Lower Crooked Lake redo

[djkimmel]

Though I caught a decent number of bass yesterday at the Upper lake I decided to return to Lower Crooked Lake the next day (4/23/2016) hoping to find the latest hiding spot of the bigger bass. I was also thinking I might start finding some beds by now as this lake has some early spawners.

Here's how some of the day went. I started with a long run towards the lower end of the lake. Stopping at the 1st major lily pad root bog I pitched into the hole inside with a KLK Nemesis Baits Bullet Craw and immediately got popped with a fish running off the side. I set the hook and pulled only a little pressure and water! @#$%@#!

I straightened the craw out. Pitched it back into the same spot and before it got to the bottom, thump! Set the hook and catch this small keeper (due to a looongg tail).



As aggressive as this bass was and the way it hit and ran I figured it had to have company but I may have blown too close to the roots to maximize my bites because I got no more bites.

So I headed towards a depression in the weeds I like. And it produced exactly one bass though it was worth it! Off some pad roots at the end of the depression where it drops a few feet I popped this really big male or spawned out female on the Deposit Spin Titanium Revolution!



The bass just HAMMERED the spinnerbait! WHAM! I love that feeling, don't you?!?

I traveled around hitting pad roots, clumps of pads, weed clumps, depressions and anything different mostly offshore though I also tried what would count as an inside weedline for awhile too. I mostly threw the DSTR spinnerbait though I tried some other presentations including shallow cranks and pitching the Bullet Craw.

Twice I missed fish of unknown size on the Bullet Craw and missed a nice bite on the spinnerbait too. Just sloppiness on my part not being in proper position to get good strikes with good hooksets.

I did find some of the stickworm bites I was getting were actually spawning crappie like this nice one!



Some of them just felt like crappies but I caught a few and saw some of them. I even had a nice one steal a whole stickworm off my hook because I set the hook too hard! It was a perfect place for a big bass and I expected to connect and have to get it out of heavy cover fast but it was only a crappie... oh well. The hookset looked good, just like Bassmaster!

I finally gave up on the lower end of the lake and headed for a totally new pocket I haven't fished this year at all yet. Good call it turns out. I was shallow but not too weedy yet, and it turns out fish were moving into it. I found my first bass on a bed and 2 feet away was a crappie on its bed!

I tossed in a stickworm (shad-colored) and the bass hit it so fast I jumped from surprise instead of setting the hook. It put me out of position so my eventual catch-up hookset was off balance (I almost went swimming for the 2nd time that day... yikes, don't tell Angie) and all I did was pull the stickworm away torn all up.

I decided to leave the bass be for awhile because now it was on to me and being very finicky though sticking tight to the bed under an overhanging bush branch (which showed me how rust I still am this year! ).

I moved along the same side of the pocket and caught 2 really nice big male bass out of bushes on a green-pumpkin stickworm with some purple and copper flakes in it. They were spectacular bites and fights around all the bushes. One bass humped up the whole bush when it blew out to smash my stickworm.

Once I moved past that shore to the other parts of the pocket all I caught were a bunch of dinks and a bunch of grabs from spawning crappie and even a few perch that were just roaming around the pocket.

It had been awhile so I headed back to the bed I found earlier near the mouth of the pocket. I tossed the same gp stickworm past the bed and the bass immediately nailed it! I had to get it over one branch of the bush which I did and it turned out to be a much bigger male than it had looked like in the pretty shallow water!



My first sight-fished bedding bass of 2016. A good start I call it. I didn't see anymore obvious beds and it was time to go so I called it a day after this fish. I would have liked to stay a little while longer and fish some more for all the crappie and perch I was seeing but when it's time to go it's time to go!

One side note. I've been using the FG knot lately to connect fluorocarbon leaders to braided line and so far, despite some challenging fish around lots of cover, I haven't broke off one single time! Yet! I'm impressed with the knot. I've had problems in the past with my leaders breaking with double uni-knots in tough situations or when I set the hook too hard. So far though the FG knot is 100%. Tougher to tie but I'm thinking it may be worth it! I even used a real short fluorocarbon leader on a Bullet Craw Texas-rig the other day and didn't break that despite several 'Bassmaster' hooksets on nice bass! I'll keep you posted on this.