Funny you mention fishing the creek with beetle spins. One of my favorite things to do is sneak along the creek tossing black beetlespinners into the deeper holes.
When I top water fish the weeds in mid summer the bass always have crawdads in them. No riprap on the damn. It's dirt.
I wonder how many of those you caught were actually spotted bass?
I think you should check them this summer when you are fishing topwater again.
P.S. Catching bass on topwater lures during calm evenings are some of my best childhood memories. My father used to have to tell us to actually slow down on the hookset. Sometimes the bass would try to hit so hard they would mostly miss the lure and we would yank it away from them! Fortunately, they were so aggressive, you could usually get them on the next cast if you threw it into the same spot.
