Our decision paid off quickly when Jody hit a 5-1/4 pound largemouth on his second cast of the day. The fish hit a blue/white Bill Norman Deep Little N crankbait. I Over the next 30 minutes, he put three more fish in the livewell, all of them in the 2-1/2 to 3 pound class. I finally decided to give up on the Senko for the time being and throw the same crankbait Jody was throwing. Within a few casts, I had our fifth fish of the morning and we were looking at a 16 pound limit and it wasn't even 8:00 am yet.

We were fishing the back corner of a protected bay with several docks and scattered weed beds from 4 to 8 feet of water. While we were taking our fish in 8 to 12 feet of water two weeks earlier, most of our fish on this day were much shallower, from 4 to 6 feet deep. The key was throwing the crankbait right against the weedline and the hits were coming within a few feet of the weeds.

Another hour went by and we only took one more small keeper, so we decided to make a quick run of some of our favorite rock piles on the south end of the lake. Things were pretty fruitless until around noon when I finally hooked into a fish on a deep diving Fat Free Shad in the red and white pattern. The fish came off a deep shoreline near Red Bud are. As I reared back on my Loomis crankbait rod, the fish pulled hard and began to head for deep water as it slowly pulled drag off the reel. Just as I began to tell Jody it was a big fish, the line suddenly went slack and I felt the crankbait pull free.

About a half hour later, Jody hooked another nice fish on the Norman crankbait and this one also came unbuttoned as we saw it head shaking only inches below the surface. Not a big fish, but a 3 pounder that would have helped out. We still had a 2 pounder in the box, so it wouldn't take much to improve on our limit. I switched back to the Norman crankbait and finally caught another fish that weighed just over 2-1/2 pounds and pushed our limit up to 16-3/4 pounds.

Our last stop was back to our original set of docks where we started in the morning. Jody managed to catch one more crankbait fish that wouldn't cull anything and I finally hooked a Senko fish that felt heavy, but came off a few seconds into the fight. It's amazing that I had fished two T.O.C.'s during the past month and hadn't lost a single fish in four days of fishing. For some reason, Jody and I managed to lose four fish that would have undoubtedly improved our day's catch.

It was interesting at weigh-ins to hear a number of teams reported losing a lot of fish during the day. Several people remarked that a number of their crankbait fish were all hooked on the outside of the mouth. I have learned over the years that fish tend to bite differently under certain conditions and landing fish on reaction baits can be very difficult at times. Two weeks earlier, just about every fish we caught had the crankbait or Rat-L-Trap absolutely inhaled and they were fighting very hard. The fish this weekend were biting softly and didn't put up much of a fight.

Look for the crankbait bite to hold steady during the month of November as long as water temperatures remain in the upper 50's to low 60's. Once temperatures cool below the mid to upper 50's, the top getters should be jigs and rip baits. Of course the jumbo minnow bite should be on fire for the next couple months if you're simply looking for a fun day of fishing.