluke at night. I have been having a great time catching around 15-20 a night. I hav been fishing a golf pond in our housing addition. So yes they are working great.
I also like flukes but what I don't like is the lack of noise in stained waters. I like something to call the fish in a bit.
Since spinnerbaits don't hang long enough in a strike zone, I made a small glide bait for bass. Works great! It has the same action as a fluke, looks more like a fish, and has some rattles in it to make more noise. Also nice not going through so many baits.
Only drawback is not being weedless, but it suspends well so it's easy to work over weeds.
I use Zoom Salty Super Fluke, Golden Bream (after puttin a dark red bass assasin to let the red bleed into the fluke) with a 4/0 hook in a slow jerky manner. Get's lots of hits and lands about 85% of them.
While I am mainly fishing for crappie these days I have been catching more largemouth bass than crappie in the deep water brush piles.
During the middle of the day the bass are going down to about 18 ft on Bluegrass Fish and Wildlife Areas Bluegrass Pit.
I have probably caught and released 20 to 30 LM bass this past month in the 18 ft depth. The water in this pit is clearing up more and more.
Visibility is greater now that last year. Maybe it's because of the lack of rainfall and the lack of runoff putting mud into the water. I can see the bottom in about 3 to 5 ft of water.
That's 10 ft visibility because the sunlight has to go down 5 ft and then reflect off the bottom and come back up 5 ft though the water so that I can see the light.
With water this clear it's necessary to use light lines and clear lines. I am using some P Fluorocarbon lines and also the Stren Magnithin line which is thin in diameter for it's rated 6 lb strength.
Since I am fishing for deep slab crappie I am using live bait. I use chub or fathead minnows which are about 1" to 2" long.
This former strip pit is about 65 to 100 ft deep in spots but averages around 30 ft deep.
There are a few shallow water shelfs where there is abundant submerged weed growth. Mostly Leafy Pond weed and Eurasian Mill-foil.
These weeds grow to the depth of about 6 ft or so with some at 7 ft and by the time you get to 8 ft the weeds are gone. They just can't get establish below 8 ft deep.
Now as the sunsets the bass start to come up into the shallow weeds and hunt for gizzard shad. I've caught some nice 1 lb and 2 lb fish in these weed flats near sundown. I lost three bass that were larger than 2 lbs.
I rarely fish in the early morning hours, but want to get back into that early morning fishing routine again.
The same spot that I caught the bass on the shallow flats I caught about 60 crappie on another trip. All were caught after the sun has gotten lower in the sky. There is a Western Bank tree line that blocks the sun when it gets really low in the sky.
If I were to go fishing for bass I would fish flukes on a Carolina rig in about 18 ft of water during the hottest part of the say when the sun is really shining down bright. I would fish the edges of the weed lines in the early morning hours and evening hours. And think about doing some night fishing for bass or crappie. It's much more comfortable at night temperature wise. But I hate them bugs that swarm around the light. Maybe they make a UV light that won't attract bugs so much.
I know one guy that fishes at Otter Pit with a super fluke. He fishes from the bank and catches a lot of largemouth bass on these flukes. He casts them out on a caroline rig and lets them sit in the shallow water near the weeds which is next to a channel that drops off into about 10 to 15 ft of water. I've watched him fish and catch one pound bass one after another. Can't recall the color but it was like a greenish/brown color maybe. Watermellon color maybe? I just can't recall. Other guys fish with jigs in the deep water and are catching some largemouth bass on the deep water jigs. By deep I am talking about 18 ft deep.
The thermolcine on these pits runs around 25 ft deep. So anything over 30 ft won't hold many bass.
Not unless there is a lot of high winds that can get some currents down that deep and carry some oxygen down to those depths. But the thermocline at this time of the year is very stable and hard to break up. It won't break up and let the lake turn over until all the water gets down to the 50 's Deg F water temp.
Last year when these pits/lakes turned over I drove past them and could smell the H2S gas from the roadway. The bottom of these strip pits is covered with old coal dust and grit. I imagine that is a pretty inhospitable environment when there is no oxygen in the depths. H2S gas is produced by Anaerobic type bacteria that work in the absence of oxygen deep on the bottom in the muck. There is a lot of sulfur in the coal around here and that's where the S comes in the H2S compound. After turnover the H2S can rise to the surface where it's free to go into the air. A week after the lake turns over it's all dissipated.