Lower Crooked Lake After the Snow

[djkimmel]

My April 5th trip to the lake was a lot different than my previous trip. It decided to snow and get real cold again. And the bass apparently reacted more than I did by just putting on a few extra layers.

I decided to try different parts of the lake because I expected the shallow bite to be off a bit (it was). I started in a deeper pocket but was surprised to see thicker weeds than I expected. To make a long day shorter, I saw one bass swimming lazily along that seemed partially spooked to see me. I did see a crane on a nest which was nice, and a Caspian Tern flying over the lake, which was a surprise.



I moved to a deeper point and fished it from the top to the bottom tapering out into deeper weeds. Out in barely visible bottom in scattered weeds I saw a nice bass slowly swimming away from me along the bottom. That was my only sign of fish life.

I fished another point with a suspending jerkbait from way out past where I could see bottom in towards shore. A couple hundred feet off shore I caught this 1 little dink on the jerkbait around some stringy weeds. That the only bite I could buy. The cold breeze was blowing me along so being in a rowboat I'm not sure if I stayed on the same exact spot or not. I didn't have any marker buoys with me.



After this I made a cast with a KVD 2.5 towards a laydown tree along the shore on the point and had a moderately interested bass follow it out from the tree but not hit. I thought that meant things would pick up! Yeah!

Boy! Was I wrong about that...

I worked my way around more laydowns, some offshore wood and out into deeper weeds without any action at all, even after a mystery fish jumped out of the water - unexpected on a day like this one.

So I broke down and headed towards the shallow pocket that produced big bites a few days ago. I might as well have been casting in the wet spot in my back yard for all the good it did me. I tried that pocket and finally in the corner saw a couple nice bass around 2 pounds or so just swimming around lazily absolutely ignoring everything I was trying including dead-sticking a stickworm - something that strains my patience.

I went into a bay nearby and saw no bass at all out in the middle or along the shoreline. I finally broke down and got out my Whip'R rod and Carlisle slip bobber to catch something! That worked a little. I was casting in the middle of the bay around scattered weeds to catch a few gills like this one. The slightly bigger bluegills were out in the middle along with a few crappie, which I didn't attract to my Gulp! bait I carry around for these scenarios.



I kept searching shallow pockets and around points throughout the rest of the day hoping for some movement but it was just too cold a drop to move any bass without a lot of bright sun. It was good to be on the water but 1 dink bass and a few bluegills was all I could manage. I was the only person on the lake. No surprise there.