With the waters cooling off the migration of frogs will start heading for the shorelines in preparation for their hibernation in the shallow mud. In turn the fish know about this and start preparing themselves in getting into the prime locations to intercept the tasty little morsels.
That was going to be the theme for this trip. I headed to a small local pond that has good sized fish and see if I can get this pattern to work. About half of the shoreline has some vegetation in the form of lily pads and the lure of choice was to be the Bearpaw LOAD Frog. This is a frog imitation plastic bait that is rigged on a 4/0 hook and casted into and through the pads or any sort of vegetation long the shoreline.
Started working the pads and wasn’t long and the first fish hit but missed on the blowup. One thing about these types of baits that the hookup rates are about 50/50 as the fish either misses the bait all together or you set the hook too soon. Hooksets have to have a hesitation to make sure that the fish has the bait in its mouth.
Moved down to the corner of the pond and there is a small creek that comes in here and there is a path in the lily pads to work through. Made the cast and as it was worked back a small fish swiped and missed the bait. Within a few cranks of the handle another fish attacked the bait and this one definitely wasn’t getting away. The fight was one of the better ones that I have had this season and when it was finally over a very nice 4 pound largemouth was lipped, photographed and released.
The winds were definitely picking up big time and making it tough to work certain shorelines. I moved to the side of the lake that was a little calmer and right away had a fish blowup and missed and snagged the bait on the pads. This end of the lake doesn’t have as many pad fields so I skipped portions of the shoreline. The end of the lake has a small weed flat and a small largemouth was caught there.
This was the case a couple of more times and couldn’t find any big sized fish as these were in the 12 inch class. On a point a little better largemouth was caught but was still only 13-14 inches long. All in all it wasn’t a bad few hours of water time with 4 bass caught with one big fish.
We are going into the prime time to be fishing as the waters are cooling; bait is migrating and looking for warm water and bigger fish are moving towards the shorelines again. Fall time on the lakes also is great for anglers as many boaters are pulling their boats out, some are hunting and the lakes are getting void of traffic and pressure. Bundle up and get out there and catch a few fish as many bigger fish will be caught this time of year.
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