October 2, 2009
I had a benefit tournament at Collins Lake this past Saturday and Sunday. It was to benefit the Susan G Koman all out for the cure foundation for breast cancer research. It was also a wholesale customer appreciation weekend for Riebes automotive. I was invited to this tournament to show the attendees a little about fishing Collins Lake and some good techniques for catching bass in early fall.
On Monday Sept 28th I went out and saw the lake for the first time in months it was definitely low but not nearly as bad as last year (40 feet this 75 feet last year). The first thing I tried was top water Lunker Punkers, Zara spooks and buzz baits no go after about forty five minutes of this I switched to spinner baits and crank baits on the west side flats trying to find fish feeding on pond smelt and shad. With nothing happening on the top or middle of the water column I headed for the bottom the first bass I caught was around a pound and a half spot the next one was near two pounds and lost half of that with all the crawdads he spit up all of which were in the two and a half to three inch range. Shortly after I caught these fish I went to the west shore were the water is deeper and started to notice fish stacked up in the thirty to thirty five foot range with lots of baitfish around. Nothing was really chasing bait just staying in the vicinity so I figured with the full moon and all that they were feeding at night or early morning so being noon I decided to get off the water.
Oct 2nd started on the east side of the lake again starting with top water and working my way down one fish on a jig worked in around eighteen feet of water dragging it really slow after about twenty minutes I went two the west shore where I picked up seventeen pounds in around ten minutes. What I found was that if you located the baitfish that had small fish busting above them the larger fish were down below waiting for free food so I sent down ½ ounce Hopkins spoon and was nicely rewarded.
This was not a regular tournament for me so I basically was there to show others were fish were and how to catch them unfortunately the bite on Saturday was less than spectacular and there were very few fish caught but I took some of the folks out and caught a couple decent fish through out the day all on spoons in thirty to forty feet of water.
