I was back on Lake Storey for the second time in eight days anticipating the water level to be dropping with the onset of the annual fall drawdown. The drawdown is a fisheries management practice that lowers the water level several feet with one of the aims being increased access to prey for the lake’s top predators. Basically, the smaller fish have less places to hide and the larger fish feed up leading to a healthier predator-prey balance. Anyway, the lake was not yet being lowered, which was disappointing but not a game changer. After all, those fish don’t go anywhere, there is just more water volume and places to hide.

9:13am – First bass is Top Bass at 3-6 (19″) on a spinnerbait

Stats
Date: September 8
Location: Lake Storey, Knox County, IL
Time: 8:10am-4:10pm
Totals: 9 bass
Weather: Sunny/breezy to windy, 51-72F
Water temperature: 69-72F
Lures: War Eagle spinnerbait (chartreuse/white) – 5 bass, Strike King Red Eye Shad (sexy shad) – 3 bass, Strike King KVD 2.5 Rattling Squarebill Crankbait (natural pumpkinseed) – 1 bass
Top Bass: 3-6 (Spinnerbait)
Top 5 Weight: 10-1 (3-6,2-1,1-15,1-9,1-2)

Winning Lures

Tune of the Trip
Life in Wartime – Talking Heads (1979)
“The sound of gunfire off in the distance, I’m getting used to it now.”
Occasionally, a Lake Storey fishing trip coincides with police firearm training at the Pistol Range on the lake’s northwest shore. A couple dozen officers unloading all at once makes quite a racket but doesn’t disturb me (or the bass) at all.

Notes and Nonsense

The Most Fished Tree – My first catch of the day was also the Top Bass for the day, a solid specimen measuring 19” and weighing 3-6. It was caught on a spinnerbait while fishing a tree that has been laying along the Lake Storey shoreline as long as I can recall. As a kid in the 1970s, I remember the tree leaning out over the surface of the lake and you could walk out on it if you dared. In the fifty years since, the supporting limbs have deteriorated, and the tree now lays directly on the lake bottom. One could probably walk on it for a step or two without getting wet with the lake at full pool. Not for me though as I am a bit less stable and adventurous at age fifty-eight than at age eight.

This is why you have a backup of your favorite lures

Carry a Spare –I have learned a thing or two about fishing over the years. One nugget of knowledge is to pack along spares of your “confidence” lures in case one gets damaged or lost. My latest “go to” spinnerbait is a War Eagle model that features tandem blades with one being orange. The short story from this outing is that I snagged it on a log, popped it free, it landed in the water near the trolling motor, the line got wrapped in the motor housing, and then the spinnerbait hook snagged on the front of the boat as I lifted the motor. The result was a bent-up bait with one of the blades busted off. Fortunately, I had my spare, and it proceeded to fool two more quality bass weighing 2-1 and 1-15 before the day was done.

What in the name of sasquatch is this creation?

Statistical Goals – As I have noted before, I have a series of three goals to meet when I hit the water.
Goal One – Don’t get shutout (Check! First bass in the boat at 9:13am)
Goal Two – Land five bass at 12” or better (Check! Top 5 established at 2:48pm)
Goal Three – Post a double-digit Top 5 weight (Check! At 3:35pm I reach 10-1)
The chronology of these goals occurred as follows:
8:10am – Launch and begin casting

9:13am- First catch weighs 3-6 (19”) on a spinnerbait

12:08pm – A 1-2 (13.5”) on a spinnerbait pushes my weight total to 4-8

12:50pm – A 1-9 (14”) on a lipless crankbait boosts my weight to 6-1

2:14pm- A 2-1 (16.5”) on a spinnerbait pushes my weight to 8-2

2:48pm – An 0-13 (12”) on a crankbait completes a Top 5 weighing 8-15

3:35pm – A 1-15 (16”) on a spinnerbait knocks out the 0-13 and pushes my Top 5 weight to 10-1

4:10pm – Last cast of a successful day and mission accomplished (thanks for the boat, Dad)

While the lack of a drawdown has been disappointing, my two Lake Storey visits were far from disappointments. In fact, I headed back for more the following week. Stay tuned for that report and talk to you later. Troy

I got wind that some of my Knox County public strip ground had received a “hair cut” making bank access much more angler friendly. That looked too good to pass up even though hiking and biking is getting to be more of a workout with each passing year. Read on for the recap.

