Right back to Round Lake 5-27-2017

[djkimmel]

Against my better judgment I decided to return right away to Round Lake. I left the first time with more questions than answers - a much different looking lake. I also forgot to mention there's a new owner and process for renting boats, and the new boat rental person didn't want to get up super early so here I was getting to the lake at 7am on a SATURDAY (weekend) and a HOLIDAY weekend to boot!! What was I thinking?!?

Well, actually, the lake did end up pretty busy but it was supposed to be a fairly calm and sunny day, and how many of those have I seen this spring?? Well, almost none!! So here I was, and it didn't end up that bad though, yes there were lots of anglers and a few boaters out on the little 80 acre lake - a bunch were even bass fishing, and yes, some were keeping them... but that's how it goes every season with our harvest season actually starting during the spawn!

I started on a point again and some outside weedlines. I tried moving to some different parts of the lake hoping to find some bass doing what they sometimes do in other years. I will add that I actually haven't done much fishing here during the bass spawn in the past and had only found a few spots with bass beds, though I found a bunch of panfish bedding spots in the past.

I wasn't really thinking spawning bass but kept hearing the small boat anglers talking about the smaller keeper bass they all seemed to be catching, and mos to them were way up on the shallow flats. Then I heard one small boat angler tell a friend in another boat that he was 'sightfishing a bass right now' so after I did not see them hook anything, I waited until they moved farther down the lake and I went to the inside of the weeds real shallow to find a decent bass on a shallow bed.

I also saw more, shallower bluegill beds, and a fair amount of bigger, but empty beds that had to be bass beds. I was quickly seeing more bass beds, including bass still on beds further into the thicker weeds than most anglers were trying than I actually expected.


I circled back for now to the first bass I'd seen on a shallow bed. I tossed a Texas-rigged Power Worm a couple times but the bass wasn't showing great interest. I picked up a drop-shot rigged 4" Case Plastics drop shot worm (greenpumpkin gold flake), basically the Stevie Rig (named after dartag because of his love of this rig with a greenpumpkin worm). As soon as I tossed the little worm into the bed this respectable nice male largemouth bass ate it! I got him in, took a quick picture and released him.

I moved along shallow seeing another bass on a bed about every 10 or 15 feet along near the inside weed edge. I caught a couple more. Then, I saw a nicer bass further into the weeds. This is when I found that some better bass were a little ways into the thicker weeds in holes. The best ones were actually on beds that didn't even look like beds until you either saw the bass, or the bass kept returning to the same spot! This looked more promising but required more effort too!


Here's one of the nicer bass I caught on these less obvious beds in thicker weeds. This one fell quickly for the Stevie Rig again when I got it into the exact right hole in the weeds. There was just enough breeze at times that I sometimes lost sight of the bass and beds in the thicker weeds. I would get tangled up in them too. I didn't think to bring a few markers and maybe my push pole. Would have made things easier and more efficient for sure.

Because it was a nice day, and the bonus being most anglers and boaters were avoiding the thicker, shallow weeds, I kept moving along this same shoreline and became more and more impressed at just how many bass beds (and many more real shallow panfish beds) I was seeing!!! I really didn't expect this many fish on beds at one time in such a small lake!?!

I caught a few more. I was out of practice though so I missed a number of bass that would hit instantly, and then get really shy and touchy. I also hooked and lost a couple really nice bass including one that was on a hard to see bed at the base of some lily pads on an edge. I somehow managed to completely lose that bed and not find it again for 20 minutes after I spent some time rerigging and getting blown into deeper and thicker weeds. Upon turning back, everything looked different to me somehow even though I had found some junk in the water nearby so I KNEW I was close.

Finally, just a lucky cast in one direction while I was looking another and I got hammered. I actually thought I had hooked the bass well but on the first good jump I lost the bass again. It was the same bass!! It didn't want to give me another shot after that, and I figured there were plenty of bass to see and water to check so I moved on.

