Today was a first for me. Three bass 20 inches and better. Two of them hit that mark and my last bass of the evening was 20 3/4 inches. The first bass I caught was about 18 inches. Brian caught six, several of his nearly 20 inches. They whomp Chatterbaits just as if they intend to kill prey on the spot. Unlike last time on the lake, we caught a lot of the bass out in the open water. Oddly, we caught no pickerel, though twice pickerel followed my Chatterbait to the boat.
Wind was heavy, so we used an anchor. Otherwise, we did work our way towards the back of the lake, but got about halfway there. I've paddled beyond the island many times, though I've never got all the way into the back, as Brian once told me he's done. Today, we got in between the island and shore where it was calm. We've tried this spot many times, usually getting skunked, although once I caught an 18-incher and another time, my son caught a 25-inch pickerel.
Today it seemed we'd get skunked, since it was taking a while before anything happened. When I felt weight on the line tied to an unweighted Chomper's worm, I was uncertain at first if it was weeds or a bass, but I set the hook into my second 20-incher. I've spent years perfecting my casting with unweighted worms, and though I was a little rusty today, I still managed to get the worm right on target frequently. It's important to lay it down gently so it sort of slips into the water and right next to submerged brush. You don't want it actually in the stuff so it doesn't sink to bottom, but you can knock wood, so long as that worm does drop on down. It's the same when working weeds, but it's always testy. Many casts result in weeds blocking that passage to the bottom, so a little pull or two might be all you need until you make a better cast that results in the worm dropping slowly all the way down.
Brian soon caught a bass about the same length on a Chatterbait, and then I hooked another big bass on the same worm, the one that nearly measured 21 inches, a very hard-fighting fish. The drag was squealing, but I had forced the fish away from the sticks and branches with some diameter to them. Brian caught yet another bass nearly 20 inches that had peculiar black spots and a very badly damaged caudal fin.
Altogether, we might have fished three hours, catching 10 and losing only a couple, though a few hits were missed. "These bass are especially acrobatic," Brian said. Each one of them leapt at least once, and to see a bass over 20 inches go airborne is something I would've caught on my GoPro, but memory will just have to serve instead.
Maybe there'll be another time when I have the thing on my head and get the camera rolling in time.
