Summer in Texas has arrived. Afternoon temps are in the mid 90’s. Lake water temps are in the mid 80’s. Cloudy or rainy days are fewer; the sun reigns. Fishing tends to get tough for me when summer sets in, but so far, I’ve still been catching fish, at least at Cedar Creek.
On Tuesday of this week, I fished mid-lake. I hadn’t fished mid-lake lately, and wondered how tough it might be, with this hot weather. Sure enough, it was a bit tough. I caught nine bass and two catfish. Best bass of the day weighed 3.52 pounds, and several others were nice chunky bass. Tough, but a good enough fishing day that I won’t complain about the fishing on that day.
Thursday, I fished the lower lake, and had a really nice day, catching seventeen bass, three crappie, one drum, and one flathead catfish. That’s in spite of the lake being very busy, with it being just two days before the 4th of July. All fish both days were caught on Ned rigs. I went almost an hour first thing in the morning on Thursday without catching a fish, so thought the really tough fishing might have arrived, but when I switched to a new jig for the Ned rig, the fish bit it well and I had a blast, catching fish. Best bass weighed 3.78 pounds.
I’ve posted about the jig I was using Thursday, before. It’s called a hover jig. It’s a very different jig. It’s weight is further back from the hook eye than most jigs, and when rigged, it is fully enclosed in the bait. Rather than inserting the hook into the front of the bait, you insert it into the top of the bait, 1/8 to 1/4 of an inch back from the front of the bait, then thread the bait onto it. That, plus the way the jig is made, put the weight much further back in the bait than with other jig heads, and that completely changes the action of the bait. If you twitch the bait on a slack line, it will jump sideways. As the bait sinks, rather than sinking straight down, it glides in a large spiral as it sinks. Those two properties make it a great rig for catching fish. I’ve been tinkering with different hover jigs for a bit now, but just now seem to have settled in on which one I like best, and how to best retrieve it. I’m going to be fishing these jigs a lot more in coming days.
Below is a four inch Big Trd bait cut down to three inches, and rigged with a 1/16 oz hover jig. Below that in the photo is the hover jig by itself.
Tuesday’s best bass, 3.52 pounds.
And Thursday’s nicest, at 3.78 pounds.
