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