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You Have to Fish This Lake- Part 3

After Thursday's clouds and rain, swim baits caught bass Friday prior to the next storm.

Rising just after daylight on day three, our first thought was to check The Weather Channel before heading to the lake to see if our rain suits would get another workout today.

Typical of spring in Illinois, the weather map showed red and blue lines all over the Midwest with warm and cold fronts colliding to create storms. We headed for the lake hoping to get at least half a day of fishing in before storms run us off the lake.

The air temperature was 65 degrees at 9:30 with sunny skies. The water temperature at the ramp was 63 degrees.

The wind had increased just enough and changed directions to come from the north that we abandoned our crappie fishing after a short, futile effort.

The rain had stopped and the cloud cover had left, as least temporarily. We decided to start fishing spinnerbaits in the areas where we caught fish the previous day. We concentrated on flat, bare banks in pockets and the ends of coves in the cold arm.

Of course, our hopes were for a repeat of Thursday, but nature has a way of ensuring that one great day of fishing is followed by enough difficulty in getting bites to keep fishermen humble.

Tony added to the day's catch with this four pound bass who couldn't resist his Chompers twin-tail grub.

Predictably, the spinnerbaits didn't get us any fish. We tried a variety of crankbaits, topwaters, and bottom-bumping plastics and jigs with no success.

Running out of ideas, I decided to try something that had been featured in several InFisherman television shows during the winter- a swim bait. They had featured this bait in segments for muskies, stripers, and bass, emphasizing that it was an under-fished bait.

I had rigged several 3 1/2-inch, white, paddle-tail swim baits on 9/16 oz. jig heads with extra long hook shafts prior to the trip.

No sooner was the bait wet than fish were attacking it. Tony tied on a similar rig and also started catching fish. He used a 3-inch Chompers salt and pepper twin-tail grub on a 3/8-ounce jig head.

Evidently, the bass didn't want any flashing blades, rattling crankbaits, or slow-moving bottom baits. However, at least some of them responded to a simple piece of plastic with an action tail swimmed through the water.

At 3 p.m. the skies darkened and the wind howled to more than 30 mph. Lightening strikes and pouring rain ran us off the lake for an hour. At 4:00 the sun came out bright and the air became absolutely calm so we went back out for an hour. The swim bait bite was over and we called it a day.

Chompers salt and pepper twin-tail grub and a 3 1/2-inch white, paddle tail swim bait rigged on jig heads caught our bass.

We caught 18 bass for the day on our two swim baits. Four of the fish were at least 18-inches long, including the largest, a 19-inch, 4 pound 6 ounce fish. In three days of fishing we had used lizards, spinnerbaits, and swim baits to catch the majority of bass. We were anxious to see what we would have to resort to tomorrow.

Coming Soon- Part 4- The cold front makes air temperatures dive and the wind howl, but one bait surprises us and salvages the day.