Revenge of Lake Menderchuck 5-3-2017

[djkimmel]

Lets say you know a lake is full of BIG bass! Lets say you even know where a lot of them were caught a couple weeks ago! Then lets say you go back there a 2nd time because the 1st trip was stranger than you expected thinking... 'this time!! This time I will get them!!'


And this is the only picture you end up taking yourself from this 2nd effort... a crappie on a big suspending jerkbait...?!? This is a sure sign things have gone from stranger just to just downright dumbfounding!! This infamous Lake Menderchuck has me scratching my head more than any other lake (except maybe that oddball Maceday) right now...??

I met new friend Randy again early on the morning of May 3rd and we started at the same point I caught a toad off of the week before. This went pretty much how the rest of the day went - no good bites... this day can be described easily in a sentence or two - we caught a few scattered dinks and I think 1 or 2 keepers all day, and that was it!! I've actually scratched a bald spot on my head over this lake...?!?

To expound a little, it's not like we didn't see any signs of life!!! There were panfish feeding on top almost EVERYWHERE! We even saw a number of times when they got really nervous and even looked like something was eating them!! Granted, we think some of these times were actually crappie attacking small minnows, but a number of times we saw definitely big fish smash into these panfish! Yes, some of them were pike too (see below) but some of them were almost assuredly bass!!

I actually caught one keeper bass on a light rig slow snapping a darter on a jighead out from a weedbed near the break. It was a wimpy bite and fight from a decent keeper. I think most of my very few bass bites came on this rig though you would think with this much life happening that other, bigger approaches would be working great?!?!?

I actually caught the one crappie while trying to pretend my jerkbait was a wounded little panfish near the edge of a cabbage patch - I hit the cabbage, ripped the minnow free and the crappie peeled itself off the weeds and grabbed this big for it jerkbait. But that was all the action I got on that lure.

The only thing that seemed like it would work for us this day was going after pike! And I'm frankly already sick of pike this year!! I've had enough of them and would be happy if I never caught another one all year (not that that is going to happen...)


We definitely saw a bunch of snaky, gatory looking creatures slithering over weed patches on the flats a number of times, and some of them looked HUGE!! (see below for that too). So I asked Randy to take us way up on the flat to see if we could find some prespawn/spawning bass working the flat maybe between weed beds or in sparser weeds and it didn't take long for me to catch a hammer-gator throwing a KVD 2.5 in my pike-catching color of green gizzard shad! The pike just LOVE this color - I would quit throwing it if it wasn't for bass liking it a lot too!

I knew it was a gator as soon as it hit and by the way it screamed straight ahead like a rocket! You know what I'm talking about if you fish anywhere there are pike! I was actually avoiding throwing a few places because I had seen what looked like monster gators prowling the areas!

Later, we cruised some shallow areas looking for beds and cruising bass and finally, though we were out of fishing time we saw a couple scattered cruisers in one part of the lake - they were decent sized bass. Also saw a nice, big doggie cruising nearby. I would have thrown at it on a day like today if we had time left. I had seen a small dogfish near the edge of a break just sitting on the bottom like they do early in the day, so yes, Menderchuck definitely has dogfish. Randy said there were some big ones in it. In fact, there seems to be a lot of big fish of many kinds in the lake... I just apparently can't figure out what these bass are doing this time of the year and how to catch them (scratching my bald spot some more...) though this is generally the time of year I can get on them the best.

I haven't given up though. If and when Randy is available again I hope to return and try again... because I am the ever eternally hopeful angler like the rest of you - the next time!! The next time I WILL get them!!


Meanwhile, a couple weeks later I got a text from Randy, and sure enough, those were some BIG GATORS we had seen snaky across the water!! He whacked a MONSTER while out doing some more fishing - a real monster for any inland lake - 40 inches of pure teeth and orneriness in this giant Northern Pike!! He managed to land it even though he wasn't using a steel leader at the time. I forgot to ask him if he kept it or not? I think the lake appears to have plenty of big monster gators in it!

Now... if I can just figure out what these weird Lake Menderchuck bass are doing?!?!? to be continued...