switching from panfish to bass

[ChrisCarter]

I think its that time of the year. My crappie intake has dropped substantially from the shore since early June. Bluegill have been less and less, unless i go to Offutt base lake and catch 30 - 40 three to five inchers. Pft. I haven't been very aggressive on the bass end of things this year. But it seems when im not catching panfish, im catching bass and usually missing them because of the small hooks and not being able to get a good hookset.

Temps have finally cooled enough for me to feel comfortable heading back out to the water, but i didn't want to go to Offutt Lake just yet, i wanted some quality bluegill and crappie to test out the new filet knife i got from Rapala. One hour of trying lead to nothing, not even nibbles on the worms. Heard a lot of splashing close to the bank where the heavy weeds were at and knew right away it had to be bass. Tried another location about 50 feet away and still didn't get anything. Then for giggles, i stuck a crankbait on, the slim minnow one, not the chunky shad one. Didn't have any luck with that, so i switched to a black and orange chunky shad one. Bout this time two boats came over my way, one boat was slowly trolling along the shore around the lake, two guys using plastics jigs for bass just jerking it back to the boat, they didn't seem to have much luck, but the second boat, actually came rather quickly from the north end of the lake where the dam was to talk to the guys in the first boat, said something about catching a big one near the dam, then they proceeded to pulling within 3 feet of the shore and just kind of look at me while i waiting for them to move out of my cast area. The first boat was gracious enough to go around, but still within range of my casting so i had to temper it down some until they completely pulled away. It was after they both were out of the area, i caught my only catch. 14" or 15" largemouth bass on the crankbait. I had shot a video of me putting him back into the water, but i accidentally deleted it. Why didn't i just take a picture?

As the sun came out more and more behind the clouds, the bite slowly dropped off, i heard less splashing from the heavy weeds and i realized the bass must've moved on. If only i had started using the crankbaits and buzzbaits earlier when i was out here, i might've walked away knowing i caught more than one bass. He had to be hungry, belly looked empty and nearly swallowed the crankbait, took me five minutes to get it out of his mouth without killing him.

But at any rate, I'll probably do more bass fishing for now than crappie and bluegill fishing at least until the weather starts to cool down for the fall.

[Eager Beaver]

Hey Chris, glad to hear that you are back at it again. I would go to a little heavier line and would put a bobber on about a foot above the hook and toss it into the weeds and see what happens. You might be surprised with what you come up with. Good luck and stay cool. EB

[ChrisCarter]

Yea, i can finally get up at 6am and its not already 80 degrees.