I moved a little and got on a drift parallel to Steve and changed tactics a bit. I shortened the leader under my Victimizer cork to about 30" and went to the smaller size orange crush grub and tipped them with fish bites. After that I picked up a nice 18 incher on the first cast. Then my buddy Duane caught what turned out to be the big fish of the day, a fat 20" fish.
We continued on the drift and picked up a few more shorts and a couple of keepers. We made virtually the same mile long drift in 4-6 feet of water 4 times and ended the day with 10 keepers from 16-20". We lost several good fish that jumped like bass and threw the lures. We caught probably 40 fish, nearly all came from the orange crush victimizer curly tail and fishbite combo. My last fish was another 18" fish that I caught using a whole fishbite crab strip on a naked jighead. We were back at the landing at 1:00.
The big fish were slow biting and sometimes never even moved the cork. The smaller ones would nearly knock it out of your hand. The best tactic seemed to be to pop the cork quickly, then let it set and count to 5. Most of the fish hit on 4 or 5 while the bait was stationary.
Water temperature ranged from 61.1° to 63.6°. The sky was overcast all day with a 15 knot NE wind. Water was the color of coke.
