The Lure: Escaping bass a good chance to try out new words

Our high-pressure heat wave and 87-degree water have created slow fishing for my clients. The morning excursions are producing six to ten bites, mostly on plastic worms.

This past week has produced, however, a good number of big bass opportunities. Five jumbo largemouth have entertained us with hard battles, but four of them have ended up breaking our lines and hearts.

These 5- to 7-pound class black bass are using boat dock cables, brush and zebra mussels to cut our lines. This is very character building and broadens your vocabulary.

We are getting good looks at these shallow bass in the clear water. They are lurking around boat docks and heavy brush where it is a challenge to successfully land the fish.

On Sept. 3, I hooked into a beautiful 6-pound largemouth that, luckily for me, ran for open water. The bass filled up my landing net, posed for a photo and then was released to fight another day.

All five big bass were fooled by a green pumpkin Zoom worm crawled ultra-slow on the bottom in 10 feet of water. The bigger bass are a tad lazy and like to take their time reading the menu.

Big fish honors go to a 13-year-old boy who hooked and landed an 8-pound gasper gou on a real nightcrawler worm.

It took several minutes to subdue this hard-fighting member of the drum family. A light spinning rod and 8-pound test line enhanced the experience for the excited youngster and myself.

The girth of this gasper gou was awesome. Turned out its stomach was packed with crushed zebra mussels. Hopefully all gou are feasting on these pesky clams!

We need a couple of strong cold fronts to get the water temperature down below 80 degrees. This will trigger the good fall fishing in shallow water.

For updates or a guided excursion, call 512-261-3644.