1st time, maybe the last? Cloverdale and Wilkinson Lakes 9-21-2017

[djkimmel]

Derek and I are always looking for some bass fishing adventure which includes trying many new lakes as we come up with ideas and maybe some tips now and then... After asking about several ramps at several lakes I've never fished in Barry County we got a tip about a ramp being usable by bass boats at a lake that is supposed to be a great frog lake. That sounded good enough to us so we decided to go with it completely blind other than the available lake maps.

We drove over to the township ramp off of M-43 on Cloverdale Lake and launched into a lake completely surrounded with tons of mixed weeds topped out and scattered lily pads. There's also a long shallow channel that leads to another lake to the south - Wilkinson Lake.

Because the tip said so, I picked up the frog and got a strike on my very first cast!! We could both see that it was a dink with more gumption than mouth to take down a big frog but it was something to get us thinking we might have chosen wisely!!

Alas, this will be a shorter fishing report because, as my old fishing partner Bigfish Chipchase used to always tell me... little fish are liars!! And this strike was not a harbinger of things to come but just an apparent fluke because we couldn't come up with anything consistent on this day.

Even when we found some big schools of bait outside the shallow, thick weeds we were not able to get a bunch of strikes, or even a few, or one in the area...

There were a number of places where weeds tapered out deeper into weed fingers and weed points that should have gotten us into some bass-whacking action, but we couldn't make it happen! We also went shallow inside the thick weeds where there were some real nice open water holes with cover variety to try, but that didn't cause anything to happen either...


Eventually, in a really nice looking boat path with varied weeds, clumps and cover variety I managed to have two tiny bass jump all over the big Whopper Plopper 110 right where you'd think the better bass would choose to stalk bait!! Catching tiny bass in such key spots didn't raise my expectations very much either. I was actually casting it way back into openings behind various weed clumps knowing I'd snag weeds before getting it back if I didn't get struck!

Derek caught a few dinks too on worms and the Bullet Craw. Mostly pitching it outside the shallow weed walls into deeper weeds tailing out into deeper water.

We decided we needed a definite change of scenery so we took the long idle through the narrow, shallow channel back to Wilkinson Lake. It looked a little better to me - the weeds were topped out quite a solid in the shallows though still very weedy and topped out in places. The weeds were varied - some milfoil and lots of coontail too (in both lakes, which you don't see much of anymore in Southern Michigan).

The graph showed what looked like lots of bait in a few places, mostly where you'd expect to find them but we still couldn't seem to figure out any consistent bite despite trying quite a few approaches from shallow to out to about 22-24 feet - it was a quick, steep drop in most places.


Finally, near the back end of the lake along a subtle inside turn on a subtle point where there was a little more of a deeper flat we would be shortly coming up on, I was slowing dragging a drop shot fluke bait down in ~16-18 fow of water when I felt a bite. I set the hook and was very pleasantly surprised to feel solid weight on the end of my line. The really nice bass then shot up straight out of deep water and performed several really nice cartwheeling jumps!! Good thing it was no tournament or I might have felt even more urgent anxiety about finally getting a keeper bass in the boat!!! Though as you can see I did land it even though it fought very hard on the light spinning rod I was using!! It seems like the inland largemouth bass are generally fighting much harder this season on many lakes than in recent seasons?!?

I felt a lot better now about our so far half a day effort to figure something out! This seemed like a perfect spot to find a school of feeding bass but despite our determined effort neither of us could hook another bass in the area. The upcoming deeper flat had swarms of bait on it and we actually saw what looked like a keeper bass smash something up in the shallow pads too!

We fished like mad banshees but couldn't hook and land anything!! I had the probable bass we saw in the pads nail my frog at least 3 times without hooking anything but water!! It appeared to follow my frog a couple more times even... There was more activity here too and several more times it appeared that something of decent size stalked my various frogs I tried up shallow but nothing actually happened.

It was beautiful water out from the shallow, thick stuff but we couldn't get anything to bite from the deeper, thick weeds, or in the really nice open holes throughout!

We finally moved on because we just couldn't make it happen even though conditions seemed perfect for nice bass... we crossed a shallow channel to a backwater area and I was reeling in my topwater frog quickly over almost topped-out milfoil when what appeared to be a nice bass came out of nowhere and slashed at my frog!! We both completely missed each other, and even though it was maybe 10 feet from the boat we never got a look at the fish. Couldn't get another bite in the area no matter what we tried either - the fish just vanished...?!?

We had about an hour left so we fished another stretch of the lake with great edges, shallower but nice looking pad patches and a variety of weeds. We were seeing bait again too but nothing was happening...??

We got to a pretty big, long point jutting out a ways into the lake when Derek finally hooked a decent keeper! I think it was on a Texas-rigged 7 inch worm? Can't remember now... he was asking about getting a picture when I set my hook on the drop shot again into a maybe barely squeaker keeper only 15-20 feet from where he hooked his bass. It took a couple minutes for me to land my bass on the light rig so he had already thrown his keeper back and was trying to get another quick bite on what might be finally a hot school of bass!?!

It appeared there was bait there and more bass showing on the graph but we couldn't buy another bite. We went through the side of the point, and then back through it from the other direction with a variety of lures without getting another decent bite.

One interesting thing did happen though - way, way out off the same point maybe a third of the way across the long, narrow lake some decent looking bass started busting minnows - must have been out over pretty deep water. I wanted to immediately chase after them but Derek said that it was unfortunately about time to go so rather than chase after bass that might have moved anywhere by the time we get out to them, I continued down the same point and good-looking weedline towards another really nice looking point thinking there had to be more bass along such prime real estate!!

It looked perfect but I couldn't buy a bite! Derek was done prepping to go in so that was the end of our day... not sure we'll be in a hurry to go back? We either hit it on some kind of real downtime or there just aren't a lot of bass in those lakes maybe? Or maybe they spend much of their time out even deeper than we fished?

At least we each landed one keeper... better than none.

[djkimmel]

We did get the one double, and I was happy to catch one real nice bass. One other thing I recall that was interesting about the day was the tree productivity on Wilkinson Lake! The whole time we were fishing there was the sound of loud bangs!! Don't know if they were acorns, walnuts, maybe hickory nuts but there were thousands of them dropping, banging off house roofs, garages, covered boat hoists, boats, docks and plopping into the lake!! It was an unbelievable constant barrage that wasn't just one, then another but multiple all over at the same time! BANG! BANG! BANG BANG BANG!

Obviously, the people who live there are used to it because some were out doing various early fall chores with things crashing down all around them without seeming to flinch or fear for their lives... Never heard anything quite like it in all my years. Sure explained why there were tons of squirrels around.