June 2
My first experience night fishing for bass occurred on June 2nd. We started our trip around 6:30pm, this gave us some time to check out the water and scout the lake a little. Shawn wasted very little time, landing nearly 20 bass on a popper before dark including one an ounce shy of four pounds.
I didn't do nearly as well, but I did pick up a few fish right before dark. At about 9pm we met up at the mouth of a small creek arm and went over our game plan. Shawn said that dark colored Jigs worked well, and to be honest that's all I needed to hear. I tied on a mop jig and chigger craw combo in blue and black and started working the banks....or at least where I thought the banks where. It was dark and all I could see is a little reflection off of a few lights from nearby houses. Some casts went a little long and landed in trees or in someones yard, others were several feet off of the bank. We kept our kayaks about 20 feet off of the banks and flipped our jigs along the rocky shorelines. It didn't take long for me to find a fish, a 15" largemouth that fell for the jig mere inches off of the bank. Ten minutes later Shawn had found another good fish, and again on the jig and craw combo.
We continued to work down the bank toward the deep end of the lake. Shawn landed another half a dozen bass behind me over the next two hours. I was starting to think he had switched to some secret bait, he had landed over 20 fish to my 3 on the trip. To be fair, he was comfortable with night fishing already and this was his favorite lake.
At 11:30pm I finally landed my second bass of the evening. I put my jig right on the bank and silently drug my jig into the water. I gave the jig a hop and immediately felt the bite, I reeled up the slack and set the hook. After brief battle I leaned over the side of the kayak to grab the fish. At first I thought it was in the 16-17" size class, but the lack of daylight made judging fish very difficult. The fish hit the hawg trough, and amazingly it went 18.5".
June 25
Wednesday Shawn sent me a text and asked me what I was doing later that night, which meant he was ready to head back out to the lake and give the bass another shot. I told him I got off work at three and could meet him anytime after that. After a few texts back and forth with Amanda, she informed me that she didn't feel like fishing for bass. I told Shawn that I was going to meet up with him, but Amanda didn't feel like heading out. One thing lead to another and we somehow got Russ roped into night bass fishing. Now to be fair, Russ isn't a "Bass Guy", and he'll be the first to admit it. He just hasn't quite had the success needed to fuel the desire to pursue bass fishing. When it comes to his favorite things to fish for, largemouth are most likely at the bottom of his list (Behind snapping turtles). Needless to say Shawn and I were both surprised that he was willing to make the trip.
Russ and I met up in Peebles and then drove to meet Shawn. From there we started unloading the yaks, and that's when we heard a rumble in the distance. I quickly checked the weather on my phone and discovered that we were getting ready to get hit by a small pop up thunderstorm. It appeared that we had 30 minutes before the storm hit so we paddled across the lake and began fishing. Twenty minutes later we were paddling back to the beach as fast as we could. When we got within 5 yards of the bank it started raining pretty hard. If we would have waited another minute longer to make the paddle across the lake we would have been soaked. We quickly ducked under a shelter house and started talking about fishing. Shawn mentioned that a hard rain may shut the bite down during the night. The only real way to find out was to stick it out and see, and that's exactly what we did. After the rain subsided Shawn told us that he wanted to fish some mid lake points tonight so we made the paddle down the lake and started working the banks. We had about an hour of daylight left so I went to work with a popper, Russ tried a spinnerbait, and Shawn tossed a popper as well. We managed a dozen bass between us before the daylight faded. Everyone seemed to have similar sucess before dark, each landing 3-4 apiece. At dark we all met up and went over the game plan, Shawn was to fish one side of the lake and Russ and I were going to take the other side.
At first I took the lead and Russ followed 30 yards behind me. I switched to jig and started working the banks....and eventually fell victim to a overhanging tree. While I was retying my jig Russ passed by and continued working the banks with his black spinnerbait. On his way by I asked him how he was doing, I had heard him catch a few fish but I was unaware of the size. He told me that he had caught a half dozen but none of them were over 15". I went back to retying my bait and he continued to work the banks. Before I could even finish my knot I heard Russ catch yet another fish, it appeared that Russ was going to have a good night.
