What else could we have done??

[66KingFisher]

I'm thinking my fishin buddy Ron said it best-"We suck at fishing"!!

Yesterday we hit lake Ouachita hoping to find some big bass as we all do this time of year. This is only our 2nd time to visit this beautiful lake. Early clouds turned to bluebird skies that day with a 2-4mph wind. Air temps in the mid to upper 70's with water temps ranging from 61-65. The lake is at full pool with incoming water from recent storms. Water clarity was 3-5ft everywhere we fished. We worked coves and pockets all along the South Fork leg of the lake from about 9am till dusk.

Results were as follows. I caught more than a dozen bass ranging from 1/2-1lb. They all appeared to be small males. I caught one on a shad colored crankbait, while the rest came on hard jerkbaits...I used 4 different styles and color patterns over the course of the day and caught bass on them all. My fishin buddy Ron, whom is new to bass fishing, was shadowing my catches by changing to similar lures that he had, but he wasn't getting the same results. So he'd change lures and try something else....I think he tried about everything he had in his box, and wasn't getting bit. In fact I was quite surprised that his spinnerbaits and such didn't produce a thing...Just as the day was coming to a close he finally picked up 2 small bass. I say small, but they were both bigger then anything I caught...lol....but they were less then 2lbs.

All the fish I caught came off either a point leading into a small pocket, or midway back into cove or pocket....I never saw a fish bed of any kind all day, and I never heard or saw anyone else catching anything. We talked to a couple of guys in identical rigs to ours that were pulling out after fishing the early am bite, as we were unloading, and they said they caught a few dinks on a grape floating worm wacky rigged, and later we talked to a guy trolling for stripers that said he'd only caught one 7lb fish all day.

So in the end we weren't really happy with our results, even though we didn't get skunked...lol. Which brings up my question....What else could we have done different to find the bigger fish?