In Your Back Yard Iowa Reports - Recent Posts

Hey Todd i need to borrow some mojo. Ron and I have had enough bad luck for 5 people. I guess thats why it's called fishing and not catching. make sure you bring enough mojo for all of us this Sunday at the 4 man.

Hey all,

After a long day of fish Sunday I didn't get moving as early this morning as I had planned.   I was still in the water before 6am.   

Those clouds that appeared to be rolling in from the south had me thinking that maybe the topwater bite would go a bite longer this morning.    That really didn't materialize and it was a mostly bright high sky's kinda day.   


Water is up at the lake.   Prolly a foot or so.   Basically it is level with the wood on the dock framing and it had been down a good deal from there.   
Main lake is nice and clean, farther up you go the dirtier it is.   Bout normal.  I made it to pelican but that was it.  Also bout normal. 

For the early morning I had planned to throw a frog.   I also planned to video tape it and see if I could get any decent shots while the bite was hot and on top.   I'll make a video of it and get it put up.   I think I did get some decent action.   You'll see as I am talking pulling away from the ramp on the 4th cast I believe it is a nice fish blasts it and I got one in the boat just that quick. 

Caught 6 or 7 on a frog. I wasn't super pleased with that and the sun was getting high so I put the frog away and picked up a SK Series 6 crankbait and went out to the middle of the lake.   Kinda the polar opposite of what I was doing.   Basically I worked over several main lake humps. Spent maybe an hour draggin around a couple cranks, hanging them both up in the tree's and also a 10" worm.   Nothing really going on at all.   

So I head up the lake into the trees, heading back toward the first silt pond.   Using that bank as shade to try and get the frog back going.   Didn't happen but I did get a couple more on a frog later and on that bank I did pick up the white spinnerbait and they started hammering it.  Fished it back there to the island and then headed out.  Sun was getting high and I needed to get focused deeper for some bigger fish.   So I go to the deep bank right on the point coming out of that area. Put down the moving bait and up came my flippin stick and a beaver.   Nothing at all in the first 20' of bank, that's too long and this spot is too good.  Down with that and start over.   10" black/blue power worm.   3rd cast.   Slam!  Fish comes up and its not huge but a 19" or so.  Shakes off.   I retie, (yes retie, I think that spot is that good)  new worm.  Back at it.  Maybe 10 flipps, SLAM!   Again, another fish in that range. 
(Pardon my crap photos, IDK what happened today, somehow the fish got in the way of me.)  :scratch:


I take the pics, repeat the retie process and back at it.   Maybe another 10 flips and again, another nice fish. 


Ok, now that was fun.   Looks like the ole power worm is gonna be close by the rest of the day.    


At the road bed jetties I caught the other frog fish. I always catch a frog fish right there.  Maybe they are the same ones. That's kind of a shallow jettie.   


Up at pelican I couldn't do anything but get snagged up and miss fish.  I know I had 5 bites around that thing and deposited a couple tungsten weights but never a fish.   

Now back up to the road bed jetties, now on the north side.   Spinnerbait all the way around them to the pads.  4 fish nothing special.  Now I am back toward the main lake so its off to the handicap jettie and working around to the north ramp area.   

I am cranking a Lucky Craft SKT MR american shad at this point and flippin a beaver when I was in my sweet spots.   Crank caught 2 and beaver caught 1 but it was pretty dead in that area.  As I pull away from the jetties there to that shallow flat right by the north ramp I always pick up the swimbait and drag it in that area.  Specially when the water is up.   Had 3 blow ups before I got hooked up.   1 on each side of the ramp.   I swear some of the best fishing I have is right at the launch ramps.   :shrug:


At this point I am remembering how hard it is to get that swimbait bite and hookset down.   Its so different from any other that I can see why guys specialize in it.  If you do not do it a lot and just get fresh with that feel, you miss a lot of fish.   After doing so good with it earlier this year and making it my primary bait at S other than the jig.  I was no where nearly as good with it today as I had been.   It still got lots of strikes, I just missed them and didn't feel confident with the hookset again.   :bang_head:

Here is one I did catch on it though.  No giant either but a nice fish.



So now I swimbait the entire main lake perimeter.  Steady bites and lots of misses. It will get bites when other baits will not.  The wind picking up a little this afternoon helped too. 

So I am back at the emergency spillway where I have to flip that rock bank. NOTHING!  Bummer.   Just wasn't there today.   So back to the swimbait.   Now back to the power worm for a minute.  Good bite and wrapped me up.   Broke off.   Now back to the swimbait, nother nice fish in there on the swimbait.   Skip over the jettie there cause someone is on it and around to the south ramp again.  This time the fish is on the LC crank but out of the same spot as the frog fish.   


Then over to the jettie where we met at the end of the tournament.   Around it with a beaver and swimbait and all down that rock bank.   1 short fish.   Ok, I think I've had about enough.    I am not waiting for the evening bite and the day bite is over. 


