Great Afternoon Bite

Norm wanted to battle some more of those mean smallies so we headed to the lake that I had fished with Christiane on the weekend in search of Moby. I also had to get the brakes checked out again, so I thought it would be a good trade off. Unfortunately they were still getting way too hot to be safe while driving long distance, or even traffic for that matter. We hit the water in sunny conditions and air temps in the low 50’s that were expected to climb only into the 60’s today. Winds were out of the S/W at around 10 knots and eventually were to increase up to 15 or 20 later in the afternoon. I immediately went back to the area I had seen so many bass the last time and ironically, they weren’t anywhere to be found. We fished it for almost an hour covering plenty of water to find the schools, but came up short. I fanned out and searched a larger radius right into deeper water and still came up empty. Here today, gone tomorrow! We decided that a change was in order and I headed to deeper water for a drag and hopefully some fish! Norm wasted no time locking up on the first one in 23 feet of water and I thought we were finally going to get them. Once again it didn’t happen as there were only two others landed in over an hour, with several drifts. Oh they were down there as I would mark one here and one there, but not in the mood I guess. I packed it in and made a long run with Norm & Buddha to another area in 3 footers to a flat and had Norm chunk a spinnerbait over open water. Within the first few casts he got violated and finally was tight to a bruiser. This fish went to the air several times and eventually threw the hooks right at the boat on its final aerial, leaving Norm speechless. Definitely in the high fours and meaner than a pit bull! He got crushed a few more times and landed another one in the high fours along with one slightly smaller in the next drift and then it died. I tried dragging a tube in the area and had to go to a heavier than usual one just to feel bottom in the 3 foot rollers we were in. Eventually after a few more follows without commitment, we relocated once again and Norm got hammered. This too was in the high fours as we watched it surf the waves all the way to the net. Wow, another hog on the blades and worthy of the livewell for later pics. By now I was throwing a jerkbait in hopes of bringing in a school and locating more of those big brown bass. Ironically I was only able to get into the smaller ones of 3 pounds or so all the while watching Norm continue to hammer the bigguns. It was getting even rougher where we were so I decided to try back where we had started in hopes of finding the mother load once more. After a while in this area without any results again I began the wide search and finally located what I had been looking for. When we finally found them they were huge and aggressive! Norm was having a ball and his faithful companion Buddha was too! We were watching some real giants come out of nowhere and just slam into the lures with such force that they were twisting the crap out of his lure. Big brown bass busting blades, gotta love that! In the last couple of hours we got into plenty of fish and all of them were in the 4 to 5 pound range making the day a phenomenal one for size. There wasn’t anything that he caught other than the deep jigged bass under 4 pounds. What a day and what a spectacular end to the day as well. We finished with a real bang and we never gave up until we found the monsters. It’s too bad that we went from a real high to a low when I had to pull over on the way home and wait almost 45 minutes for the smoke to clear from my trailer brakes. Looks like I’ll have to find an alternate source to get them fixed before I completely break down & have to be towed!!