Eventually I retied my jig and went back to working the banks. The bite seemed much hotter for Russ as I failed to catch a fish in the first hour after dark. At about 11pm I paddled up to a small cove off of the main lake. At the end of the cove was a bright dock light that illuminated the cove. I kept my distance and made very long casts, putting my jig on the bank each cast and then dragging it quietly into the water. On the first three casts I landed a fish....14", 15", and 14.5" respectively. Now they weren't giants, but I was glad to have finally broke my slump. At this point I did start to notice a pattern, If I tossed my jig on the bank and drug it into the water I was much more likely to get a bite. The splash that a normal cast would make must have been making the fish weary. With this in mind I began targeting areas where I could make a clean cast onto the bank.
A few minutes later I landed a solid 17.5" largemouth, now it still wasn't what I was looking for but it was definitely a step in the right direction. I had recently purchased a camera mount for my rail system so I decided to give it a shot and see if I could snap a picture on my own since Russ was no longer within sight.
Now that found out what the fish were looking for I started picking up a fish every 10 minutes or so. One one occasion tings didn't quite go as planned. I made a good cast onto a well manicured lawn and then drug my jig over some rip rap into the water. Immediately there was a massive swirl where my jig had entered the water. Before I could even set the hook, the fish began pulling drag and leaping out of the water. Now the reason he was leaping out of the water was because my line had found a rock and as he picked up the jig. He immediately felt the hook and made a run parallel to the bank. My drag started slipping and I could feel the line rubbing a rock, and that's when the line went slack. Twenty pound braid was no match for the rip rap bank and the tug of a good bass. The bass made three more jumps after the line had broke, I assumed that he was trying to free the jig from its mouth. With each jump my heart sank a little deeper into my chest, I was sick to my stomach. That fish would have most certainly been a new personal best. I put my head down and reached back into my milk crate and grabbed my jig box. I quickly tied on another black jig and started fishing again.
Twenty minutes later I had yet another heart break. This fish hit the jig the same way that the other bass did. As soon as the jig entered the water I saw the swirl and set the hook, however, the hook up wasn't very solid as the fish was swimming right toward me. As I reeled the line up to the fish the weight of the fish grew. This was another good fish. I reeled down and kept steady pressure, eventually it surfaced at the side of my kayak. I turned the head lamp on and leaned over to grab the fish when he decided to make another run. This time he ran under the back end of my kayak and that's when I lost the weight of the fish. Now I handled this loss a little better than the last one, simply because I knew exactly what I lost. It was a bass in the 19-20" range, 3.5-4.5lbs. I shook it off and went back to fishing.
A couple casts later I get a text from Russ.............."21". That's all the text said, So I replied 21 fish or 21". I kinda assumed that 21 fish would be more believable than 21", since I had nearly 20 fish on the night myself. My phone went off again....."inches." I knew that his personal best largemouth was just under 19" so this was a big deal. I picked up the phone and tried to call Russ.....no answer. I called a second time, still no answer. At this point I assumed that Shawn had paddled over and was taking pictures and that's why he couldn't answer his phone. I only later discovered that he only got a picture of the fish on the board and then released it. He said he yelled for me but he didn't want to yell any louder as to wake the property owners up. So instead of dragging the fish down the bank to find me for a picture he decided to let it go.
A half an hour later I hooked into another fish, again right off of the bank. This fish felt very similar to the last fish I lost under the kayak. However, this time around luck was on my side. I had gotten a solid hook set and brought the bass to the surface rather quickly. It went 19", just enough to dull the pain of losing the giant earlier.
I continued working the bank down toward the beach until I ran into Russ and Shawn talking out in the middle of the lake. We were only 30 yards from the beach where we had launched from so I assumed that everyone was ready to go. The fish were biting, but it was well after 2am and Shawn had work in the morning. I paddled out to meet them and we began talking about our fish. Of course I told them my fish stories of the two that got away. We talked for a few minutes and then paddled in and called it a day.
