Feelin' Lucky: April 2016

Feelin' Lucky: April 2016

"Feelin' Lucky" is a new series of blogs I'm starting on a monthly basis with the help of the folks at Lucky Tackle Box.  The point of these posts will be two-fold; I'll be discussing a bit about Lucky Tackle Box, a great company that sends out subscription boxes filled with tackle each month from established tackle makers, along with some up and coming small businesses making their way into the fishing industry.  Secondly these posts will act as in-depth fishing reports for the particular lake I go to each month.  Hopefully you and I will each learn something new along this endeavor.

So, last weekend I decided to unload all my tackle from the Hobie and take with me only my Lucky Tackle Boxes and a handful of terminal tackle that I would need for the baits in the box.  For a trip like this, I should have considered Bartlett Lake.  Bartlett is located just north of Phoenix, AZ and is the only lake nearby where you can regularly catch 20 fish in a day.  The problem is they are stunted fish, I've never seen much over three or four pounds pulled out of that lake.  It is however, the perfect lake for a trip where my goal is to catch numbers, or on a variety of lures like all of them in the Lucky Tackle Box.

But I didn't do that.

No, I went the opposite route.  I loaded up and made my way to Canyon Lake, the "Land of the Lurkers", as it is often called.  The last three state records came from this lake.  It's the definition of quality over quantity, and the last choice I should consider for this experiment.



LTB Standard Box:

Lunkerhunt Bento Baits

V&M Baits J-Bug

RAW Panfish Swimbait

Reaction Strike Suspending Jerkbait

Mustad Grip Pin Flippin' Hooks

LTB XL Box:

Lunkerhunt Bento Baits

V&M Baits J-Bug

RAW Panfish Swimbait

Reaction Strike Spybait

Mustad Grip Pin Flippin' Hooks

6th Sense Lures Squarebill

Strike King Swinging Sugar Buzz Bait

Right off the bat I noticed two important things about this box.  One, how well the box is aligned with April's seasonal patters; two, the wide variety of techniques that are covered in the box for all the different conditions you might face in April.  I've seen other company's boxes that cover the season well, but it may only be one or two techniques.  If the conditions are wrong for the box, you won't be catching fish.  With the LTB, regardless of the conditions, something in the box is going to get you a fish!  The only downfall of a box like this is that it makes it difficult to go out and do what I attempted; a fish on each bait.  I tried anyway, and here are the results:

Lunkerhunt Bento Bait:

I rigged up the Bento Bait as a drop shot on a 7ft medium fast spinning rod with a 6:1 gear ratio reel. I use this set up as a finesse flippin' and pitchin' rig in shallow water.  I like to pitch out to shallow targets like rock piles, brush, or this time of year beds.  Just like flipping a Texas rig, I keep my kayak about 20 feet off my target, pitch out the bait and let it sit in the strike zone for a while occasionally giving the rod tip a little shake.  The high gear ratio reel allows me to get the bait back in quickly to set up for the next cast.  Most guys don't think to fish a drop shot this way.  Many think of the drop shot as a deep water technique designed to target suspended fish in the dog days of summer or cool winter afternoons.  But to me, a drop shot is one of the most versatile rigs around.  In fact, it's the only rig I have a dedicated rod for, and it's the only rod that comes with me on every trip regardless of the season.  It straight up catches fish year round.

In the springtime, I like to keep the distance from the weight to the hook relatively short, about 6 inches is as long as I'll go.  This allows the bait to slightly rise and fall just above the bottom, mimicking a small bait fish feeding on the bottom; or in the case of this weekend, slowly float it's way down to check out those tasty bass eggs.

The incredibly realistic detail in these little Bento Baits along with their subtle action drove the bass crazy this trip.  At almost $8.00 for a six-pack, they certainly aren't the most affordable plastics around, but they absolutely made for a fun day on the water.  If you're in the mood to try something new and looking to spend that birthday gift card or seasonal bonus, give these little guys shot and you won't be disappointed.

For more of my thoughts on the drop shot rig, check out my blog HERE.  In it, I cover several ways to fish the rig shallow or deep and in any season.  Can't get enough of the drop shot?  Check out everything you need to know to double the fun with the "donkey shot" HERE.

V&M Creature Bait on Mustad Grip Pin Flippin' Hook:

I was hard for me to put away those little Bento minnows.  I could have fished them all day and kept catching fish, but I came out with a goal, to catch a fish on all the LTB baits.  When I think creature baits and flipping hooks, I think of two things: standing timber, and tullies.  The lakes around here don't have much standing timber and Canyon is no exception.  However, back in Boulder Creek, a motorless-only section of Canyon Lake, there is no shortage of tullies and weed lines.

In the clear water of Arizona's reservoirs, it's easy to see pockets of hard bottoms in the weeds.  During the spring, bass will make their beds in these pockets, usually about two feet in diameter.  The thick weeds provide 360 degrees of protection from predators from the sides, but it leaves the top wide open to flip a bait into from above.

In my opinion, the 4/0 hooks in the box overpowered these relatively small baits.  I could barely fit the bait on the hook correctly.  Luckily, the bass disagree.  As it would turn out, my opinion didn't matter much as it only took 4 or 5 pitches into one of these weed pockets to tempt a 4-pound female to come out of the weeds and slam it on the fall.

