Well I had so much fun fishing on Saturday in the cold rain that my partner & I headed for Wapogasset.  We were on the lake a little earlier, probably around 7:30am.  Only 3 boats at the access, not much for company on the lake.  Once again, I was too lazy to study the map, we started off cruising around the lake. The water was 52-53 degrees in the morning.  The biggest difference from Deer Lake was the greater presence of cabbage and other submergent vegetation.

The first place we actually put the trolling motor down was in a little boat channel on the east side of the lake.  It was pretty shallow and actually colder than the main lake.  It was chock full of small bluegills, crappie, and fingerling bass.  Also there were a few pike and I did spot one loner keeper bass in there.  Not very promising, but could have some merit next weekend if the weather warms, i just wished it were a little deeper. 

We started covering more water with the outboard and headed for BearTrap Lake which is connected by a channel to Wappo.  On average the water was about 1 degree warmer in Bear Trap.  We hit a few docks with plastics and I fished a Perch colored Husky Jerk  between them and over the inside weed edge., not much luck just a few short bass on a Lake Fork Baby Ring Fry.  I then hit a shallow main lake shoal on the outside of a cove with a Husky Jerk &  Glass Shad Rap (Perch) but has no action.  We then stopped at some docks farther in the pocket, I saw one nice bass cruising and several empty beds.  Not sure if fish had moved up and then pulled off because of the cold snap or if some fish had already spawned.  I did not really notice any empty beds on Deer Lake.  In the back of the cove I picked a nice keeper on the Baby Ring Fry off a dock.  We had seen enough of Bear Trap so we went back to Wappogasset.

We started in a pocket on the east side that we had liked the looks of earlier when we were driving around.  We backed off and fished the cabbage edges in 4-7 feet, we caught several keepers on spinnerbaits (chart) & lipless cranks (crawdad).  I caught 3 bass in 4 casts with my crankbait and then a northern at it     Rather than beat on those fish we headed to the far north end, we saw about a 3lb bass locked on a nest, I made a few pitches just to get a feel for her attitude, she was definitely catchable, but figured it did no good to catch her today and that she would be gone by next weekend.   We then moved out to the weed edge in this area and replicated our success from the previous cove on a 1/4oz Rat-L-Trap (chart crawdad) and the double willow spinnerbait. 

We also idled up the inlet on the NW corner, it did not look very promising so we checked one more cover before we had to head home early for Mother’s Day events.  I came away pretty confident in the weed areas that we found and I have a pretty solid idea of what shallow areas will produce if the weather warms the water enough.  Based on what the fish are doing on Saturday at Deer Lake, I will determine where I will start and what fish I will target.

Rich
www.richlindgren.com
basstournament.blogspot.com