Drought Breaker - Blame it on the Rain?

[FishDr]

This has been an off-and-on swimbait season, with a lot more off (the water) time than on. In fact, I'm ashamed to say that I've gone fishing (all types) 5 times since the new year and threw swimbaits on 4 of those trips - last year I was well into double digit trips by now. I'll blame that on a very busy season at work...

 

Still, the drought of swimbait fish has been severe, so when a couple of friends from Souther CO called to say they were in town and in need of guiding 2 days ago, I gave them some direction and told them I would try to join them the following evening. Well, they followed my directions to a tee, except for the part about sticking a pig, but last night they were no longer willing to head out for another session with the black-and-white cat!

 

I, on the other hand, was going out come hell or high water. In the end, I didn't run into hell, but there was high water - it was dry in my town, but a couple of towns away the rain was coming down thick and heavy. Too bad. I'd packed a raincoat, forgot my rainpants and figured what the heck, I've got dry clothes in the truck.

 

I started off throwing the Possum and was pleasantly surprised when somewhere out in the dimpled surface of the lake, only three casts into the session, a chunky CO largemouth blasted the bait and stayed on. "Hmmm", I thought, if the rest of the night goes this way, I'll have to blame it on the rain!

 

Soon after I caught the fish, the local game warden dropped by, checked my truck, and then traipsed along the bank in the rain until he found me and checked my license. I like it when the enforcement folks aren't afraid of a little heavy humidity. For the next hour and a half, I fished without success, with only two small boils to show for my efforts. Should I blame it on the rain? Actually, the rain finally stopped, and it turned into a nice evening, but the fish didn't turn on. There was definitely fish activity, though, and at least one big baitfish (a trout?) met a messy and noisy end about 10' to the left of one of my casts. Splash, splash, splash, KABLOOM! I wish it'd been about 10 feet to the right...

 

Towards midnight I switched from the possum to the 9" Slammer and for the first 30 minutes it was the same story - no action or activity. I knew that I should go subsurface, perhaps with a RS, but I'm stubborn, so I stuck to the wakebait. Finally, about 5 minutes before it was time to go, a small but stocky fish plastered the Slammer.

 

After that, I realized I needed to make tracks to get home in time to get enough sleep to get up with the kids to get them to school. It wasn't a spectacular trip, either in terms of fish size or numbers, but it broke my night swimbait bass drought. At first I was going to blame the good fishing on the rain, then the bad fishing on the rain, but I'm not sure - I'll just blame it on the rain, Milli Vanilli style , and ignore the fact that that I should have probably used something other than wakebaits!

[DenverSwimbaiter]

Nice Chris!

[evans_usmc69]

Way to break the drought! Most times any size of fish on a swimbait will make me happy, especially when I can get more than one

[SWIMBO]

Way to stay after it Chris!

[urbanhick]

Thats a great bait. Works great here in MA.

[flaswimbaiter]

Nice doc, you love that slammer dont you.