May 26, 2020
Fishing Time: 6:00 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.
Rating: 9
Weather Conditions: Sunny with partly cloudy skies
Bait: Megabass Ito Vision 110 FX Tour Premium HT-ITO Wakasagi Jerkbait
Rod: Abu Garcia Veritas Winch Crankbait Rod
Reel: Shimano Curado Casting Reel
Line: 12-pound Yo-Zuri Hybrid Fishing Line
Total Bass Caught: 4
Final Weigh in Weight: 6.01 pounds
With crystal clear water, light chop, and partly cloudy skies, today set up to be the perfect jerkbait day and, fortunately for me, my go-to spring technique did not disappoint. I arrived at the lake around 6:00 p.m., and seeing the conditions, immediately headed to fish the shoreline at Luther Burbank Park. The bite started off a little slow and after twenty minutes of fishing, I was without so much as a nibble.
Knowing that I needed to switch things up, I decided to try some deeper water and cast away from the shore instead of towards it. This proved to be a wise decision, as on my very first cast into deeper water a smallmouth absolutely devoured my jerkbait. The bite was so hard that I barely had time to set the hook before the bass started taking line. After a great battle on my baitcaster, I managed to wrangle the bass into the boat and get it onto the scale. Breaking the two pound mark, it weighed in at 2.05 pounds.
Thinking that I may be onto something, I continued fishing the deeper water around Luther Burbank and, five casts later, I had my second bass of the day. This one was a little smaller and weighed in at 0.75 pounds.
After that, the bite cooled off a little bit, so I decided to head over to an area with a similar underwater composition: Meydenbauer Cove. The cove was extremely rocky and I had high hopes that there would be some bass hanging out there. However, after a handful of casts it became clear that I needed to try a new spot.
I motored around for a little bit, scouting out potential areas, and eventually found a nice rocky point with an isolated hydrilla patch on it. I made a cast just beyond the patch and worked my jerkbait back with a twitch-pause-twitch-twitch-pause retrieve. As soon as I made my first twitch above the hydrilla, a bass exploded out of the cover and attacked my lure. I gave a huge hookset and, fighting to keep the bass from diving back down into the vegetation, made sure to keep the rod tip high. It took quite a bit of effort, but eventually I was able to tire the bass out and get it into the boat. When I put it on the scale, it came out to be a solid 2.71 pound smallmouth.
The next spot that I tried was the point next to the I-90 bridge. I made a total of eight casts there and after failing to attract a bite on my first seven, decided to slow things down. I made a long cast out to the tip of the point and about two-thirds of the way back to the boat, stopped my retrieve entirely to let my jerkbait suspend in the water. After a good five seconds, I felt a bass come up out of the depths and grab my lure. I set the hook and, within a minute, had my fourth bass of the day. This one was a little guy and weighed in at just 0.5 pounds.
Satisfied with the day thus far, I decided to finish the day off by hunting for some largemouth bass. I used a topwater frog and a wacky worm to work the edges of dense lily pads near the boat launch, but, as has been the case this season, the largemouth were nowhere to be found.
Observations: The water temperature ranged from 61-65 degrees today, which is similar to what it was during my last outing. I caught my bass in 5-15 feet of water, indicating that the bass may be on the move to deeper water. The smallmouth are definitely in post-spawn mode right now and seem to be actively feeding to replenish from the grueling spawn. They were extremely willing to chase a moving bait and hit aggressively on all of my bites. I still haven’t managed to catch a largemouth this season and part of me is starting to believe that the water will have to warm up more before I encounter my first one. Regardless, it was still an amazing outing today and a lot of fun to catch some jerkbait bass.