Jackson and I have been on a lily pad tour for the last two days. Thursday we went to Lake Monticello and Friday we fished Cane Creek near Star City. At Monticello a few bass were in the pads but not enough for me to go back just to fish a Ribbit. The pads were blooming and beautiful.

We started out with Ribbits and had the early morning topwater bite going but not very strong. There were a good many airballs and misses until the 4 pound + FOD came along and tried to kill it. That’ll get your pressure up.

After the topwater bite gave out we tried swimbaits and caught a few. I had one put the scold on me. When it bit the line seemed to be around a root and when I set the hook it broke. The fish then jumped three times trying to shake the bait out of its mouth.  We tried a variety of different baits. Here’s one Jackson caught on a small Strike King crankbait.

Note the bait hanging in front of his glasses. It seemed we could catch the bass with the swimbaits on the secondary points. One fish had a large worm and a hook in its mouth. The large worm was actually down its throat and the only way we knew it was there was the line was still attached.  The fish was saved from gastric distress. We caught 7 at Monticello, 5 of which were three pounds or better. On to Cane Creek.

This accidental photo gives an idea what Cane Creek looks like. I was handing the phone/camera to Jackson when it went off and took this photo. The first fish was caught on a spinnerbait out in the stumps. The frog bite was again rather slow early but around 10:30 got hot.  Our hookup ratio was good to start but soon went South. It quickly got almost comical as we lost fish almost any way you could imagine. During the major period the fish were hitting the baits so hard sometimes to miss completely. The drought finally broke and we caught a few, this being one of them.

The next photo is of one I caught that had some black markings. The black circle behind the eye reminded me of the dog in the “Little Rascals”.

A true black bass. After the frog bite died we caught a few more in the stump fields with a Booyah spinnerbait. We finished the day with 12 and a FOD of 3  – 12.