I haven’t posted about my fishing trips lately. With all the flooding, Cedar Creek has become a muddy mess, and even Lake Athens has gotten tough. I hadn’t even fished Cedar Creek since the start of all this high water until Wednesday last week, when I launched at mid lake and fished for about three hours. And just like the day before at Lake Athens, thunderstorms quickly built up and ran me off the lake before I’d caught much. I fished at Cedar Creek again this Tuesday, this time on the lower lake, and even there, the water looked terrible. The clearest water I found was at the dam, and even there, water visibility was only about two feet. Bobbi had told me that morning that she’d like to cook fresh crappie for dinner, so I spent more time than I usually would on such a tough bite, trying to get a few for dinner. I ended up catching 4 bass, 4 crappie, and one channel cat. The crappie weren’t all that big, but 4 of them were enough for dinner, so Bobbi cooked fresh crappie.
I went back to Lake Athens yesterday, even though it’s gotten very crowded since June arrived, and has been tough for me. Once again, the parking lot was overflowing, and 10 or so vehicles and boat trailers were parked on the grass. On a Thursday! That’s busier than many lakes are on a summer weekend. There were pontoon boats and big play boats pulling inner tubes everywhere, more of that traffic than even fishing boats, and there were quite a few fishing boats. But I managed to catch a few fish anyway, 8 bass and 1 crappie. And just before 3:00 in the afternoon, right before I was going to leave and head home, with boats and tubers flying by everywhere, I caught a five pounder. Those tend to be a lot more scarce this time of year than they are in the spring and fall, and here I was catching one with all the craziness going on around me. It’s a reminder that sometimes all that bothers we fishermen more than it does the fish. I don’t like being in the middle of all that very much when I fish, but as long as Cedar Creek remains such a muddy mess, I’m thinking I’ll just keep going to Lake Athens. It’s above normal lake level too, and not as clear as it usually is, but better suits the finesse fishing I like to do than Cedar Creek does right now.
One of the most interesting parts of my changing to newer finesse bass fishing techniques, Ned rigs and jig-and-minnow rigs, has been the bait and jig experimentation I’ve done. In the late fall at Cedar Creek, the crawfish-looking finesse TRD’s were the best baits, but since then, and especially at Lake Athens, with all its grass beds, the jig-and-minnow baits have been the best. At one point, I posted thoughts that I needed bigger jig-and-minnow baits at Lake Athens, but since then, the opposite has been true. My best bait has been the 4″ Finesse ShadZ, on a 1/16 oz worm nose jig. This bait is a 4″ shad or minnow looking bait, but 2″ of the 4″ is a long tiny round pin tail. The bait’s profile looks much smaller than most 4″ baits. I’ve been surprised at how many crappie I’ve caught on it. But it catches big bass too. I’ve caught two 5 pounders at Lake Athens since I started fishing it last month, and one of them has been on this little Finesse ShadZ. I’m finding myself fishing this bait more and more, and finding new things to try with it. More on that later.
Yesterday’s best bass of the day, a 5.05 pounder.
