Round Lake Topwater Fest 7/28/2015

[djkimmel]

I returned to Round Lake to test the topwater bite again on July 28th. The last time the topwater bite had slowed earlier and I didn't get as many bites as I thought I would so I decided to start out with more of a pop and no rattles going a little stealthy with an 'antique' Heddon Chugger Spook in clear. It's the only one I have.

After a dozen so casts around obviously busting bass of various sizes I had had 2 missing strikes that seemed wimpy to me. Time for a change.


I went back to the earlier successful popper - an X3 Excalibur with a decent pop and spit, and fairly loud, high-pitched rattles. The very first cast a to the same area a solid keeper hit it so hard going away from me it set the hooks on itself and almost jerked the rod from my hands!


It was ON after that. I never had any doubles but I had 2 keepers like this one in 2 casts at one point! It was fun!

Late morning the topwater bite finally started to slow as the breeze picked up a little, riffling the water. So I decided to try some new tactics. Fishing shoreline-related shallow weed drops I could still get bit pretty good on the popper but I was catching more smaller bass though they were really crashing the popper. I wanted to catch some keepers so for something different I headed shallower to pads with the few docks on Round.


I missed a couple small bass on the Horny Toad but I think they were small. Then I tossed the Horny Toad next to a pontoon and this solid keeper crushed it! I didn't even throw under the pontoon, or not that close.

I skipped a Super Fluke under the pontoon only a short ways and immediately caught another bass though it was small. The next pontoon I caught another small bass immediately on the Fluke. And that was end of my dock pontoon experiment because I never had another bite by a bass bigger than about 7-8 inches and only a couple of those.

I caught one more crasher on the Horny Toad from pads but it was only about 12 inches long. I missed one bass of unknown size in the pads when I was reeling in fast. I also saw a couple hump up the pads but couldn't buy a bite.

One surprise was I had a piece of weed trailing from my portable electric motor prop and saw what looked like small log behind it out of the corner of my eye. My brain said, "that 'log' is moving!?!" I looked back to see a curious dogfish ghosting along behind the weed. Before I could pitch something to catch it it ran out of curiosity and swam away...

It was hot out so I was thinking should I go in, call it a day, or stay out a little longer. The fun topwater bite seemed mostly over. I decided to try my early morning spot one more time before calling it a day. Lucky call I'm glad I made!!


I tossed my old standby green pumpkin Power Worm to the weed edge and immediately popped a really good one that fought hard, stripping line a few times before I landed it. Then I couldn't get any more bites on the worm but to my surprise the breeze slowed a little and I could start seeing panfish and minnows 'bubbling' the surface again scattered out over open water.

It was early afternoon. I put the popper back out there and caught a dink. Had a couple half-hearted bites. So I decided to bust out the clear pearl Sammy. I have tried the Sammy on Round before while getting them on poppers without any good hits but this time it was different!


I was walking the dog very fast right throw schools of panfish out over relatively deep water for this lake and BAM! Got one! BAM! Got another one! They were CRUSHING it!! BLAM!! Hooked a big one that was stripping out line. They were all jumping.

This one jumped and then dove for the weeds. Somewhere in there it got off which was a bummer because it looked to be my biggest bass of the day bigger than the worm bass! I caught a couple more including the one above and then the wind kicked up again, and the bite slowed back down. I had had a great day of small inland lake bass fishing landing 26 bass with 12 of them being no measure keepers, mostly on topwater so I called it a day. A good day!