Had my Ohio friend over for some fishing at my BOW. He just about melted in the heat, but had a blast catching LMB on a spinnerbait.
Despite high temps, fish still take feed eagerly. Sadly, Big CNBG got mostly wiped out by fungus last fall. I haven't seen one exceed 7 inches this year, while last year the bigguns were over 8 inches
On the plus side, population of small CNBG has exploded & YOY are everywhere. Last year smaller CNBG were very scarce due to poor recruitment.
LMB are naive about lures & extremely aggressive. Noticed that the side with 3 feeders was MUCH better than side with only 1, and I don't think it is just that LMB take feed. They are also targeting the CNBG that come to be fed!
Bass were heavy. Most seemed to be in the 15 to 18 inch range, around 2.5 to 4 lb. Very stocky, husky, hard fighters. No sign of parasites or fungus. Most of what we caught were feed trained N LMB, I'm sure. The overpopulation of small LMB has been cut sharply since last fall, likely by the N LMB stocked back then.
The good side of the lake not only has more feeders, it also gets evening shade from the pine trees. The other side gets shade in the morning, but not after. That could be a factor, especially when fishing in the evening.
PS I'm gonna mostly shut down LMB fishing for a few months, water is getting too hot & they fight HARD. Also, of course, I don't want them to get lure shy! But I do have an idea: Take the hooks off a topwater Jitterbug & cast that. I caught several nice LMB on topwaters, awesome to see the blowups, but the double trebles were tough to get out quickly. Going hookless means having the fun of seeing the hits without harming LMB nor teaching them (and their progeny) to be passive.
