East Crooked Lake has quality bass

[djkimmel]

Our almost weekly Thursday fishing trip with myself and Derek was to 'new' water this week. Neither Derek or I had been to East Crooked Lake in years. A few for Derek (and the only 1 time he's been there) and probably over 20 years for me. We went with only the lake map on the map car and I printed out the satellite view from Google Maps.

A nice friend confirmed my idea that it can be a good lake for weed pitching - fun fishing when it's working! We arrived around a little later in the morning after 9am but with the light rain and thick gray skies we thought we could get away with fishing fast over the weeds for a time.

We started near the ramp since there were nice weeds. Derek missed a tentative strike on his very first cast with a buzzbait. Shortly after casting ahead of the boat over weeds near the break I caught a solid keeper on a chrome-blue Sexy Shad. It hit hard!

We never quite figured out the hot spots or techniques but on the first good point we came Derek caught a ~4 pounder on a Pop'R which you know is a good time! We were sitting over the main outside weed edge and casting on to a sparse weed flat.


At the next point we came to we landed 3 keepers pitching creatures and worms Texas-rigged into weeds in 9-11 foot.


We moved out to the sunken island. The weeds looked great! We only got 1 good bite but it was another ~4 pounder that Derek got off the top of the hump on the Pop'R again! Blam!


We tried more weeds, another point and did some shallow fishing without really nailing down another good spot though I caught a small chunker keeper jerking a stick worm in shallow weeds, and we both broke off good bass near docks. The best I can say about that is we are both rusty at dock fishing!

We had some other random bites on spinnerbait, buzzbait and similar lure. A nice bass broke Derek's line on a spinnerbait somehow - must have been a nick that wasn't obvious. The bass jumped once shaking the spinnerbait. Hate to have that happen but sometimes it does. Most of the bites other than the 2 big Pop'R bass and the one Sexy Shad fish were subtle to very soft. The bass seemed a lot more tentative for a rainy, gray, dark day but it was fun and were impressed with the average quality of the bass. We may go back depending upon how our other lakes explorations go.

Water was warmer than the air in the mid-70's. It started to get warm finally early in the afternoon as the sun started breaking through the cloud cover but we had to get out of there around 2pm or so.

[21XDC]

Is this the one in Brighton? I have spent a lot of time on that lake.

[dartag]

If you are talking about the one Mike mentioned.  I have fished it twice.  Got a 1st and 2nd with close to 15 pounds each time.  Both times the fish were shallow and feeding.  Even had one 1/2 way to the boat and it jumped off.  Saw it sitting there and casted to it.  It bit again

[djkimmel]

If you are talking about the one Mike mentioned.  I have fished it twice.  Got a 1st and 2nd with close to 15 pounds each time.  Both times the fish were shallow and feeding.  Even had one 1/2 way to the boat and it jumped off.  Saw it sitting there and casted to it.  It bit again

Got to like that about ANY lake! Good thing there are 11,000 lakes in Michigan. We always have something new to try!

What did you fish with for them there?

[djkimmel]

Is this the one in Brighton? I have spent a lot of time on that lake.

That's the one. Only my 2nd time there as I said. It was a long time ago my last time and a few years ago for Derek's only other time of the lake. We may go back. We just have lots of ideas for lakes to try. So many lakes... not enough days!

[21XDC]

I thought so... The 3rd pic made me think that you were fishing the hump in the middle..

Scroll in and I think I see you on it now>>> http://binged.it/1HoXx7z  LOL

[djkimmel]

That's pretty good that you can recognize the spot from that small amount of background. I'm impressed. I can rarely do that unless the background is something very obvious and unique. All fishermen and all fishing spots look alike to me I guess

I checked the referenced picture and that was not us. We didn't fish the back side of that end of the hump. That must be where we went wrong...