Stats
Date: September 6
Location: Knox County public strip pits (7 lakes)
Time: 2:05pm-7:25pm
Totals: 14 bass
Weather: Sunny/very windy
Lures: Z-Man Chatterbait (sexy shad) with a BPS Speed Shad trailer (pro blue) – 7 bass, Strike King Red Eye Shad (red craw) – 2 bass, 5″ Yamasenko wacky rig (blue pearl/black hologram flake) – 2 bass, Spro Flappin Frog 65 (nasty shad) – 1 bass, Whopper Plopper 110 (bone) – 1 bass, 7″ Berkley Power Worm (tequila sunrise) on an Owner 3/16 oz. Shaky Head – 1 bass
Top Bass: 1-5 Senko
Top 5 Weight: 5-8 (1-5,1-2,1-1,1-0,1-0)

Winning Lures

3:40pm – Top Bass Runner-up at 1-2 (13.5″) on lipless crankbait

Tune of the Trip
The End of the Innocence – Don Henley (1989)
“We’ll sit and watch the clouds roll by and the tall grass waves in the wind.”
Thanks to some groundwork by the site crew, a great deal of the bank vegetation had been obliterated. Instead of watching the reeds lining the shore waving in the wind and wishing I could get to the water, much of the bank was wide open.

For many years, these shorelines have been completely inaccessible

Notes and Nonsense

Landscaping – Much has changed over the thirty-five years that I have roamed the Knox County strip mines. Population dynamics, new fishing holes, drained fishing holes, improved access, and nature allowed to run wild are among the observed changes. Occasionally, some changes occur that are a boon to hiking anglers. This year such an improvement is the clearing of shoreline weeds, reeds, and brush in some locations. Access to the banks of several lakes has opened to levels not seen since the 1990s. Kudos to the site staff in looking out for us anglers (and a fellow strip mine angler for putting in a request).

Haven’t had a backlash as ugly as the one on this day that cost me half of my spool

Professional Overrun – I favor a baitcaster when it comes to bass fishing although I do pack along a couple spinning combos for more finesse-oriented presentations. But no matter how long you have wielded a baitcaster (just over forty years in my case), you are going to experience backlash (or fancily referred to as “professional overrun”). Heavy winds got me on this day as my frog got too high on a cast and fouled my spool bigtime. In fact, I had to cut the mess out, strip all the line off, and put what was salvageable back on the reel. Fortunately, I was in the middle of nowhere, so no one witnessed this ritual of shame. Or heard a few bad words even though I am not much for profanity. If you are a bass angler, I suppose you have been there as well.

4:42pm – Top Bass at 1-5 (14.5″) on a Senko

Missing Bass – Every once in a while when I review my GoPro footage from a fishing trip, I find a missing bass. On the water, I make notes on my phone for each catch as a temporary log which is then entered in more detail in a spiral notebook and Access database (yes, I know there are fishing log apps, but I am old and a creature of habit). In the case of this outing, I failed to record a chatterbait catch from 6:01pm. As it is not the first time such a logging error has occurred, I suspect that I have actually caught a few more than the 7,774 “meticulously” documented largemouth bass since 1997.

Fatigue in the Fifties – It’s strange to think that I am much closer to sixty than fifty. When thinking back to the fact that I first started fishing these waters in my early twenties, much has changed in addition to the landscape. I covered over four miles while peeking at ten different bodies of water and by the time that I wandered far from the parking lot, I was already feeling beat. One goes in with the realization that one must make his way back out. I was tired and clumsy as I fished with inaccurate casts and was occasionally out of tune with my presentations. I was tired and sore when I got back to my truck. I was tired and stiff after my hour drive home. I was restless and fighting off cramps as I lay in bed that night. But I was back on the water two days later, feeling only mildly refreshed yet resolved to stand in a boat for eight hours. That’s another story.

