bass fishing (lake coutny forest preserve, il)

Neal and I headed out for a quick trip to Independence Grove in hopes dropshotting up some decent bass. The weather was overcast early in the morning and we were fighting off an ugly storm moving in from the west. This would be my only fishing trip for the next week due to an upcoming sales meeting with my company in Las Vegas, so I really wanted to bend a rod on some fish. Being early June, I really was surprised at the amount of weed growth that was already taking control of the lake. The weeds were thicker now then they were at the end of last year! We settled on fishing plastics around the deep weed edges in the early morning and switching to some of the deep timber later.

The morning was just awesome for Neal, and he was quickly catching fish after fish. They were just hammering the Berkley hand poured 4 inch worms he was dropshotting. I finally started to catch up by the time we left and I think we caught a total of 14 fish. Here’s the nicest fish landed.

a healthy lake county, il bass

The one that got away….. I’m not going to make up some astronomical number on its size or weight. Typically when people do that to me, I tend not to trust what they are saying. I will tell you this, it was the biggest bass I had ever seen. Mid morning fishing timber with a cotton candy zoom finesse worm on a dropshot I hooked this sea-donkey. I wasn’t working the bait aggressive, I was locating the timber and just shaking the dropshot stationary. I felt a solid tug and set the hook on this slob. I knew from the second it was hooked that this fish had some shoulders. I played it slow only to have the fish spit the hook when it jumped. I felt like I gave it plenty of slack when it came up to jump but it wasn’t meant to be. Just another fish story I guess…..?