Bluegrass 6/21

[bassmanic1]

Fishing report for Bluegrass 6/21/13 . Started day at 5:30 AM fishing for bass , weather fair , air temps a pleasant 69dg no water temp gauge probably 75 or so . Lake calm . Started with Senko around weedbeds no joy , brother throwing Chatterbait . round 7:00 the armada started to show up and by 8:00 Id say there were 15 boats on the lake , half newer rangers . One DA was doing laps in front of the ramp , didnt know what that was about . Anyway , started trolling a berkley flicker shad and hit some crappie then some 17" bass . Also had luck on a Red Eye Shad casting around weedbeds . Brother dosent like to troll says it "isnt fishing" well we are all entitled to our opinion . Like to troll by the deep hole in front of the cove with the road to find fish then cast for em . Someone stuck a tree limb out in the mouth of that cove where its really shallow .

[Moveon]

Thanks for the fishing report Bassmanic1:

I was out there fishing this morning but a little later than you. I was there about 9 am. I was the guy out there trolling side planer boards and fish around that tree you talked about. I saw if from a distance and could not figure out what it was at first. I've never seen it out there before. I guess the BEAVERS have been busy at Night putting in new structure for the fishermen. I wonder what type of boat those BEAVERS drive? hehe


I saw the guy doing laps and got a video of him too. I may post some more U Tube Videos of these jerks driving too fast out there some day in the future. I saw more than one boat going a little too fast today. And the other day I was talking to Gordon Woods at the South Launch ramp at Blue Grass Pit when he noticed a guy speeding on the lake. He took a keen interest in the guy but didn't have a boat at the time and neither did I. I would have taken him out after the guy if he wanted to use my boat that day. My feeling is that it ruins the fishing of the other fishermen who could be rocked out of their boat by the waves these guys create on this small body of water. And it's against the rules to boot. I wish that people who fish there would read and know the rules and follow them. If not I fear that they will go back to Trolling Motor Only on these lakes. That would be a bad punishment for everyone involved and I hope that never happens. But the property manager will only take so much before he decides that the expermiment of allowing big motors on these small lakes is not working and bans the big motors again like they did in the past. Remember for the last 40 years they didn't allow motors larger than 10 HP on these little lakes that were state owned Fish and Wildlife Areas. I never could take my boat to Hovey's, Turtle Creek and Glendale due to the fact that my motor is bigger than 10 HP. And try recovering and launching our big boat with out using a gas motor! That's a bitch to do when it's windy.

OK enough of that. Now for a fishing report.

I measured the water temperature at the surface at around 80 to 85 deg F. I used my Humminbird 898 C SI unit's temperature graph to determine the water's temperature. So I was looking a a graph on my screen and had to estimate the readings off the graph. So I could be off by as much as 10 deg. I should have looked at the digital reading but I think I disabled that one on the SI screen. Needless to say the water's hot and will be getting hotter.

I caught all my bass near weeds. Most were in the ten to 15 ft depths. I caught five LM bass all together fishing from about 9:30 am to 1 PM. My butt got tired from sitting in the boat all day and I ran out of bottled water so I decided to head home.

I did get a couple of pictures of the bass and weighted two of them with the digital scales that I carry in my boat all the time. They weighted in at around 1.5 lbs. I didn't have a measuring tape handy as it was in the back compartment and I had to move three other things just to get to the bag. And the bag was stuck inside another water proof type bag for safe keeping. I need to get that tape measure out of that and put it where I can get to it better. I'd estimate that they were about 16" long or maybe only 15" long. But they were fun to catch. One gave me a pretty good fight too. I had 80 ft of line out behind the side planer boats and when I stop the boat the fish jumped out of the water way back 8o ft behind the boat. But the crank baits hooks held firm and I managed to get him into the boat after he took one last dive under the boat. It was a good thing that I had the drag set up right. I'm using Daiwa ACCUDEPHTPLUS 17 LC reels from Gander Mountain. These reels have multiple drag disks and the drag is very smooth and easily adjustable with a large Star on the handle. And they will put the same amount of line out behind the boat every time as long as the reel is filled to capacity. It holds about 270 yard of 10 lb test mono. I'm using Stren Magnathin line 10 lb test with Green colored line. A friend of mine uses this a lot at Patoka Lake. 6lb test is great for Patoka Crappie but I got 10 lb test as the Trollers Bible book used 10 lb test mono for all it's dive charts. But you must remember that this mangathin like is a little thinner than regular 10 lb test Stren Mono line. Which means that the baits probably run a few feet deeper than the charts say for regular 10 test mono line.

