Unexpected Bite

I had been looking forward to the annual early spring creek-channel-jig bite on my favorite nearby largemouth reservoir.  After our smallmouth river adventure last week, I had promised Bryan this would be great opportunity to field test his homemade jigs on largemouth.  Just over a week ago there had been a thick cover of ice on the lake.  With ice gone, I had assumed water temperature would be in the low to mid 40s for our scheduled fishing trip - perfect for dragging jigs over channel-edge stumps in the headwaters area of the impoundment.  Driving to the lake, piles of snow still lingered in shady areas.  But once on the water, the temperature guage registered 50 degrees! What a surprise!

Still, that was a surface reading and calendar said March -- it seemed to me that jigs on channel wood should be the ticket.  Within about 15 minutes I boated a 16 incher on a jig and pork chunk -- not exactly the size of bass I had promised Bryan.  For another 30 minutes we worked the drops from 8 to 14 feet without a bite.  

The very noticeable swirls with occasional skipping minnows we attributed to feeding crappie.  But we remarked some of the swirls were rather large.  Finally, we investigated the shallower flats.  Bryan tied on one of Sebile's Soft Swimmers while I picked up my lipless rattle bait rod.  An 18-incher that pounced on a 'Trap was quickly landed.  But Bryan's next cast doubled his heavy action swimbait rod!  With a 5.5 pound bass in the well for photos, Bryan nailed another near five pounder on the next cast.  Testing of Bryan's jigs had to wait for another day as we made the switch to swimbaits in four feet of water...