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:
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!
