New moon yesterday (thursday) and according to the moonphase chart fishing should be fair to good. Me and a buddy of mine Eric decide to head out to "The Captain" for some early morning top water action. Water level was low as usual and it had dropped some more since the last time I was here. Stained water with what looked like about 6-7' max water vis. The weather was really nice n cool with a little bit of a breeze.. the mist was just beginning to lift off the glassy water.. we were on by 6:00AM.

We made a beeline to the area just south of what used to be the Island. Lotsa bait fish being chased up to the surface. Bass boils everywhere. There were two other boats in the area jigging straight up and down on some structure -- not too much action there. Just a bunch of shorts.. Eric was on within a couple casts on an old school top water lure. Looked like a pretty good fish when it hit. His line went straight down after the explosion. ZZZZZZZ! was all I heard as Eric's drag attempted to keep the fish at bay. Somemore ZZZZZ! and more ZZZZ.. then I heard a little chuckling... then laughter.. hmmm? what the hell was so funny? ...ended up that he had his drag set really loose.. He had me goin for a while as I was standing there lookin like a fool with a net in my hand and rod in the other.. it ended being a solid 4 pounder. We were up to 5 fish within the first hour -- mostly 2-3 pounders -- on top water. Threw some senkos and dropshotted the shallows / weedlines for a couple more. We picked up and left as it started to get crowded in this area.

We cruised up to the north end and drifted the entire shoreline for nothing. The water was doo doo brown in the area and there was not too much goin on as far as structure was concerned -- just muddy bottom and a few shoreline rockpiles. The wind had really picked up by now and it started getting hot. We headed for conejos arm where I picked up a nice 4 pounder and lost another throwing big hammer swimbaits. I lost a good handful of fish on this bait today. Mostly when I'm about to lip the fish.. Wonder what I'm doin wrong?

We hit the Island area again on our way in for a couple shorts dropshotting. I got a bunch of hits on the hammer but felt like small fish. I almost lost my dropshot rod while casting the hammer. I accidentally hooked the rod and casted it out. I just saw my rod doing somersaults flying over my head and splash. Luckily it got tangled up and I was able to reel it back in.. whew!

We headed for the dam but decided not to fish it because of all the jetski traffic. We called it a day at around 2:00 or so. Over all it was a pretty fun day. Others we talked to seemed to do okay - mostly shorts reported. This was also confirmed by the dock workers.

Nice report. I noticed you mentioned losing some fish on the swimbait. I've had the same thing happen to me with swimbaits and spinnerbaits. I think there are three reasons for this. The first one is the rod and hookset. If you're using a stiff rod and a hard hookset it will tear a larger hole in the fish's mouth, making the hook easier to fall out. The second is the fact that you have a hook fixed to a heavy lure which gives the fish something to really throw around. The third, and this is pure speculation, is that when you first hook the fish and it's several yards from the boat the hook is in the right position in its mouth. But when the fish gets to the boat your line is now perpendicular to the water and the hook is turned in its mouth. All the fish has to do is make a run straight down and it's home free. I've had this happen to me alot with spinnerbaits especially. As for the solution, well.... your guess is as good as mine. BTW i've also casted my rod into the water. Once in the lake and once in the ocean. It's pretty embarassing when other fishermen are around.

Yeah.. I think it's probably the rod -- it's pretty stiff. I need to switch to something more like a long crankbait rod. I've been thinking about using my calstar 186L 8'fiberglass saltwater rod but I can't use my calcutta on it cuz it has no reel seat.

The funny thing is that I havent really lost too many calicos on the same set up... and I fish the same way as I do with large mouth bass. Basically I just reel harder and faster when I hook up. I hardly ever swing to set the hook or anything like that... then again I'm a newbie when it comes to fishing swimbaits for large mouth bass. Appreciate the reply Phil!

I've had the same problems with the swim bait. I recently started throwing swimbaits and the LMB and I thought for sure all of my favorite sticks for throwing plastics at Calicos would be awsome for fishing the swimbait in freshwater. Man was I wrong. It seems that the stiffer sticks do make it easy for the bass to spit the lure when they jump. Just like you mentioned I also wind the fish on by habit. I do swing on fish that eat the swimbait on the fall but with out current it doesn't hard to hold it the strick zone so most of bites come on the slow retrieve. When I get bit I crank harder just like fishing iron in saltwater. What I have learned is when it comes to LMB it's not a bad idea to scale the weight of the lead head down so it's not so heavy making it harder for the bass to spit the bait. The only draw back the lighter head is less control and it's harder to keep you swim bait swiming straight. This is specially true on the faster grind. If it's centered correctly when you rig it then it should be fine. I also decided to change over to a salmon rod (8ft Lamaglas) One piece casting but It has a much softer tip then say a calstar gx8/ Gf900L, or- phenix/Loomis 965 or even a 1054 but it looks like it will load up pretty good. I'm hoping it will give more and cause less fish to shake the hook when the jump or make runs. Oh well I'm going stick on the drying rack and try it out either this weekend or next week.

JerryG