The choice for this outing was a destination that I had fished twice previously and established an initial Top 5 Weight of 8-3. For this leg of the Top 5 Quest, I was in search of a quality bite or two to gain the twenty-nine-ounce boost needed to push my Top 5 weight into double digits. Things started off in fine fashion, but the flurry did not last. Read on to see if the bass came through.
3:00pm – Top Bass at 2-4 (17″) on a buzzbait
Stats
Date: August 11
Location: Hennepin Canal
Time: 3:00pm-6:00pm
Totals: 4 bass
Weather: Sunny/calm, 78F
Lures: 5” Yamamoto Senko (pumpkin/black flake) – 1 bass, War Eagle Spinnerbait (chartreuse/white) with Bass Pro Shops Twin Tail trailer (Houdini) – 1 bass, Spro Flappin Frog 65 (natural red) – 1 bass, Big Bite Baits Suicide Buzz (citrus shad) – 1 bass
Top 3 Weight (only 3 at 12” or better): 5-2 (2-4,1-11,1-3)
Winning lures
Notes and Nonsense
New Buzzbait – A recent article on buzzbaits in a national fishing publication sent me in search of a new trick on the day prior to this outing. I found what I was looking for at my second stop over the river during my first visit to K & K Hardware. They always have a quality booth at the annual Quad City Outdoor Show and the store did not disappoint. My purchase was a Big Bites Bait Suicide Shad in the citrus shad pattern. This buzzbait is a variation that features a swimbait body rather than a skirt on the business end of the lure. My traditional skirted buzzbait bite has been lacking on The Canal this year, and the abundance of shad observed in the waters pushed me to try something different.
Expanding my arsenal with a new type of buzzbait
Fast Feedback – My first casts with the new buzzbait were a mixture of disappointment and surprise. The disappointment arose as the blade was not turning smoothly, causing the lure to dive or clumsily flail about the surface. The surprise came as I rapidly splashed the bait back to the boat for a tune-up. A bass blasted the ugly retrieve and a follow-up with a Senko wacky rig had my first bass of the day in the boat before a minute on the water had elapsed. Six minutes later, after fixing the blade issue, a solid 2-4 nailed the new lure and I was feeling pretty smart about my purchase. I never caught another bass on it the rest of the trip.
5:29pm – Top Bass Runner Up at 1-11 (16″) on a topwater frog
Top 5 Quest – The 2-4 provided a significant boost as it displaced a fifteen-ounce bass in my creel and put me within eight ounces of the ten-pound mark. However, it was a lengthy drought of over two hours before I got another “keeper.” Adding to the frustration was losing a bass at boatside that was in the two-pound range. Luckily, I got one more shot when a bass busted a topwater frog as it reached the deep edge of a shoreline weed mat. My target had been a shallow stump amid the weeds and the strike took me by surprise as my focus drifted after not getting the strike where I initially aimed. There’s a lesson there but even after forty plus years of bass fishing, a prolonged lack of bites will still catch me daydreaming. In this case, I was fortunate that the bass was on target and all those years of muscle memory aided in a hookset that bordered on autopilot. That final bite of the evening came in at 1-11 and pushed me past my goal with a current Top 5 Weight of 10-2.
Mission accomplished as I got the bites that I needed on an evening when bites were few. Check another spot off the list for a double digit Top 5. Three days later, I was back for a quick hit on another stretch of The Canal with the same goal in mind. Stay tuned for that report and talk to you later. Troy