Fourteen bass and nothing real big but a rewarding hike and bike to take advantage of the enhanced bank access. Often, as I sit in my truck or nurse my sore body after such a stunt, I ponder a “farewell” tour for some of these lakes. Eventually, I get over it but one of these days…Talk to you later. Troy

I look forward to fishing the Lake Storey fall drawdown each year but this year I opted for a day of advance casting while the lake was still at full pool. It was a daring move on a Labor Day weekend Sunday, but the crowd wasn’t too bad, and the bass were in a good mood to start the morning. Unfortunately, they got stubborn later. Read on for the rest of the story.

Starting Lineup

Stats
Date: August 31
Location: Lake Storey, Knox County, IL
Time: 6:50am-1:35pm
Totals: 10 bass
Weather: Partly cloudy/breezy to windy, 57-73F
Water temperature: 78F
Lures: Strike King Red Eye Shad (sexy shad) – 5 bass, War Eagle spinnerbait (chartreuse/white) – 3 bass, Booyah Buzzbait (snow white shad)- 1 bass, Googan Squad Gridiron Jig (rotten pumpkin) with Net Bait B Bug (natural craw swirl) – 1 bass
Top Bass: 1-14 (Spinnerbait)
Top 5 Weight: 8-0 (1-14,1-12,1-8,1-7,1-7)

6:53am – Top Bass #4 at 1-7 (14″) on a buzzbait

Tune of the Trip
“Love on the Rocks” – Neil Diamond (1980)
I do like Neil Diamond, but this tune certainly does not crack my Top 5 from his catalog. However, some of “the rocks” at Lake Storey were a big winner on this trip. More details in the notes below.

7:17am – Top Bass #1 at 1-14 (16″) on a spinnerbait

Notes and Nonsense

Frog False Start – One of the lures in my starting lineup was a Spro Flappin Frog. Leading up to this trip, I had a game plan to head immediately to a weedy flat after launching, saving some other areas in proximity to the ramp for later in the day. Upon arriving at the flat, however, I was greeted with absolutely no surface weeds. As a result, I never made a single cast with the frog. Instead, I picked up a buzzbait and was greeted with my first catch of the morning on my third cast. It was the lone topwater catch of the day.

7:29am – Top Bass #3 at 1-8 (14.5″) on a spinnerbait

Boom and Bust – Defined as an “alternation of prosperity and depression”, boom and bust was an accurate description of my day on the water. The depression part only related to a decrease in bites, not in attitude as it is tough to get too down even when the fish quit biting. At 9:01am, I landed my eighth bass of the morning, barely two hours after launching. For the next four and a half hours, I would only fool two more fish. I altered presentations, continued to hit proven spots, and worked them thoroughly from different angles when possible but continued to come up empty. That’s fishing.

Rockpile bass are noted above with four from one spot (time/length/weight/lure)

Love on the Rocks – According to the Neil Diamid song cited above, “Love on the rocks, ain’t no big surprise.” Lake Storey features several rockpiles scattered along its length and they are always worth some casts. My favorite and most consistent of those spots consists of a length of rubble and cinder blocks sitting about sixty feet off the bank on an expansive flat. On this trip, that area produced four bass in the span of fifteen minutes on a lipless crankbait. One of my favorite “tricks” for fishing this spot is a change of retrieve direction. After working both perpendicular and parallel to the cover with multiple casts, I move past the area and then cast back to it in parallel fashion from the opposite direction. This approach frequently produces a bite from a fish that ignored my prior casts. And right on time, it worked again on this trip as noted in the 8:44am log entry above.

8:38am – Top Bass #2 at 1-12 (15″) on a lipless crankbait

9:01am – Top Bass #5 at 1-7 (14″) on a spinnerbait

A double-digit haul is a decent trip for me on Lake Storey, but good bites were elusive. All bites are “good” but my definition of a “good one” is a two-pound or better fish as that is what it takes to meet my daily goal of a ten-pound Top 5. I came up short this time, but I intend to take another shot or two as the annual fall drawdown is set to kick in after the Labor Day holiday. As September dawns, I view the remaining months as the home stretch of another year on the water. Here’s hoping there’s some more “good ones” out there. Talk to you later. Troy