June 27
Friday after work I decided that I was going to take what I had learned from fishing with Shawn and from fishing his favorite lake at night and apply it to a lake where I live. This particular lake is large and heavily pressured so I figured it would be a good place to test what I have learned. I got off work and rounded up a fishing partner for the evening, Jake, my little brother. He was hesitant at first, as I was my first trip but I assured him that he would enjoy fishing for bass at night. After some persuading he was in. I went back home loaded up the gear and took a short nap. At 5:30pm I woke up and drove over to pick him up. We got on the water around 7pm and began working a large creek arm of the lake. I remembered Shawn telling me that he liked to fish shallow water near deep water at night. This particular creek arm had water depths of 20 feet in most places so I figured it would be a good place to start. I gave Jake a Texas rigged chigger craw combo and told him to start working the banks. I alternated between a sinko and a popper until dark.
By dark Jake had me outnumbered 3-0, but that was all about to change. I switched to a jig and chigger craw combo and began working the banks. Before long I had evened the score out to 3-3, all of which were in the 12-15" range. By 11pm we had completely worked one side of the creek arm from the shallow end all the way out into the main lake. At that point I told Jake we could either, (1) load the kayaks up and go hit another spot on the lake, or (2) work the other side of the creek arm. He told me he didn't care, so to avoid packing up the kayaks and unloading them again I decided to paddle across the creek arm and work the steeper banks on the other side. It didn't take long to find out that we had been fishing the wrong side all night, as Jake quickly landed a half dozen fish behind me. As we worked down the bank Jake extended his lead, eventually stopping somewhere around 15-5.
We got to one section where there were a few fallen trees right under the water, fearing that Jake may tip his kayak if he hit one I decided to yell over to Jake and point out the trees. Meanwhile my jig was resting on the bottom of the lake mere inches off of the bank. After I warned Jake about the tree I gave my jig a hop and let it fall back down........"THUMP" I reeled up the slack and set a solid hook. The fish fought down for the first 20 seconds, so I yelled over to Jake that I had hooked into a nice channel cat. I fought the fish for 40 seconds or more before it started string the surface of the water as it swam back and forth, at that point I turned my head lamp on to see if I could make a positive identification. It wasn't a channel cat, in fact it was exactly what I was hoping for..
After we released the bass I looked over at Jake and I told him, "That's why you night fish for bass!" He couldn't deny the fact that we were catching more and bigger fish at night than we did during the day, not to mention the fact that we were the only ones bass fishing on one of the largest lakes in southern Ohio. The fact that we didn't have to fish in 95 degree weather, didn't have to deal with pleasure boaters, etc...was all just a bonus. Jake had seen enough and even though he had nearly tripled then number of bass I had caught on the evening, he wanted to take the lead. (Meaning he worked the bank in front of me instead of vice versa) We worked our way down the bank until we reached the end of the creek arm, at this point is was a little after midnight. I told Jake we should probably fish back down the bank we had just fished, we were catching fish and there was still a lot of activity on the bank.
We worked back down the bank and eventually made our way out into the main lake. We picked up another 6 or 7 fish each and even one at 17.5". At this point it was 3am and we were both satisfied with our trip. We paddled over to the boat ramp and made our way back home.
Conclusion
In the last month I have night fished for bass 4 times, one of which didn't make the report because it was just an average trip....lots of 14-16" fish but no big ones. So out of 4 trips I witnessed a 20" bass or larger caught 3/4 trips, not to mention the countless 16-19" fish that we caught along the way too. If you haven't tried night fishing for bass yet or just haven't had the success that you wanted, I would recommend heading back out and giving it a shot. My learning curve was rather short since I had the opportunity to head out and fish with Shawn, someone who I would consider to be an expert in this field. And to be fair he probably drew off of his fathers experience, who is also an avid night fisherman. As I mentioned above, I'm no expert so this is just a compilation of my reports.....not a guide to night fishing. Shawn is working on that and we will have it up shortly for you. In the meanwhile don't hesitate to head out after the sun goes down with a jig and creature bait, buzzbait, or spinnerbait and see if you can find a few fish of your own.
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