RAW Panfish Swimbait:

If there were any bait in the box I didn't think I'd catch a fish on, it would have been this swimbait.  Not because it's not a great bait, but because I've never thrown a swimbait before.  Swimbaits seem to be an entirely different category of fishing out here in Arizona.  They are big fish baits, and they're the kind of baits that you throw all day long looking for that one quality bite.  Oh, and it's an incredibly slow kind of fishing.  I don't have the patience for it on a normal day.  I work a stressful job all week long, on my weekends I want to catch fish.  As many fish as I can.

To sum things up, I didn't know what I was doing with this thing.  It had treble hooks on it like a crankbait, so I threw it like a crankbait.  After the first cast I knew that wasn't going to cut it as it stayed about six inches deep the whole way in (it did look good in the water though, I could have sworn it was a real fish).

After about an hour of experimenting with location, depth, retrieve speed, and everything else I could think of, I headed back to the grass where I caught the V&M fish.  I made a long cast and pulled it in over top of the grass.  Once I was on top of one of these pockets I mentioned earlier I killed the bait and let it sink slowly into the pocket.  And I mean a real slow sink.  If you think a wacky Senko sinks slowly, this thing is going to drive you nuts with its sink rate.  After about 30 seconds of sinking I felt that ever so slight tick of a bait being inhaled by a big bass.  I set the hook and nothing moved!

Throwing those treble hooks into the thick weeds, I knew I was snagged.  As I paddled up to the snag to shake it free, it broke loose itself and my line began to swim away off to deep water.  Fish on!

6th Sense Lures Squarebill:

This is the lure I was most excited about.  I grew up fishing crankbaits and there will always be a special place in my heart for squarebills, the most exciting of all crankbaits!  There's just nothing like burning a bait through the shallows, banging it off a rock or stick up and seeing a five pounder jump out from behind the cover and slam it.

With that said, I don't spend big money on baits.  For one, I don't have big money.  But even if I did, I'm not going to spend more than five bucks on a bait whose purpose is to get deep down into cover and hit stuff.  Snags are far too common, and I'd end up leaving $40 worth of baits buried in the brush piles every trip.

The 6th Sense Lures Squarebill has the hand painted custom look to it that my wallet usually doesn't agree with.  It's also a bigger bait that gets a bit deeper than many other squarebills on the market, a huge benefit to our deep Arizona lakes where 15 feet of water is considered shallow.  This guy runs about 8 feet deep on the 12-pound copolymer I was throwing it on.  That's almost twice as deep as the Strike King squarebills I normally use.  The final thing that got me excited about this bait was it's flat sides.  A flat-sided crank has a tighter vibration than its rounder, fatter friends (imagine the difference in wobble between a Rat-l-trap and a Wiggle Wart).  A wide lazy wobble is great in the summer and winter when the bass are deep and lazy themselves.  But in the spring and fall when the bass are hungry and chasing down their meals, a fast, tight, vibration buzzing past them will really catch the attention of anything that's hungry.

The disappointing thing about this bait is that I didn't get it sooner.  Arizona temps are already in the 90's.  The Spawn is wrapping up and this bait will soon need to be put away until November.

Unfortunately, I was too excited to get this "big fish of the day" picture, that I wasn't thinking and took the lure out of her lip before snapping the picture.  This girl measured 19 1/2 inches and came in just under five pounds:

So what didn't I catch a fish on?  A few things.  There were so many baits jammed into these boxes I knew it was going to be a struggle, especially at a lake like Canyon Lake.  My goal was seven fish on seven baits.  I don't recall ever catching seven fish in one day at Canyon Lake, let alone each on different lures.

As I alluded to at the very beginning of this post, the baits in the box span a wide range of techniques for a wide range of conditions.  It would take a day of very wacky weather to create the conditions to match each bait.  The conditions I faced were very common for Arizona this time of year (and every other time of year in Arizona).  Sunny bluebird skies with just enough of a breeze to put some chop on the water.  It was too much wind for the spybait, and not enough for the jerkbait.  The odds were simply stacked against me.  I threw the jerkbait for about 20 minutes, but I didn't even take the spybait out of it's package (however, the next time I go to Lake Pleasant it will be getting used hard!)

The Buzzbait was the disappointment of the day.  I really thought it would get hit.  The added action the swinging hook gives looks great in the water, and it's one of the loudest, clack-iest, squeal-iest buzz baits I've ever thrown.  If I were to invent an excuse as to why it didn't get bit, I'd have to say it's due to the color.  My Buzzbait confidence is in white, especially for the morning top water bite.  Unfortunately the one I got was black.  I look forward to our upcoming Motorless Summer Nights tournament circuit where I'm sure this thing is going to catch me a top water toad at sundown at least once this summer!

This was my first month with Lucky Tackle Box, and it was a good one!  The result was a Motorless Tournament 3-fish limit of 56 1/2 inches, which will lead to a top 3 finish in just about any kayak fishing tournament you'll find.  As for a 5 fish bag that a traditional bass tournament uses, I added up just about 18 pounds worth of bass which would easily go top 10 in any of the "glitter rocket tournaments" around here.

Do you subscribe to Lucky Tackle Box?  Let us know about your favorite bait from this month's box in the comments!  Not a subscriber?  Check out Lucky Tackle Box today and insert promo code SAVE10 to get your first box for just five bucks!  Or, since LTB is just too cool, you can opt for the free lure option by entering FREELURE at checkout.

And as always, tight lines!