DVL is still producing! Bass, Cats, & Carp

[OG MUDBONE]

Rented a boat with a buddy on Thursday 9/3, the water level is most certainly down quite a bit from the last time I hit the lake. Although it's sad to see the water level so low I find that it makes it much easier to fish and pick apart the lake, from a rental with no electronics anyway. The steady dropping of the water has also revealed many new and interesting areas to fish. Lots of newly exposed rockpiles and shoals scattered throughout the lake. For those renting boats watch out for these! None of them are marked with buoys, almost ran into a couple shoals at full throttle because a lot of them are located far from the shoreline in unexpected areas. As for the fishing, the morning started out great the weather was absolutely perfect, cloudy and foggy with a nice breeze that stuck around all morning. The grass has really grown thick throughout the lake and that's what we concentrated on fishing. Actually 100% of the bass we visibly saw were in or near grass, at one point we cruised along the west dam and made it halfway and didn't see a single bass up shallow. Had a blast picking them off on spinnerbaits over the tops of the pockets of grass, fished just below the surface almost like a buzzbait. They were absolutely crushing it! Double silver willow blade in bluegill colors was the ticket. My buddy who's still pretty new to bass fishing stuck with the senko and fluke all morning and had good success. Majority of the bass caught were 1.5 - 3lbs. I was fortunate to get into some nicer ones, one on a hollow body swimbait and two ripping a lipless crank through the grass. Also saw what I'm assuming is a fox? Little dude took off before we could get a good picture. Fun day for sure! Had the entire lake to ourselves, only saw two other boats all day. So for those who were wondering... DVL is still alive and kickin! Also included in the pics is a nice bass and channel cat caught a couple weeks ago on a piece of hot dog. Thing kicked my *** on the ultralight rod and was literally a second away from pulling the rod in the water lol, caught it all on the gopro.



















Shore report for Friday 9/4, got to the lake at sunrise and opted to hit the western shoreline. Started out throwing cranks and caught a couple on the silent 5xd. I incidentally managed to even catch a channel cat on the crank, has happened to me a couple times this year boy do they smack it hard! I started ripping a lipless crank through the grass and as I was popping it out of the grass I felt like I got hung up, then all of a sudden line starts peeling off my reel like crazy. But as I was fighting it I could feel that something felt funny, everytime it made a run I could feel the vibrations of it's tail kicking hard. Which led me to believe it was somehow tail wrapped or foul hooked. I fought it for what felt like a good 5-10mins and when I finally got a look at it turns out it wasn't a bass after all but one strong pissed off carp lol. Sure enough it was foul hooked in it's tail, not in the meaty part of the tail but about two inches from the very tip of it's tail which absolutely amazed me that the hook didn't rip through. Beautiful looking fish and lots of fun nonetheless definitely got my heart pumping. Ended the morning with some dropshot bass and called it a day. Shore fishing was a little tougher, there's not much structure that I could see in the shallows specially seeing as how the first two coves no longer exist. Looks like weather will be in the 100's this week so I'll most likely wait til next week to get back out, good luck out there guys!

[JV]

Great report & pics.