I decided to try the night bite. It was about 80* and with a very light breeze. Shortly after launching, I started hearing the tell tale sounds of bass feeding. To be honest it sounded more violent and frequent than I was used to hearing at other places. Started with the black jitterbug and within the first couple casts, I ended up with this little guy. I knew it was a smallmouth because it jumped about 5 times.
I unhooked him and sent him on his way. The very next cast I hooked up with this largemouth in the same area.
The next cast, I lost my black jitterbug. I remembered reading Jibbs posts about buying lures in threes, and I actually stopped at Wildlife Taxidermy with the intention of buying 2 more... no dice, they didn't have any. So I lost my only black jitterbug.
I didn't loose it how you might expect. The braided line is pretty slick, and when you retrieve lures on a spinning reel without a lot of pressure, the line doen't load on the reel properly. I went to cast and the line got hung up on itself on the reel... those two fish had already done a number on loosening my improved clench, so the lure just went flying to god knows where. I tried to find it with my spot light... as I was motoring along to where I though it was... I heard a bass hit it. lol... too bad the line was all screwed because that would have been bass number 3. I tied on one of my other jitterbugs and the fish just weren't interested for some reason. I decided to take it out of the water and dry it off. I had a black magic marker, and I tried to color the belly of it a little bit. Then I hooked up with a small, but my best smallmouth of the year.
I decided to try some of those zoom frogs. I bought them at Wildlife since I couldn't find the jitterbugs. I figured I could toss them up into the weeds. I wanted 4/0 hooks... they didn't have any. So I settled on 3/0. Have I mentioned that Wildlife Taxidermy is messing up by not stocking stuff? NO BLACK JITTERBUGS OR 4/0 HOOKS... HOW MUCH MORE BASIC COULD YOU GET?
Anyway. 2nd cast with the frog and something blew up on it. I missed it. It was the same problem CaptSpike and I had before of getting that hook through the meat of the frog. Even with that groove, it has been hard to get a good hook set. I cast again and I get a hit in about the same spot. I gave the fish at least 1 whole second and slammed it. Finally got a good hook set in the lower lip and my last landed bass of the night.
All in all a fun night. I would do it again tonight, but with the weather rolling in, I don't think they'd be biting and I don't think I'd have a lot of fun. I plan on bass fishing more this fall... it's just more fun to me right now. And if bass fishing only gets better like a lot of people say, then it makes my decision pretty easy I guess.
