This past week I had several trips out on Butler Chain, with the weather playing games with us, we watched bass going from beds to heading back to deep water drop offs. Several bass this week had been caught off beds in various lakes on the chain, using mostly Junebug lizards to get them. Lake Down and Little Lake Down early on in the week seemed to be the hot ticket to catching bass, in and along the grass beds as well as off of bed. Most of the beds spotted were in 2 foot to up to 8 foot of water.
After two days of a slight cool down, bass were pushed off the beds but you could still see and catch them as they were still in the general area of the beds, just cruising around, occasionally cruising thru the bed. A few days we had catches of 20 bass using nothing but weighted Gitem Shads and working them real slowly, as the cool down came, the bite did drop off but you still got your catch, just working very slowly.
Chris came down from New York and had some descent action on Butler, as he caught the tail end of the cool down, asking me to also fish with him, I got him up on the weighted Shads, which he had said he had never used them with a weight, I had tossed to shoreline and Chris made a cast close to the boat to check the action, I had landed a nice 2 ½ pounder, Chris had made his second cast right behind me, and instantly got hammered, and the fight was on, landing a very nice bass just shy of 5 pounds. The bite was very a light one, with you getting light taps, you had to let them take the bait and swim off with it some before you set the hook, other than the very aggressive one that Chris had gotten.
White spinner baits and a 10" Junebug worm were also catching bass, spinner baits had to be slow rolled and worked in and around grass beds, big key was having some type of drop off close by or other types of cover such as eel grass or hydrilla. Lakes that were fished this week on the chain were Little Lake Down, Lake Down, Lake Chase, Lake Tibet and Lake Sheen.
Till my next report, tight lines and great fishing!!
