I rarely fish freshwater, especially bass, but I do enjoy a good kayak adventure to Barrett every year or two. I brought my kayak buddy two years ago and he was hooked. We set out for a return trip Friday night, camping out at Good Vibes Ranch near the lake, which was a trip. It bought us an extra hour of sleep though and we were parked, loaded up, and on the water right at 5 Saturday morning. Peddled over to the cove just right of Becky’s at gray light and started throwing top water near the waterfall which was super cool. My buddy gets a nice one on the plopper pretty quick, and around 5:30 I get my first one on a buzzbait. It wasn’t really on fire or anything so we started working down Hauser, buddy gets two more on top water, I miss one more and start thinking I might need to change gears. Shaun then gets one on a 6” fat tail MM roboworm on a darter head, and I am sadly thinking the top water bite may have never really materialized. I really hate fishing plastics but start tying on my go to drop shot. While we’re working down the arm, I keep seeing and hearing fish boiling out behind me toward the middle, so I fire off some poppers and shad baits and small flukes with no reaction what so ever. Meanwhile still trying my kitchen sink to get a pattern on plastics. Finally around 8 I get two nice ones back to back on a red brush hog on a sled head. That then fizzled out for me but I eventually found sustained success on a green Damiki air craw rigged on a weedless Ned head. Seemed like whenever we found clean hard bottoms in 15-20 ft of water near but not too close to exposed brush, that’s where the fish were. Picked and scratched away all day with the green jig, drop-shotted Aaron’s Magic roboworm, and my buddy’s darter/robo combo accounting for almost all our fish. I ended with 15 and a nice bluegill, and he got 16. All nice ones though, no dinks. We finished with a decent flurry right across from Pigs, and I got my best fish of the day on my last cast. A great battle with my ultralight drop shot rig, Stradic 500, 8 lb braid.
I suck at bass fishing so we were both happy with the slow but constant action throughout the day. A few nicer fish lost, and even a 2 lb Northern in this lake makes you think like you have a 5lber on. I did notice all my bites came on the drop. Hardly any “THUNK - I’ve got one!”, instead it was “why is my line going that way - oh I’ve got one”. We went as far back into Hauser as we could, which was rad. Fished the frog in the froggiest waters I’ve ever seen for nothing. Only one blow up and that was earlier back in the main arm. Water was 80 in the way back, 75ish most of the day. Awesome weather, sun came out better than expected. Another sweet day in this amazing lake. We don’t care about numbers more than a good time on the water changing it up a little bit and catching a few fish. Might have to get out here more often.
Cheers,
Belk
,black and blue is a staple for barret especially gary yamamoto black and blue senko and also i had great luck with the flappin hog same color. And what waterfall where you taking about the small one on the left side about half way down hauser going down? If so those rocks holds a 6.5lber