I even found some beds deeper on the flat along and near a second inside weedline of different weeds as I moved along. I also saw a huge, black shape come out of super shallow pads and smash some panfish right up onto shore like a school of orcas would do!!! Despite the size of the fish and shallowness of the water I could not figure out for sure where it went when it turned back away from shore. I'm still not sure if it was a HUGE bass or just a big dogfish?!? It happened pretty fast...!!

Moving into a little deeper weeds I actually even found my first cloud of tiny fry. A pretty good sized daddy was watching them, cruising over the thicker weeds back and forth. He halfheartedly grabbed at a fluke-type lure I tossed near him, but in the end I decided to leave him to his business and look for more good stuff while the looking was pretty good!!

I found several patterns during the day of the variety of cover and bottom that the bass preferred to spawn in - several different combinations - verses the panfish which were often nearby but shallower or on a different bottom/cover combination. It's pretty common to find a bass or more bedding near panfish. It was true here too.

After starting to run out of shallow beds and bedding areas apparently, I moved out deeper to an area I was suspicious about from past visits to some open water between thicker shallow weeds and thicker weeds near the break. For whatever reason, in this area, the bass - bigger bass on average were bedding a few feet deeper here!! Interesting... basically, most of the bass anglers were casting past these bass into shallower water and completely missing them.


When I had the area mostly to myself shortly after, I moved to a few of these bass and caught several of them on various presentations. They each seemed to have their own preference that got a strong reaction verses lackluster reactions to other attempts and presentations! This really nice bass was on a bed 4-5 feet deep next to a bigger stick. It was away from any other cover so without good glasses in this dark water it would be easy to not see it. I moved about 20 feet away and pitched the Texas-rigged Power Worm (greenpumpkin) to it on braid and it grabbed it and swam off quickly.

Nice hookset! Nice fight! A quick picture and released it right back to its bed. I noted a number of obvious bedding spots for the future and didn't catch all of the bass I saw. I decided rather than try to catch them all I should keep looking at as much water as possible to learn while it was calmer and brighter... for the future!

I moved around the lake further finally seeming to run out of bedding areas (there's still one small section of the lake I haven't checked to date but at this point maybe it will have to wait until next spring?). Seeing many more beds than I for some reason expected, I decided that as it had gotten calmer again and boat traffic wasn't too bad considering the holiday weekend, I went 'offshore' to see if there might be more beds there than I've seen, found and expected in the past.

I actually worked some of the offshore dropoff too for awhile without getting much action. It finally dawned on me that with the bright, clear sun shining at the low angle from the west that I might be able to see one side of the offshore edges better than normal so I headed there.


Sure enough, I could see more deeper than maybe I've ever seen before in this little dark water lake... and I found a bunch of DEEP beds on a little sand spit. I couldn't tell for sure if there were bass on them or not because the water is so dark, and because of the depth but I pitched the big Texas-rigged black blue Bullet Craw to a bed as the base of a deep weed clump. I hopped it a tiny bit just once, and what looked like a big bluegill came from the side and slashed at my lure!!! I gave it a big hookset and lo and behold it was my biggest bass of the season so far at Round Lake - a huge male bass from a deep bed!!! It was an awesome way to finish a very interesting day.

I found two more patches of deep beds on little sand spots out past the break but couldn't see any bass on them and my efforts to check them for a guarding male came up empty... but the right time next year I'll be whacking some bigger bass off these same spots!! Whether I can see them or not now!!!

I also found some nearby deeper panfish beds too that I hadn't noticed before. Added to the additional panfish bedding spots I saw during the day, I could keep busy fishing for panfish for days on all of these spots in the future if I feel like it (and I do believe that a little bobber fishing now and then is good for the fishing soul!).

It was a long, but productive day with only the one big fish, but a good number of solid bass, and I learned a lot more about the lake than I thought I could (I should know better, of course... there's always much more to learn, even on a small water!).

[djkimmel]

For a change, I was glad I took the risk of a weekend holiday fishing day. It was nowhere near as crazy as the one weekend day I fished out there last year, though in general, it seems like I'm seeing a lot more fishing pressure out there on the little lake this year compared to recent years.