Light bite? What gives?
I had a chance to to fish for about 3 hours Saturday before a previous engagement so I put in at a local lake at about 9:30 am. The week before it had been high 80's with afternoon thunderstorms but today was about 70 deg, overcast (cloudy with brief sun breaking), water temp was 76 at the surface with pop-up showers developing around me (but not raining on me), the water was pretty clear for around here (4 foot visibility?) and the cloud cover cleared around 1 ish (so passing pressure system).
All fish seem to be holding at the points....I'm assuming post spawn. I was marking crappie stacked up at about 7 feet in 9 FOW on weeds/structure and the bass seemed to be holding just past them in the weeds, right along the bottom at 10 FOW or so.
Thing is, I was getting bites every other cast but everything was SOOO light that I had a problem hooking up. I tried changing lures, changing colors and changing presentation and the bite seemed to mainly be on Chartruese marabou jigs (especially tipped with meal worm) and a green pumpkin curly tail grub on a jighead. I hooked up with one little 14" smallie with the grub.
I tried setting the hook early, I tried counting to 3....I tried light set and hard sets....
Is it the fish just coming off spawn? I was marking some larger fish but maybe only the small (bait stealers) were eating? Could it be the temp change or even just the middle of the moon cycle?
The one time that the bite "picked up" was the first storm front that passed nearby and for that 15 minutes I SWEAR the bite got harder and that is when I boated the smallie.....Other fishermen said they weren't having any luck and the two I did see hook up, both lost 'em before they got 'em in.
Whattaya think?
Learn to not run from your problems....except when your problems are giant boars.