The misadventures of Breach on Comfort Lake...

[breachless]

I spent a combined total of probably 12 hours or so this weekend fishing Comfort Lake near my home in Wyoming MN. It's an absolutely beautiful lake: nice clear water, almost all sand and rocks with fallen trees here and there, and lily-pads that span **** near the entire lake. It really is one of the most beautiful lakes I have ever fished.

Anyway, every time I go out, I see a ton of bass, the occasional Musky, and of course, a large amount of carp. The frustrating thing is that I just can't seem to get ANYTHING to bite! I just started fishing this lake this year, and I was sure this was going to be a great bass lake, but I have thrown almost everything in my tacklebox at these bass and they just don't seem to care at all. I have tried every color of frogs I have, texas rigged worms, chomper baits, spinnerbaits, plugs, spoons, crazy crawlers, hula poppers, Basserino's... Everything! I even tried dragging the tried and true Lindy Rig with a minnow to try to snag a Walleye yesterday and came up with a freaking sunfish... And a small one at that... on a Lindy Rig... with a minnow... off the bottom in 30 feet of water... You would think that I would have at least snagged a Northern Pike by accident, but I haven't even caught one of those yet in this lake.

I am this close to giving up on it, but it's hard to do when you KNOW there are a ton of bass there and it's so close to home. I just can't think of anything else to get them to bite. Very frustrating, but at least the weather has been fantastic and the scenery is nice...

Getting skunked sucks! Especially when you can actually see the fish flat-out ignoring your bait! Maybe I have just completely lost my touch. I don't know...

 

[wasilvers]

On the one clear lake I fish, I have to go with smaller lures and lighter line to get bit. Fish early or cloudy days. Natural colors like Senko's in baby bass (almost translucent green with silver flakes) and clear with flakes work pretty well for me. Also did ok in deeper water with deep red baits - though I'm not sure why.

It could have been they weren't hungry

 

[BaitCaster]

What kind of line are you using? If the lake is clear you might want to try a flourocarbon leader. I also agree that you might want to down size your bait presentations.

 

[poolie]

I would try a light flourocarbon line (6# maybe) and give a shaky head worm a try.

 

[Loggerhead Mike]

sounds like one of the lakes I fish thats super clear

Ive found light clear line and natural looking/color baits work best (natural colored craws and worms)

 

[shamoo]

Early morning + clear lake = Strike King Red Eye Shad 1/2 ounce in Sexy Shad.

 

[breachless]

Right now I am using some Fireline that has started to show it's age: I will be buying new line here soon so perhaps I will try something different...

Anyway, thanks for the tips! It's always frustrating to be shown up by a lake and all of a sudden realize that you are NOT as good a fisherman as you thought you were, but I suppose this is where you gain skills and being on the lake not catching fish is STILL better than being anywhere else...

 

[poolie]

It's always frustrating to be shown up by a lake and all of a sudden realize that you are NOT as good a fisherman as you thought you were...

Happens to me every time I go to the lake ;-) It's a forever learning process.

 

[bassassassin8]

Early morning + clear lake = Strike King Red Eye Shad 1/2 ounce in Sexy Shad.

I 2nd that. Except I throw gold sexy shad :lol:

 

[wasilvers]

Early morning + clear lake = Strike King Red Eye Shad 1/2 ounce in Sexy Shad.

I have this lure and the lake close by - I'll have to try it out!

 

[breachless]

I am happy to report that I finally had some luck on this lake yesterday. My buddy bought a new 21' Legend bass boat (the thing is ridiculous... he opened it up for the first time while we were out and hit 90 mph before running out of lake: scared the bejeezus out of me).

Anyway, we started hitting the pads and nothing was working. Then we busted out these little things called swim jigs. Really, it's just a weedless jig-head with a skirt and a swirl-tail grub, but as soon as we switched to these, we started hitting bass left and right. We would chuck them back into the pads and just slowly drag them through: we watched the bass follow them to the edge of the pads and then hit them (which was very considerate of them! I hate trying to horse bass out of the pads...) Caught one nice fish that was just a hair over 3 pounds that put up a hell of a fight. It was fun!

I also attribute the success to switching over to fluorocarbon line. I am convinced the bass see my braided line in this lake. Since I spooled up some braid on that baitcaster Poolie hooked me up with, I put some Fluorocarbon on my spinning rig and that seemed to help quite a bit (though I did pick up one fish frogging on the braided line yesterday as well).

All in all, it was nice to finally catch something on this lake. Faith restored!