Happy Days Are Back with pics

[keithdog]

It's been a rather tough bite the past few weeks. I would put in 7-8 hours casting and have only about 8-10 to show for it, and most would be rather small. But today it finally broke open in a big way. I landed 30 and lost about 10. Most were in the 14-18 inch range. A few were just under 14". I had a nice 4 or so pounder right up next to the boat when my line broke and she made off with my favorite popper. I had just been thinking I should retie that knot. DOHHH It was very calm most of the morning and fairly cloudy most of the day. The lake was like glass up untill around 10AM. Finally a small breeze started, but just enough to ripple the surface. Early on I took 4 off of the Strike King KVD buzz bait. Once the sun started to rise, the buzzbait bite came to a halt. About then, the bass started showing signs of chasing shad. So I switched tactics and started throwing a rattle trap which caught nothing. Neither did any crankbaits. I wanted to try those before switching to topwaters. Topwaters are the name of the game in this lake when the shad bite is on. Right away, the bass started assulting my Excaliber popper. They also tore into my black Lucky Craft popper, a new favorite of mine, and a Baby Torpedo. When they would miss the popper I would follow with the Strike King Caffein Shad, t rigged weightless which they would instantly SMACK. I also was getting a few on the Strike King Rage Tail Shad in areas where weeds were touching the surface. I forgot to include that lure in the photo of the lures I caught them on today. Sorry . Towards the end of the day, the popper bite started to slow, so I started throwing the spinnerbait and the Caffein Shad. Caught one on the spinnerbait, and several on the Cafffein Shad. Things were starting to slow down, and I was hungry and tired with sore hands, so I headed on back home with a few for dinner next week. Something about turning 50+ and you start getting aches and pains I never had when I was 30!!! I know some of the fellas might be turned off with my keeping 5 bass to eat. But these were the first I've kept all year to eat. Probably 95% of the bass I catch swim away happily after being released. But the wife is on vacation next week and made it clear she wanted grilled bass for dinner one night, haha.