Real late DVL report
Well, this post was meant to come out last Tuesday night but my phone/camera decided to take a dump on me and when I finally got over to Verizon, I could only salvage 3 pics from Tuesday and lost all 114 other pics on my phone. So with that being said I'm just going to post a "general bite" post from the last 3 weeks with a little more detail about last Tuesday.
It's wintertime and the notoriously tough DVL LMB winter-bite is in full swing. Over the last 3 weeks there has been basically 3 bites, a shallow bite that includes topwater early then moves into a very slow and quiet finesse and fin bite once the sun comes up. A deep bite off points and offshore structure, and a swim-bait bite. Due to barotrauma issues with the deep fish we choose to bang the shallow bite which is definitely a grind. There are plenty of fish to be found but getting them to bite requires a very stealthy approach and whichever bait you choose, it must be presented very slowly. We search for pockets of warmer water with structure like rocks and wood. Lately, I've been throwing an s-wave swimbait and have had a ton of followers and more than a few hits and bumps by some giant pigs but haven't been able to stick one yet. Last Tuesday I had the biggest LMB I've ever seen at DVL follow my bait. I saw it from about 30ft away and watched it tail my bait, it got to within about 15ft of the boat then I stopped the bait and the bait did a 180 looking right at the giant fish, the fish just sat there and stared right back at it so I twitched it then began a slow retrieve in which the pig followed it another 5 ft then just turned around and bailed, gahhh, my frigging heart was just pounding. This fish clearly was a teener man, truly a monster. I'm convinced that I now need to gear up and start throwing the big swimbaits.
Any way, last Tuesday I stuck 6 LMB's with this fat little 3lber caught on topwater being the biggest;
For the last three weeks Stripey has been hitting the top in the late afternoon so we've been tying on our A-rigs and dragging them around with some fairly good success. They've been showing up about the last hour and a half before closing randomly blowing the surface at different spots around midlake so we trolled using an x-pattern across the lake. The following pics were taken last Tuesday. I stuck 3 in the last 45mins of the day. The first two pics were taken just before my phone/camera stopped functioning correctly. The others were taken with my son's phone after I got home;
And this pic's for the hardcore Stripey guys;
There's a bite to be found at the Jewel, you just have to work at it. Be stealthy, be quite, make long casts and work it slow and you should be able to stick fish.
Shallow baits used;
spitting/walker topwater
t-rigged soft plastics using an unpegged 3/16 black bullet weight and a 3/0 ewg hook
3/8-1/2oz jigs using natural colors
My swimbait is a 6 3/4in River to Sea s-wave. All Stripey were caught on an Alabama rig...
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Originally Posted by cutbait
