I decided to head out to Anderson and put some of the ideas found in "In pursuit of giant bass" by Bill Murphy to test -- mainly structure fishing. Although I didn't have the anchor issue solved just yet, I decided to concetrate on structure fishing 1 or 2 locations thoroughly with little or no trolling motor action.

After launching at 5:00 I headed for the south end to a primary point that I have never fished before, but graphed on Tues when I took the boat out for a test drive after performing some maintenance (didn't fish on Tues).

I found a lot of bait fish on the depth finder and fish holding tight to the structure (primary and secondary points ambushing bait). The wind was blowing fairly heavily towards the shore so I can only assume that the current was pulling bait off away from the shore towards some of the points in deeper water (about 15-20 feet). I threw a deep diving crank bait in a char/blue pattern to simulate the bait fish color (water was stained).

I found that the bait fish were moving from left to right (facing the south shore) along with the under current over the points and the bass were holding to the cover facing that direction. Basically if I fished the crank bait in the direction the bass were facing I'd pickup a fish, if I fished the opposite direction I wouldn't get hit.

After picking up 4 and missing 1 I moved down the shore to a second point I've never fished before in about 20-30 feet of water and started searching for bigger fish holding to cover. I found several big fish on the depth finder at about 17-20 feet down off the points in 20-25 ft of water. Moved shallower to 10-17 feet of water and found fish in the same location, but tighter to the ledge and much smaller. On the second point I picked up 3 more and missed 1 fishing the exact same pattern.

Left the water about 7:30pm and ran into a buddy of mine from Gilroy Bassmasters - Bob Nathan. He caught 3 missed 3 but can't remember what he said he was throwing.

Totals: 2.5 hours fishing, caught 7, missed 2, biggest fish was 1.8lbs (small fish day)

Bait: deep diving crank bait in a char/blue pattern to resemble the shiners/bait fish. I threw a number of other baits/colors but this is the only thing that triggered a strike.


Predictions:
This weekend we should see a lot of numbers coming from Anderson, but we may not see size. The bait fish are swimming around in large numbers and the post-spawn bass were feeding like crazy. There was some top water action, however these were definately smaller fish following a small fish pattern of chasing bait down.

If I can get out on the water this weekend I'm going to tie on a jumbo minnow/shiner swimbait by Storm in deep water off the points (15-30 feet). Hopefully the weather will stay fairly stable and the bite should continue through the weekend. This lake is definately in a post-spawn feeding frenzy.

Tight lines.

Vince
vince@theblankslate.com