It was a little chilly, but the biggest deal was the wind. Weather reports said 20-30 mph winds, and I feel it was doing every bit of that. The ponds were white-capping! One thing about Barrett's, his fish LOVE crickets. We picked up some crickets on the way, Debbie used her B&M 10' carbon rod, and I used a micro setup with the cricket rigged weightless. Hook them from behind the head, under the band behind their head, along the tail, and up through the rear edge of their wings. They will live a long time and are kicking and such the whole time. Let the cricket settle to the bottom, and WHAM! Bluegill and small bass can't resist. Barrett's pond #1 is the place for crickets, never seen anything like it. It's like they were trained for them. Whatever, Duane Barrett (the owner), told me about this last year and it is for real. I never use crickets, but it's the magic bait at that location for some reason. We were working soft plastics, beetle spins, etc, nothing...crickets were the deal.
After a while, we moved down to pond #2. We fished the perimeter, and the large mouth bass were all downwind, something we have noticed many many times at ponds. The wind pushes the small bait fish downwind, and that's where the bass are, more often than not. Sure enough, that's where they were this trip as well. On a calm day, you'll find them hunting up in the head of the pond, but if it's windy, follow the wind. We had a blast, and caught a bunch of bass down there. We didn't bother to photograph the youngsters, but those guys were like race cars and running like crazy when they would hit the bait. In this pond, we had the best luck on small spinner baits... a #0 gold Beetle Spin frame, 1/32oz red eye white crappie jig head, and the Strike King Smokey Shad grub. I noticed small frogs around the edge, s it won't be long before it'll be time to change the grub to the Strike King Friskey Frog. Stay with what they're used to eating.
We stopped at other spots on the way home, but not a single hit. Barrett's Ponds were the place to be today, and here's a few pics...
