Maceday Lake first time ever 10-04-2016

[djkimmel]

Derek and I decided go give Maceday and Lotus Lakes a try for the first time ever on October 4th (2016). Never having been there we decided to just start fishing not too far out from the boat ramp since we had no good idea where to head yet.


We saw a few bass cruising and making minnows scared so Derek put on a Pop'R and I had on a walking lure - I think a Lucky Craft Sammy I've been using a lot the last couple years. Derek had a nice strike on the Pop'R pretty quick! Here he reaches for the bass!


It turned into a pretty nice inland lake smallmouth bass - something we've heard cruises the waters of Maceday Lake!


I switched to a popper quick and minutes later got popped by a small largemouth bass keeper not too far away from where Derek got his smallie. His smallie was on the flat inside some weed clumps while the largemouth bass was closer to the break along the edge of a weed clump!

Things got slow though we could see some bass cruising and once in a while a bass would bust some minnows not too far away.


I switched to spybaiting with a perch Spinbait 90 and caught a whopper! This is the 2nd time I've caught such a monster bass on the first cast with my spybaiting on inland lakes! Oh well, they can't all be big but you can see this tiny chunker bass will be a big boy some day!


It took awhile after that as we moved up the side of the lake before we got to the end of the lake where it narrows and shallows to go to Lotus Lake when Derek got a nice largemouth bass on a jig and skirted grub lure he likes. We couldn't fish the area well because a small boat angler was anchored right in the middle of it so we moved along.

I caught another small keeper bass and lost one, and I believe Derek got one too if I remember right. Mine came on Kustom Kicker Dock Monkey in green pumpkin with a green pumpkin Case Plastics Cash Craw trailer I was casting near scattered weed clumps near that end of the lake.

The challenging part came as we traveled back down the lake on the other side and along one stretch we found a whole bunch of singles and small groups of bass just cruising near the drop. Some of these bass were pretty sizable but we couldn't get them interested in anything we tried to throw! They would just move along and out of the way. I like seeing them and knowing they're there but it is more fun to catch them!

We decided to head over to Lotus Lake because we were told there are more bass in there though they tend to be smaller. We started fishing pads first because it was late morning and who doesn't like a good pad bite!?! Derek had one bass blow up on his frog and miss finally after about 40 minutes of pads. I saw the bass and it was a pretty good bass though not a whopper.

Couldn't get it to bite anything else and it drifted away into the pads. We fished the drop, seeing some weed clumps and even what appeared to be some standing trees. We fished, and we fished, and we fished. But ZERO bites for our effort. We fished all the way around the upper end of Lotus Lake without seeing another sign of bass life or getting a bite!

I finally couldn't take it anymore and asked if we could go back to Maceday where we saw plenty of bass. We had some time left so we headed back there. We didn't catch anymore bass but we saw some, had a few half-hearted bites and spooked plenty from around scattered weed clumps and near the break. We even saw a couple nice smallmouth bass come up and bust something on the surface a couple times.

We were idling across a big flat when I looked down and saw a HUGE smallmouth bass swimming in front of us that swam away into a weed clump. Looked like a carp it was so big. Just like I've always heard of from anglers who frequent the waters of Maceday and Lotus Lakes.

So we didn't catch a bunch but we caught a few, a couple nice ones and we saw plenty of quality bass to make us want to return for another crack at least at Maceday somewhere down the fishing road!