Feelin' Lucky: May 2016
"Feelin' Lucky" is a series of blogs posted on a monthly basis with the help of the folks at Lucky Tackle Box. The point of these posts are 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 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.
Saguaro Lake: At 1,264 acres, Saguaro Lake is the fourth, and final, reservoir formed along the Salt River just east of Phoenix, Arizona. Saguaro's steep canyon walls and average depth of 90 feet offer many challenges to bass fishermen searching for a big bite. However, in the Spring bass move up to the shallow channel swings and coves to spawn where they can be caught easily on reaction baits of all shapes and sizes before returning to the deep cool water of their summer residencies.
May's Lucky Tackle Box is jammed full of awesome spring reaction baits. Yo-Zuri's 3DB Lipless Crankbait and the BD Series Spinner Bait can be worked quickly while covering lots of water fast to locate areas of active fish. Once you find some fish you can slow down and zero in on the larger females with the Olympic Jointed Swimbait, or Biwaa's 3-inch Ultra Hog. Toss the Fishing Physics #Geniusbait out to spawning fish on beds and you can have a hayday pulling in the males guarding beds (If that's your thing, of course). My surprise bait in this box is the Rick Clunn Squarebill, another great shallow water search bait.
As great as this box is, I knew from the second I opened it that I was going to have a real tough time catching fish with it. While across the country bass are spawning and feeding shallow in May, that's not the case here in the desert reservoirs of Arizona. Here in our hot and dry climate, the bass move up to spawn starting in February. By late April, most of the fish have already made their way to the cooler deeper water. When I arrived to the lake at sunrise, the water temperature was 77 degrees and the bluegill had taken over any abandoned bass bed. The bass were well on their way out of the shallows heading to their summer homes.
I have seen rumors on social media and forums around the net that LTB is going to begin shipping boxes out based on region. I sure hope this is true, as it cannot come soon enough! Spawn just finished and this box already has me looking forward to next spring when I'll get more use out of these baits.
Well, let's dive into the baits and see how I managed to do...
Yo-Zuri 3DB Lipless Crankbait:
A red lipless crank is one of my favorite baits during the prespawn. Paralleling the bank, keeping that bait running right along with the first drop off to deep water will catch you some big prespawn mommas all day long. However, there are a few issues you run into during the summer transition:
1. The cray fish that it imitates changes to a green, or sometimes blue later in the spring.
2. The bass aren't in the mood to chase down their meal after spawning, they want it slow and right in their face.
3. As temperatures warm up, the coves begin to fill with thick weeds which are no fun for the treble hooks. Ripping a lipless through the grass is one thing, but thick matted weeds is a different story.
I did my best slowly yo-yo-ing this bait along the submerged weed lines and burning it across the top of the grass trying to tempt those post spawners out of the grass to eat, but to no avail. I think a shad or bluegill color may have stood a better chance of getting hit. Although this bait is ready to fish right out of the package, I wanted to use everything in the box so I put the Mustad Ultra Point treble hooks on it. The short shank on these hooks made it a bit easier to pull through the heavy grass and weeds.
I didn't open this bait yet, I'm saving it for something special. Hopefully I'll have good things to report on it next month when I return from a week long trip in Colorado.
Rick Clunn Squarebill:
Another one still in the package. The weeds were simply too far along in their plot to take over the world, and the window for any potential reaction bite is just too narrow this time of year. I chose the Yo-Zuri bait because I knew that, despite the color, it would stand a better chance in the submerged weeds. This guy will probably stay in it's package until October or November as the weeds die off revealing the rocky bottoms and standing timber that's currently hidden away.
Oh how lucky this particular Lucky Tackle Box was, I got a second one thrown in by mistake! Although I'm not entirely sure what fish this bait is supposed to imitate, it's a cool bait! It's a sort of hybrid bait between the panfish bait in last month's box, and a squarebill. I didn't throw it a lot for two reasons: 1. The weeds, again, those dang weeds... 2. There's nothing in Saguaro Lake that looks like this; maybe a green sunfish, or possibly a yellow bass, but not quite enough to give me much confidence in it.
I'm curious if any of my Arizona readers have had luck at Lake Pleasant with something like this. It sort of resembles a small striper. Tossed around the shallows in the spring or fall you may have some luck at a big largemouth or non-schooling striper. If you have, let us know in the comments!
Fishing Physics's #Geniusbait:
A picture is worth a thousand words, so in lieu of my thousand word criticism, I'll just leave you with that picture above.
I do, however, want to point out one positive about this bait; the scent! Despite the lack of many fish catching qualities of this bait, it still attracted the attention of the few fish I could still see up shallow and I think that had to do with the scent. My package was the "earth worm" scent, and it was a smell that I've yet to come across in any other soft... or not so soft... plastic.
I experimented quite a bit with this bait trying to get bit on this worm. It's designed as a wacky worm like the ever so popular Senko, but when that failed I had to get creative. I tried it deep on a Carolina rig, on a mojo rig in the submerged grass, on a shakey head, and even cutting it in half for a drop shot, and Ned rig presentation. With this color, LTB had bed fishing on their minds, and I'm positive that if there had been any bass up on beds, this would have gotten the job done. Especially with that earth worm scent!
Biwaa Ultra Hog:
I don't know why this is called an "Ultra Hog". That sounds like a big beefy bait. At 3 inches, this is more of a "micro-finesse piglet". That's my only criticism of this bait though! I saved this bait for last because even at high noon I knew I could find a bite with it as the only bait in the box I have confidence in during this summer transition. A small, compact, creature bait like this can be used in a variety of ways from flipping into dense cover, to dropped onto deep underwater structure.
To start, I rigged the Ultra Hog on a dropshot set up to fish the submerged grass lines in about 12 feet of water. Ultimately, that would be the only rig I would need, because after six hours of frustration with the other baits, I hooked into this solid Saguaro Lake bass on the second cast.
Before we wrap up, I want to take a moment and talk about dropshot and the length from the hook to the weight. As you can see in the picture above, I started with a length of about 12 inches. That length will vary quite a bit depending on location, bait type, and season. It should also change often as you are zoning in on where the fish are in the same way that you would change out crankbaits every few casts until you find the one the fish want. Way too often I see guys throwing the same presentation for hours on end without any bites. Doing the same thing over and over again while hoping to expect different results. No. Change something. Change the size of the worm, change the lengths of the leader, don't re-elect incumbents who have a history of not getting anything done in Washington, change the color of the bait, slow down, speed up. Just as we demand our congress men and women should have term limits, our failing bass presentations should have limits as well. So change something, anything!
For more on all the baits in this month's box check out Lucky Tackle Box HERE, and for in depth how-to videos subscribe to the LTB YouTube channel HERE! You have about a week left to sign up for LTB in time to receive June's box, so get over there now to sign up and start feelin' lucky this summer!
Tight Lines!
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