One last time for Lower Crooked Lake 05-30-2016

[djkimmel]

I returned to Lower Crooked Lake for one final spring visit on May 30th (2016). I started out finding more of those tiny pike that are all over the darn lake this spring.


This tiny pike hammered my lucky bream-colored Kustom Kicker Jigs Deposit Spin Titanium Revolution spinnerbait - one of their favorite lures. The pike are really after me this year!


Fishing was tougher as the lake was chock full of lily pads just about everywhere except the deepest water. Lots of algae too so I switched to an old PT spoon (a weedless spoon with a spinnerbait skirt) and was sashaying it through some isolated pad clumps in the narrows when this small keeper hammered it!


Being a slow day (hot too) and since I just like to catch fish period I took a break now and then to pick off some big bluegills like this one still on beds using a Carlisle slip bobber to adjust the depth so my Power maggot bait would hang just above their heads.


Plus I found some big Pumpkinseeds that were coming on beds later than the bluegills by a week or so. These aggressive little biters are fun to catch!


I switched to a lure that works great in the spring on most lakes - the Strike King KVD 1.5 in a green shad color and was burning it through lily pads and over green milfoil weed beds when this whopper hit! Oh well, the little guy like it anyway...


Persistence finally pays off with a largemouth bass over 4 pounds caught while pitching a Nemesis Baits Bullet Craw Texas-rigged into clumps of lily pads near a point covered with panfish beds. This bass fought hard ripping through the pads. Very fun!


I finished the day fishing more pumpkinseeds on beds because they were available and would bite the Carlisle slip bobber rig well. I found some more bass but they were post-spawn and very finicky. They would come right by the boat like they were checking me out but not bite anything I tried to throw at them. They were on a sandy point with milfoil and more bluegills on beds. They would swim from deeper water up onto the shallow point cruising around the beds and then vanish back into the open water.

I would have rather caught them but finding them is part of the puzzle to catching them. Next time I will figure out how to catch them. If you have any good finicky weedy lake post-spawn bass catching tips why don't you share them on this report? Thanks! I can always use more tips too!