22 Pound Limit at Lake Ovid!

[djkimmel]

Derek and I took our almost weekly Thursday bass fishing trip for the 1st time this year to Lake Ovid (Thursday, July 30, 2015). I never got out there last year and the lake has seemed to be fishing down for a few seasons though I hadn't hit it enough to really be called a good fishing review of the Sleepy Hollow State Park bass population.

I felt good about the day because a full moon was coming - I had seen it the night before so I always feel like the odds for bigger bass are up during that time. Boy! The day started out about as good as it can start!!


Early morning waiting for Derek to arrive at the Lake Ovid boat ramp.

We were both throwing topwater on the first spot because it was fairly early in the morning. I wasn't sure what the strong wind would do but it can sometimes position feeding bass in advantageous spots so it didn't dampen my spirits though it made boat positioning a little more challenging.

It wasn't long before we saw a good bass rip some gills in a hole in the very, very thick weeds - mostly matted milfoil with some native coontail mixed in here and there. I threw a frog near it and Derek threw a spoon but no go. We really weren't seeing the surface activity all over the lake that I expected based on what has been happening at other lakes.

So I switched up for a few minutes to a Nemesis Baits Bullet Craw (black blue) I had Texas-rigged and loosely pegged with a 1/4 oz Tungsten bullet sinker. I had the rig on 14 lbs test Fluorocarbon on a Grandt C09 casting rod I use for moderate level pitching.

I wasn't quite ready to pitch right into the salad yet because it was early and I expected some bass to be on the outside of the weeds. We were about 40-50 feet from where we had seen the bigger bass blow up earlier when I pitched to a small outside weed point with a little inside turn hole. My lure didn't feel right so I set the hook hard.

TWANG!! The fight was on! A big bass boiled up out of the water as I fought it towards the boat and away from the weeds. What a start!


1st bass of the morning on Lake Ovid and it's a HAWG!

I looked at Derek and said it didn't matter how the rest of the day went, Dan was happy, happy, happy! It put up a great short line fight but as you can see I landed it and after a quick couple pictures let it go to get even BIGGER!

Derek says, 'what is that lure called again and who makes it?'

I told him and went back to pitchin'!

A few minutes later Derek got on the board with a solid largemouth bass that ate his weedless spoon out of a small hole right up in the salad! The bass buried the lure into about 30 pounds of milfoil. I was running the trolling motor so I turned into the salad and we went in to get the nice largemouth bass.


Nice salad bass that ate Derek's weedless spoon out of a dark hole in the weeds!

Felt good to have both of us on the board. We couldn't buy another bite though we tried frogs, the spoon and more pitching. We even saw a nice bass hump up the middle of a less matted weed bed but we couldn't get it to hit and we weren't quite ready yet to get right into the weeds to do some mat busting.

We moved over to a big weed point I don't normally fish but it was nearby and we decided to not always do the same things we always did in the past. Around the point we got no bites but when we got back to the downwind side of the weeds closest to shore I had another funny feeling on my black and blue Bullet Craw. Set the hook because my primitive brain said I should and another TWANG!

Another hawg burns out from the weed edge (~8-10 fow) and then half plows out of the water. Another HOG!! Yes! I fight it until I can get my thumb on it's lower jaw and hoist it into the boat!


A 'mini' Toad easily over 4 pounds! I'm loving the bullet craw this morning! Derek says, 'if you pop another bass on one of those I'm going to have to ask you for one to borrow!'

A few minutes later I lose a nice feeling bass, catch a small one and then catch a small keeper near an old house foundation (Lake Ovid is ~30 year old lowland reservoir that flooded some old farms). That's it says Derek, give me one of those. Since he takes me fishing a lot I gladly busted another black blue Bullet Craw out but I told him to baby them because I'm running out with only 2 colors left.


Moments later Derek set the hook into a solid keeper - his 1st ever Bullet Craw bass!

We fished a ditch that was pretty much no longer a ditch - now choked with weeds. We fished a  weedline and another point and got no bites though it looked all like it could produce but I was starting to think we were doing best on the downwind side of the weedlines because that seemed to be the pattern.

The next spot, a small hump near more foundations seemed to prove that as we whacked 3 bass quickly off the downwind side! Two near the tip and one near the middle.


To try things out and to make sure we could still get bit if our black blue ran out I switched to my other color - a non-standard dark watermelon with gold flake and this solid 3+ largemouth bass nailed it quickly along with one more off the hump.

I had it rigged with a 3/8 oz Tungsten bullet sinker also loosely pegged on light braid so I could feel the based of the weeds better. I got one bass to bite by shaking the Bullet Craw out of the weeds to the lip of the break!


Derek popped a bigger bass of about 4 pounds on his Bullet Craw deciding that he really, really liked them!

All of these bass came on the downwind side. We did catch one small bass from the upwind side but small bass can be 'liars.' So we would fish the upwind side too but we spent more time more carefully fishing downwind sides.

I did catch a small bass that creamed a deep-diving crankbait on a surprisingly bare hump that isn't real deep but couldn't get any quality bites from it with that or any other lure.

We were fishing the side of a big point and again on the downwind side of the weeds near a pocket in the weeds when Derek had a huge bass inhale his weedless spoon a short ways into the weeds where there were more openings.


Derek did a good job keeping it from burying in the milfoil and lipped a HAWG on a red and white weedless spoon!


Derek with a 5 pound weedless spoon bass about the size of my first bass of the day!

We kept fishing the weedline and the pocket for a little bit but could not get anymore bites even though we saw signs of a fish or two feeding.

We went out towards to beach to fish the big hump to finish the day since we didn't have much time left. I set the hook on the bullet craw feeling that 'snagged' feeling again but this time I lost the big bass before I could get it coming up! DARNIT! Felt like another toad!


A few minutes later, again on the downwind side of the weeds I caught my last good bass on the black and bullet craw before it was time to go for the day.

Another 3-pounder in the boat on a day when 3's were small! I missed one more bite before we had to go. It felt like a smaller bass but you hate to miss anything when so many of the bite have been BIG!

I calculated our 5 biggest bass would have been close to 22 pounds! Not a shabby day of inland summer bass fishing at all, and my biggest bass and catch of the year though the prespawn cold water day at Ponemah early this year was close.

Here's the 2 Nemesis Baits Bullet Craws we used to catch most of our big bass.


If you don't have any you might want to get you some!

[bigjc]

Great play by play and great photos!  Nice work!

[djkimmel]

Thank you! It was fun, fun!