Lake Comedero is an amazingly interesting lake. Surrounded by mountains. Steep hillsides and tons of bluff banks providing lots of sombra (shade) thank goodness since it routinely moved into the 90’s each day, usually with little breeze.
I’ll get into the complete adventure as this story unfolds in posts coming up, but for now I know many want to see more pictures of the big bass we were catching all week. So here we go – Big Bass of Lake Comedero courtesy of Ron Speed Jr’s Adventures.
We were fortunate to have our outfitter, Ron Speed Jr join us this week and perform an on-the-lake seminar of slow rolling and yoyoing spinnerbaits through the thorn trees for big suspended bass!
Scott Tyrell traveled with our NBAA group and I imagine this bass alone made him very glad he came along to beautiful Lake Comedero – another big hog almost 9 pounds!
About 8 AM the 4th morning, guide Hugo puts NBAA’s Paul Cowen and myself on a secondary point leading into a creek arm and some thorn tree-choked spawning bays. Paul tosses a lizard practically on shore just down the side of the point when this big 8-5 bass hits!
Twenty two minutes later, a little further into the creek arm, I stubbornly toss my huge 11 inch Rage Tail worm up against a shoreline rock ledge when my biggest bass of the week pops it. I set the hook hard with my serious big bass rig. Hugo asks the all important question, “Grande?” “I don’t know,” I say. And then the big head breaks the surface!!! Another GRANDE!!! These big-headed Florida bass all look like monsters!
Hugo keeps putting Paul and I on good bass as we leave the hot spawning bay without connecting with any more Grande’s though we see 4 or 5 more boil or jump and vow to come back later for the holy grail of the Grande topwater bite!
We just kept catching bass after bass. Lake Comedero has a ton of bass of all sizes and we catch them all. Most of them fight hard and most head for the thorn trees. I can’t help but wonder how many big bass we can lose because the abrasive thorn trees are like sandpaper and the bass are really good at finding the branches fast!! Even the small ones would often wrap us up.
Hugo had a talent for getting most of them out of the trees. Like this solid bass Paul see-sawed off a thorn tree eventually with the help of bass fishing guide Hugo. You didn’t want to use wimpy line, but size of the line sometimes seemed to make a difference in the number of bites.
Every morning and evening we’d begin and end with the topwater bite. This morning I had landed 3 solid bass on a black Super Spook – the hot topwater as the week progressed – and on back-to-back casts off a shallow bar out in the lake, after catching the 3rd nice one, a big 5-10 largemouth smashed the Super Spook. I’ll have another post soon more on the topwater bite on Lake Comedero, but Paul and I did end the day in our morning spawning bay hoping to crash a true toad. No big topwater bites, but Paul had a couple cracks at some big bass that again used thorn trees to their advantage.
The last morning came way too fast. We would only fish half a day on this Saturday, and I was sharing the boat with Ron Speed Jr. We tried some different things, particularly moving from shady bank to shady bank as the sun moved in relation to the mountains to keep the topwater bite going. This morning, a Pop’R was the hot bait over the Super Spook in the backs of bays and last bluff banks. No monsters in the first few bays, but several quality bass including a mini-toad that flat out ate my one VanDam Optic Popper.
You can’t complain when you’re popping quality bass every few minutes on a topwater plug like this solid largemouth that took Ron Speed Jr’s Pop’R!!
A few minutes later, another quality bass ate my one Optic Popper and broke off on a head-shaking jump… forgot to check the line for thorn tree damage… Then, as I’m snagged straight off the front of the boat while Ron throws his regular Pop’R straight off the back of the boat across a small, shallow spawning bay point when the lure disappears into a boil. The bass immediately wraps Ron up on a laydown thorn tree.
He’s nervous because he says it feels like it might be… might be a Grande! I get lose and guide Gabrielle turns back towards Ron’s bass. GRANDE!!! Just check out this boil and you’ll have some idea about how we felt right at the moment!! (The rest you’ll have to imagine 3 grown men tripping over each other as the go for the net, the camera, the scales, the bass… you name it!!!)
Big topwater bass of the week for our group!! Looks like 10-pounder for sure as Ron hoists the giant bass up for a photo after Gabrielle helps free it from a thorn tree snag.
The huge pre-spawn female is full of eggs with the big Florida bass maw. We are all thinking 10 pounds plus, but the Boga grips don’t lie (I’m told) and say the hog is ‘only’ another ocho ocho (8 pounds 8 ounces). Does Ron look like he’s disappointed?
Look at the belly on that thing!!! A head as big as the one on my day 1 hog bass, but Ron’s fish is full of eggs while mine was spawned out. Can you imagine a topwater bass of that size??
Later in the day, we went main lake point hopping looking for big prespawners holding out in deeper thorn trees. I had a real hot streak slow rolling KaRu Vibraspins around and through tree tops. It was a blast catching bass that averaged 3 3/4 pounds and demonstrated what a deadly search and catch bait the KaRu Vibraspins is for prespawn largemouth bass.
I love spinnerbait fishing and while it wasn’t a smoking hot spinnerbait week, I had caught a number of bass on the VibraSpins and a few on regular spinnerbaits in a shallow bay with a lot of larger laydown. I missed what I’m pretty sure what was another possible Grande, but that just means she’ll be there waiting for me when I go back!
We ran in for the daily excellent shore lunch at our bass camp on this hill, finding out Jack Horning had also connected on a Comedero Toad bass – a 9 pounder full of eggs. Prespawners where just starting to pile in again, and it was time to go… Well, I’m sure you don’t feel too sorry for us but you haven’t heard the full story yet either For now, here’s Jack’s huge Lake Comedero thorn tree bass:
(photos by Dan Kimmel, Jim Sprague, Paul Cowen & Jack Horning)