But the crank bait I was using for the day was not listed in the dive chart anyway. It's an older bomber type bait that these fish have never seen before. I don't think too many guys are fishing with crank baits that were bought in the late 1960's . LOL. Yea I have four or five tackle boxes of old baits that I inherited with my father passed away. He like to buy a lot of fishing stuff and look at it in the living room until he had time to take a week or two off to go fishing. He left me about 50 rod and reels too. They are all pretty old now. One is a steel rod that he used when he was a kid. I don't think you will see too many of those around these days. Although I did see one at the Washington Square Mall in Evansville, IN at the South end of the mall where they turned a old store into multiple spaces for people to rent and sell their antiques and junk. I saw one of these rods just like my dads there one day and was really surprised to see that someone else had one too. This store also had a lot of old fishin lures as well. I spend about 4 hours one day walking around just looking at all the different spaces. And I never did go upstairs on the escalator. I think this used to be a Stewarts Store but can't really remember if that's what it was or not. Anyway it's a big store area.

I started trolling because it can take a while to get to the fishing spot going at idle speed so I figured I might as well pull a crank bait behind the boat and catch a few fish on the way to the fishing holes down the lake. So far that's worked out well for me.

No crappie today. I'm really having a hard time finding the suspended crappie and figuring out how to catch them this summer and last. I know that I can catch them using live minutes and very slow trolling with tight lines from the front of the boat using the trolling motor along the drops. But I'm trying to solve the mystery of suspended crappie out over open water. I've caught crappie on this crank bait in the past down on KY lake so I know they will hit this bomber crankbait if I can get it in front of a school of crappie. And the thing is that when you catch crappie on these crank baits they are usually larger ones. Perhaps Bluegrass doesn't have a lot of big schools of large crappie and the little ones are intimated by the crank baits? Probably not but you never really know what the fish are thinking.

I was marking fish up around 6 to 9 ft deep all day on the Sonar unit. So maybe I was fishing too deep for the crappie. The like to feed Up not down so if you get too deep and pull the baits below their level they won't bite. So I'm told. But maybe that's really true.

I did troll with a minnow harness that I used up in Canada for Walleyes. I have a small live minnow on the hook and the rig has a spinner on a wire and some red beads. But I didn't catch a single fish with this harness bait. I had no idea how deep it was going behind the planer boards.

I used two different type of Off Shore Tackle Side Planer boards today. One was the OR32 mini side planer board. It's reversible but doesn't have a flag on it. It uses the Red or Orange release clips and will release the line out of the front clip and stay in the second back release clip and slide down the line to the fish.

The other is the OR12 Starboard Side Planer Board with the Tattle Flag option on it. I didn't like the way the flag worked as it was either too far down or not moving down at all for some reason. Perhaps it the bait I was using.

There are four holes along the front edge of the board. You put a spring in one of the holes to keep the flag upright. The top hole is for lighter baits and the bottom hole is for larger baits and puts more counter tension on the flag. But I don't like the position of the four holes. I may drill a few more holes in between the factory holes to give me more options on the spring tension. The flag should ride straight up until a fish grabs hold of the bait and then the front release should release the line when the fish is on. The flag should tip downward to the rear of the planer board when more weight is on the line behind the board. I'll be trying out some different sized crank baits in the future and tweak the flag's spring tension to match these baits. I have some Bandit 700's that I will be using later this summer. They are larger than the 200 and 300 series that I'm using and dive much deeper too.

Well that's the report for now. I'm tired and it's time for some alcohol to end the day.

Should I have some Scotch or Bourbon or Vodka? Or maybe just some wine. Decisions decisions. LoL.

Fishing report for Bluegrass 6/21/13 . Started day at 5:30 AM fishing for bass , weather fair , air temps a pleasant 69dg no water temp gauge probably 75 or so . Lake calm . Started with Senko around weedbeds no joy , brother throwing Chatterbait . round 7:00 the armada started to show up and by 8:00 Id say there were 15 boats on the lake , half newer rangers . One DA was doing laps in front of the ramp , didnt know what that was about . Anyway , started trolling a berkley flicker shad and hit some crappie then some 17" bass . Also had luck on a Red Eye Shad casting around weedbeds . Brother dosent like to troll says it "isnt fishing" well we are all entitled to our opinion . Like to troll by the deep hole in front of the cove with the road to find fish then cast for em . Someone stuck a tree limb out in the mouth of that cove where its really shallow .