Reed Bustin' Bass

   I'm a little late with this entry, for that I apologize. All this work and nice weather doesn't make blog entries easy!
   This entry is relative to my last enry, "Extreme Backwoods Panfish." This is about day number 2 of that weekend with Andy Mott and fishing northern Itasca county.

   Being that we are older than we used to be when we started fishing together, we needed to have a much easier day. We chose to fish largemouth bass on one of our favorite lakes. This lake has a public access so, that makes it a whole lot easier! Busting the reed beds for these largemouth bass is something that we taught ourselves many years ago. As far as we know, we are the only ones that take advantage of the excellent fishing these reed beds have to offer!

  The presentation for this type of cover is quite simple. 1/2 - 3/4oz spinnerbaits with willow leaf blades, 7' heavy action casting rod, heavy monofilament line (17lb - 25lb). I used to use braid but, found that I was breaking spinnerbait arms trying to winch these bass out of the thick cover.

   Casting the spinnerbaits with the "grain" of the reeds is important. When I say "grain", I mean the direction the reeds are bent over. This allows the spinnerbait to stay consistant in the water, without hopping out because the line is riding on top of the reeds. On this particular lake the blade color can vary. At times the wind can cause the water to turn up and make it cloudy because it it is shallow, 5-7ft deep. When the water is cloudy we found that colored blades like chartruese or orange work very well! Using willowleaf style blades is important. The willow leaf shape allows the the bait to slip through the dense cover much easier than a colorado blade.



   Reed bed fishing is fun for another reason...it's a multi-species affair! Often pike of all sizes lurk in the beds, along with bluegills, rockbass, smallmouth and the occassional waleye! Although we didn't get any smallies, walleyes, or bluegills, we did find some rockies and pike!

   Bustin' the reeds is always a good time and usually ends with a nice workout! happy hooksets to you all and next up I will tell ya all about the Sheepshead...another fun fish that gets no respect!