Hot Rod Baits Bass Series at Brushy Creek Lake

Saturday was the second stop for the series, the first was at Lake Sugema.  I had a 10th place finish at Sugema and was looking forward to this event since the ride home from Sugema.  Brushy Creek is a lake that I have fished dozens of times in all months of the year.  On the calendar, this lake should have been smashing with post-spawn bass.  In easy terms, the bass should have been on a good bite...should have been.  It is quite clear that Mother Nature has either lost her calendar, or simply does not care anymore for this state.  It has been quite a spring here in Iowa, and only the last couple days have actually felt like summer.  This has no doubt played a part in the weird and tough bite at this lake.  With tournaments at this lake each and every weekend as well as every Wednesday night it gets plenty of pressure, but has always been able to rebound and keep producing big healthy bags of largemouth bass.  This was taking place at Brushy earlier in the year, but the past 3 weekends the weights have tanked severely, and the numbers of keepers have tanked as well.
I was able to take a look around on the lake on Wednesday.  It was a solo trip and I tried to cover as much water as possible, looking at all the old stomping grounds.  I hadn't seen the lake for about three years, the only real change I saw was the water clarity was extremely clearer than I remembered.  A good thing for the lake no doubt.  Deep, shallow, mid-range, fast baits, slow baits, and the kitchen sink was was tried during this experimentation day.  A few fish were caught including two decent keepers...not what I was expecting but not really shocked either by the stories and reports I had heard from other anglers.  Onto the tournament we go.  Brian Bowles joined me for this event early on Friday to take one last look around the lake and try to form a game plan that would put us toward the top.  We did a lot of looking and some fishing on this day.  By the time we left the lake we knew it was going to be an old fashion grind the next day.  The kind of events that really drive some anglers crazy.  We knew it was going to be like this and we were mentally prepared to go the entire day with a few bites.
Tournament day came and the "Reel-Feel" was predicted to be over 100 degrees, perfect, just one more obstacle to overcome on an already tough day of fishing.  That is why boats have coolers and that's why you wear the proper clothing on these hot, sunny days.  I was glad I packed my Cliff Keen Athletic Fishing Gear, it made the hot temperatures much easier to deal with.  Our plan for the day was simple; frogs and punching Hot Rod Baits Big Craws in the best looking grass we could find.  We knew we could catch some fish using these techniques as long as we stuck to the plan.  We hit our first area and connected with a keeper in the first ten minutes.  The Optimum Baits Furbit Frog in the Bluegill color brought 2 of our 5 keepers in the boat.  After the bass would strike at the frog, the punching rod came out and cleaned them up.  They couldn't resist a sunfish Big Craw dropped down in front of them.  It is a great 1-2 combo that has worked many times and prevailed today as well.  Both key baits were rigged on QuantumPT Rod and Reels.  The new Quantum EnergyPT reel with the flippin switch paired with a heavy QuantumPT rod  was great for the punching rod, and the high speed QuantumPT Smoke Speed Freak reel paired with a MedHvy QuantumPT rod was the trick for the frog.
Our plan was a good one, but we came up one bass short today of our 6 fish limit.  You simply can't do that against this type of competition.  We had a plan, and it was a plan that would have had us in the top 5, but it wasn't meant to be today.  We only had 7 bites on this day, and we boated 6 of them.  That is a great ratio when fishing the techniques we did.  No regrets, and we both felt as though if we had to do it all over again today, we wouldn't change a thing.  We weighed in 9.77# with the winners having 12.24#.  Close, but on a day when only 4 teams weighed a 6 bass limit, we came up in 7th place.  On to the next adventure chasing that next fish.