Halloween bassin'

[bluebasser86]

My buddy Jon and I got out on Halloween to chase some fish around, turned out the weather was feeling like playing mostly tricks and not giving out many treats as we fought rain in the 40 degree temps along with 20mph winds. We were on a lake known mainly for smallmouth and having reports of good fishing we started on a likely spot. I'm pretty sure I missed the first 6-8 bites I got while Jon was catching them pretty well on a spinnerbait and tube.

I finally got my act together and started catching them on a spinnerbait, tube, and shakyhead.

Right before we left I got our biggest smallmouth of the day on a spinnerbait that went 19" and 3.28lbs.


We left a little early to try a little pond that was on our way home, wow where we not disappointed. We'd had over 2" of rain fall the day before and the little pond was swollen and muddy, didn't look good when we pulled up but hey we're here let's give it a try. For the first 15 minutes the pond seemed devoid of life, shallow, and muddy. I was running a homemade black and blue chatterbait along a metal overflow grate when it got slammed by a super fat 3 pounder that pulled like it was 6, the next 3 casts resulted in the same thing! When the little flurry stopped I pitched a black and blue Strike King flipping tube at the grate and got thumped. This one was even fatter and pulled way harder than largemouth are supposed to! No skinny fall fish here!

Jon was on the other side of the pond fishing an inflow area and catching them pretty good from what I could tell. I continued covering water quickly with the chatterbait and tube, catching several more fish. I pitched into a corner area with small chunk rock with the tube when I felt a very sharp tap. My line took off so fast I was positive it was a catfish from the start. The fish didn't move towards me at all on the hookset, instead it steadily pulled drag off my pitching rod, heading towards a brushpile, but I got it turned and moving back towards me. Doing just like catfish do it stayed down, pulled hard, and ripped some more drag before I got it close and saw a big bucketmouth and greenish sides! I didn't have my scale on me, it was in the boat along with my camera so I had to take a picture with my junky cell phone camera and guess the weight. She was extremely fat like the rest of them, I'm guessing somewhere in the 5.5-6 pound range.

Needless to say we'll be back