Submitted by lknbassman (ip 66.193.41.200)

Date Fished: 7/1/2008
Water Temperature: 84
Water Clarity: 4 feet or greater

Good early pre dawn topwater day today. Got to the ramp at 05:15 and the lake had a nice little wind chop going on. Partner and I threw around chunk rock mid lake and hooked up with a little guy and had some bites on the lucky craft sammy 100, chug bait, and new strike king king shad fished as a wake bait. Nothing big but always fun.

Ran around to a few spots and tried to find what depth they were holding on. Seemd like 12' was the number again today and as usual on typical Lake Norman cover; docks, rocks, stumps, and blowdowns.

We ended up boating a little over 13 pounds with my partner Ryan capturing the "big fish guy" honors with a solid 3lb LM he nailed on a TX rigged Roboworm that he imported along with himself from CA recently.

Jigs and worms produced best with bites on each. We could not buy a reaction bite with a crankbait, lipless crank bait, spinner bait, tail spinner, or swimbait. They love each of them during spawning season but today not so much so it was a soft plastics deal from daylight until 10:45 when we hung it up.

I had a deeply hooked 16" LM that went around 1.75 that swallowed and also tounge hooked himself on a Gammy ewg 4/0 hook. He was in trouble as soon as I saw him as that looked to be in a real bad spot. I don't think cutting that one off and letting him swim with it would have done much good as he was bleeding real bad the moment I boated him so I kept him in the livewell with the aerator on and new water pumping in to see how he'd do.

He did not survive sadly which always saddens me. We had all clean hooksets and releases all day until that guy decided he just had to inhale that worm and swim toward me so I did not know he had it until I took up some slack and by that time he had it deep in his gullet.

I kept the fish in the livewell, we pulled the boat out, cleaned her up, and I headed home. I got a new filet knife recently and decided to try it out as I don't believe in killing any of God's creatures unless it's for food purposes.

Well 2 nice filets later some hot olive oil in a sautee pan, salt, pepper, a nice soft doughy potato hamburger bun, a slice of American cheese, 1 tea spoon of tartar sauce, and a dash of tabasco and I had myself a top notch bass filet of fish sandwich. While my heart was still heavy from having caused the fish to die, my stomach was OK with the whole thing as it was a pretty darn good lunch along with some BBQ chips.

Our friends at "In Fisherman" tell us that selective harvest is a good thing for our fisheries but I rarely keep freshwater fish even though I probably should weed out some 1 pounders on a regular basis as I prefer to eat salt water fish instead. I'm of the mindset that if they are not going to survive for sure or look real bad I put them in the livewell with good oxygenated water to see how they do. If they die and are of legal size then they come home with me.

Todays baits of success; lucky craft sammy on top, custom chugger bait, jigs and tx rigged worms at 12' in good cover with nearby access to deep water. Colors; variations of green and purple.

There are 4 remarks about this report. Click here to see them.
Click here to enter a remark.

Boats/Motors
Boat Ramp Stories
Trailers & Towing
Boats For Sale
Tournament Tactics
Striped Bass