Despite windy conditions, a friend & I had a good outing at Melody on Friday.  In about 4 or 5 hours we managed to catch 16 to 18 bass and several nice crappie. 

We had more on, but my friend hadn’t fished in a while and struggled detecting bites & setting the hook properly the first couple of hours.  The wind made it especially tough.  Later, however, he did well, even hooking the bass of the day, a 6 or 7 pound beauty that went airborne.  Unfortunately she managed to shake the hook on her leap, but we saw her quite clearly.  If he’d gotten her in, it would have been the biggest bass he’d ever caught—maybe next time!

The lake is warming and many fish are on the beds.  I suspect the biggest have already spawned, though.  My friend used a watermelon Fluke with a Texposed hook.  The submergent weeds are growing up fast now, so his rig had the edge on my usual finesse jigworm.  He also caught his all time biggest crappie, they have some really nice ones.  We caught & released one huge redear sunfish, too, there aren’t many but they all seem to be 8 inches plus.

We kept about a dozen bass and the crappie, making a total of 40 bass we’ve removed this year.  The fish basket really helps!  So far somebody has eaten just about all the fish kept.  When you are done, just clamp it to the side of the dock and let Patti, the owner, know you’ve got fish for her. She asks for any bass smaller than 15 inches to be removed.

Patti intends to put some coppernose bream into the lake later on.  She also would like to fertilize AFTER killing a bunch of hyacinths.  Overall I believe the bass are fatter than last year, things seem to be moving in the right direction.