1st bass fishing trip ever to Lake Orion 6-6-2017

[djkimmel]

When Derek asked me for fishing suggestions for this week I almost immediately thought of Lake Orion! I've been there twice for youth fishing events, and got to fish a little each time, mostly for panfish, but I had seen a lot of bass and even caught a nice one once on a little panfish rig! I've always heard many good things about the lake though the weed situation the last few seasons sounds troubling.

We found if we came in from the north it really wasn't much farther to Lake Orion than other lakes we've fished so Derek agreed to give it a try. The one concern - once again forecasts were for howling winds which always makes sightfishing difficult and may limit what we can do and where we do it. Granted, sometimes later in the season a windy day gets the bass biting good in places, but frankly, I'm already SICK of wind this year!!

We couldn't get there really early but when we did get there around mid-morning there was only 1 other boat trailer at the ramp. Probably because of the howling wind and being a weekday, we only saw 2 or 3 other boats all day for a short time. We almost had the lake to ourselves! That part can be good!!

Having never bass fished here before I suggested we try starting along a long point not too far from the ramp because while panfishing there about this same time of the year at the kid's events some years ago I had seen lots of roaming bass along here. We worked our way down that point and first thing we noticed is the water seemed much darker. We couldn't hardly see anything. We went all the way along there without a bite.

We moved through one of those shallow, narrows areas and I had a 12-13 incher chase my jerkbait to the boat. It wanted to hit it seemed but wouldn't actually commit to anything. Derek has another small one eat his topwater popper. We saw a number of smaller bass all over this area and some of them were aggressive but we only saw one maybe keeper that followed a lure but didn't hit. This kind of thing happened several times early.

We went down a shoreline without a lot of cover in the back half of the lake. We saw some small bass. Had a couple bites but nothing decent. We didn't see any nice ones either. I asked Derek to turn at the bridge to go back into the deeper half of the lake so we did.

Derek had a nice bass follow his popper all the way to the boat but not hit. We just a little ways from the bridge. The bass swam away. It was a decent one. We moved ahead a little and I saw a nice bass swim around behind the boat and stop behind a shallow weed clump near the bridge. I asked Derek if it looked like the same bass and he said it did. I tossed my wacky rigged X-worm at it even though it was maybe 10 feet from the boat and could see us as well as we could see it. We were stuck between the bridge and the weed clump this bass seemed to want to stay by. To my surprise the bass made 2 or 3 swipes at my X-worm but didn't actually take much of it into its mouth.


I said, I'm going to catch this bass!! Derek was trolling into the bridge opening when I picked up a weedless, weightless-rigged regular white fluke on an ultralight rig. I tossed it back blindly towards the weed clump. I thought I made it past the back end where the bass had been sitting. I twitched it a couple times and then let it flutter down. Thought I saw the line move and set the hook - whap!! Bass no!! The darn bass ate it!! It was a pretty nice bass too. I almost always see bass around bridges but sometimes they don't bite. But sometimes they do...

It was a start anyways... we fished the pocket on the other side of the bridge. Caught a few small bass though some of that area looked promising.


Out at the actual end of the point with the wind howling across the weeds on it Derek hooked a decent bass on a shallow crankbait (which turned out to be a BIG clue!!). We had another hit there and caught a pike - big surprise. We got blown off the spot and by the time we made it back to the point we couldn't get another bite.

We followed this up by fishing a wind-blown shallow weed edge, the edge of a weedy flat drop and another good looking point but only caught another dink or two, and I think we caught another pike... another no surprise.

We went across the lake to fish an underwater point and the weedline along there. The wind was pushing us hard down that edge. I thought we'd catch some but the only bite we had was I was throwing a big Bullet Craw on a Carolina rig to fish out a little deeper. We got blown in shallower and I tossed the ball and chain into shallower water and something grabbed it and took off towards deep water. I set the hook almost straight up and hooked a really nice bass. But somehow, the darn thing pulled off...?? Another lost bass!?! sheesh!!

We fished some great spots including a big weedy point that had some great looking holes and turns. Another pike was hooked and lost, and an almost keeper bass from a killer looking inside turn but that was it. Moving down the more protected shore we saw some panfish, some panfish beds in little patches and caught a few dinks. We were fishing from near shore out to 9, 10, 11 feet. Not much happening.

I was getting bored, and also tired of trying to fish anything sensitive with all this howling wind so I switched to my green gizzard shad KVD 2.5 square bill... and never looked back the rest of our fishing time!!!

We got down near the end of this stretch of shoreline and I was tossing the bigger squarebill through weeds not too deep on the point leading into some protected pockets - I started getting whacked!!


At first it was several smaller bass, but turning towards the inside part of the point I peeled a small nice keeper from a weed clump on the point! Throwing back behind the point I whacked another small keeper!! I think Derek was switching between a couple different crankbaits and a spinnerbait still. There was a small tree in the water. He threw a spinnerbait over it. I followed behind him with the Strike King squarebill and another small keeper peeled off the end and ate the crank!!! I love it when it get on a roll with a power bait!!

Every time we would get around similar weeds along a moderate flat or point I would pick up 2, 3, 4 more bass on the crank just fishing it erratically through the weed tops or edges. Derek switched to a different smaller square bill at times but it just wasn't working as good. The only drawback is the pike were after me again too!!! Oh well, have to take the good with the bass...

Several times Derek would throw through a spot with his squarebill or a spinnerbait, and I would follow up by throwing through the same area and they'd eat my KVD 2.5!! I even had several bass hit it and not hook up only to eat it again the next cast!!


We tried a little deeper on weed edges some more too but pretty much the whole I just decided to stick with the big squarebill. I would just lower my rod tip to get it further down in deeper weeds. We were going along a deeper weedline on a steeper shore when this nice bass slammed my crankbait near the visible outside weed edge!! Deeper but I could still see it come up and eat the lure!! Cool!!!

We were getting short on time - we didn't really have a long day to fish this day - so I suggested we go into a big shallow bay to see if they bedded in there and maybe some were still nearby and we could get an idea about the lake's bass population. There was a shallow sand bar out from the bay and I popped another keeper off of that after Derek had already fished through there. My bass had a nice keeper follower with it too but the wind pushed us so fast that we lost track of it and just moved in to the bay instead.

There was almost no standing cover in the bay. Shallow carpet of moss/sand grass/starry stonewort and docks. That was about it. I'm not real crazy about fishing docks much yet this year. I'm rusty and with the howling wind I didn't want to spend the time we had left dealing with all that. We fished down the shore but weren't seeing much. It was shallow enough through most of it we could probably see any bass.

There were some more scattered patches of panfish beds. We actually found that unexpected bunch of rocks out from shore and there was a nice bass sitting by them over what appeared to be two bass beds. We didn't expect something like that in there and spooked it. We snuck back up later but on the way out but didn't catch anything.


I decided this looked like the kind of bay where roaming bass would be more out in the middle of the bay so I started casting my square bill out away from shore and maybe on the 5th or 6th cast this really nice bass ate it!! Minutes later I had another good-feeling bass on but lost it. I think I was too excited and fishing a little hyper knowing we were running out of time...!!

We checked part of the bay out real fast seeing more patches of panfish beds, a few probably old bass beds and I had another nice bass hit at my crank but miss before we were out of time and had to head in. I definitely want to go back. We didn't figure much out but obviously the lake has lots of fish in it, and there's quite a bit of the lake we didn't even look at yet. Maybe later this summer? We'll see. But I sure had a great time just flinging the squarebill this day!!