While going down that bank there is a bass boat that a guy just took out parked right along the road.  Older 17', good shape, odd registration.  I am looking at it and the guy comes around the side.   "Hi, ya doing any good"   (Southern accent)  I say "Been steady all day but nothing huge."  You?   He said, "Caught 2 big ones yesterday, 2 little ones today."   In the mean time I figure out his boat registration is from North Carolina.  :shock:  Long drive!   I asked how big the big ones was.  I figured from down there who knows.   He said 19" ers.   Not bad at all.   Today's 2 smalls was 12" fish.   Only 4 fish I caught in 2 days of fishing.  Never seen the place before and visiting family.   Be here all week.   Looking for any better lakes.       

I told him about the flooding and bla bla and next thing you know 45 minutes later I am back around the jettie and taking the boat out.   


Kinda interesting though how 2 people fishing the same lake but with him seeing it as so new and me getting so tuned in on it.   How different the catching can be.   I didn't keep track but I had to land 30+ fish today.  There was still points too where I was begging the fish for a bite.   It gets to be a grind in the hot afternoon sun.   Water temps between 84 and 86.     


Looks like the lake has a thermocline setting up around 16'.  From what I could see on sonar.  Fish are confirming that too based o what you can tell.   


Baits for the day.   Its a hodge podge for sure.
White spinnerbait
10" power worm
RI sweet beaver
SK series 6  Crank
LC SKT MR Crank
SK 5" Neon ghost minnow swimbait
Spro Bronzeye frog, (green one, don't remember the color name) 


Bout all I got for ya till video time.   


Good day, good lake, fun times!

Sounds like a pretty killer lake to me. 


Never really heard anything about it.      Must be cause it is small.     

Lost my mojo? I invented it. By the way after I posted about losing out on big bass I got an email from from the guy that beat us( jimmy Little) and he said he was laughing his ass off. What are friend for?

It's about time you two cashed another check.  I was beginning to worry you had lost your mojo!

Fished a tournament at 3 mile Saturday and one at 12 mile on Sunday. 3 mile was tough for us. We figured with the warm water that the fish would be deep. Wrong. They were shallow. Spent the first 2 1/2 hours fishing deep on humps and nothing. Started down the bank to our next deep spot and caught 2 keepers. we should have stayed shallow the rest of the day but we didn't. Ended up catching our third and only other keeper shallow as well. It took 19 pounds to win and they said they caught their fish shallow and they were all in one spot. Second had 18 pounds and I don't know how deep they caught their fish, third had 15 # and we did see them fishing shallow. Sunday was a different story. We started shallow and caught one keeper on a buzzbait and one one a shakey head. they were just keepers. Our other 4 fish were all 4+ pounders and they came on crankbaits on the rocks. Ended up with first place with 19+ pounds. Second had 6 fish at 16+ but they got big bass at 4.5. Beat us by one ounceon big bass. They got revenge for getting beat out of big bass on Saturday by 6 hundreds of a pound. To bad they took it out on us.

What a nice fishery I found in Lucas County.  At 72 acres this lake is an easy fish even though it's an electric only lake.  Even while most other southern Iowa lakes are high and muddy, this lake stays in good condition I assume because it only has 900 acres of drainage and not much farming around.

Any way a great lake with tons of bass.  Maybe not Belva Deer numbers, but not far off with one exception, big fish.  Caught several fish in the 3 to 4 pound range with one well over 5 coming up buttoned near the boat during a tail dance.  Spoke to several locals who verified catches of 4 to 7 pound fish in this small but productive lake.

The lake has nice grass off the bank including deer tongue and offshore "gorilla grass".  There were also several man made structure piles that were strategically placed off most points. 

If you get a chance I would put this on your list of must fish lakes.  On Saturday, only ran into one other boat, and on Sunday there were three other boats on the lake other than myself.

JEEP is sold 

Finally back on the water yesterday in Keokuk County on Lake Belva Deer.  Summer time deep crankin on humps and pitching for suspended fish in trees has become two of my favorite fishing techniques.

My bass club had a club tournament from 5:30 to 1pm and the fishing at that lake is fantastic.  Most members brought limits to the scales despite the temperature hovering in the mid 90's by weigh in.

In my boat alone we had almost 16 pounds (6 fish).  We caught our fish early pitching soft plastic stick baits to suspended bass in 12-20 feet of water.  But the majority of our fish came off the humps in the middle of the lake in the upper end off deep diving crank baits bouncing off brush piles and grass.  We tried the frog early with only one blow up. 

We finished up the day cranking a channel swing in 18-25 feet of water catching fish that were schooling on big wads of crappies.  We actually culled fish right at 1pm in the schools that we located with the depth finder right by the beach and ramp.  If you can use your electronics to find those wads of crappies or bluegills, you'll find the bass near and sometimes schooled up.  When we caught fish off the schools on multiple occasions we had other fish following the hooked up fish trying to take the crank bait.

If you still haven't been to this awesome fishery, you need to get there.  The only negative side to this facility is the 5 or so miles of gravel you have to traverse to get there.  For some  reason, promise of paved roads have not happened yet and what was supposed to be paved this spring has been pushed back to fall or later.

Luckily there were several car washes on the way back home to dust off the boat and truck!

Hey y'all!  Its been a while since I dropped a line on this thread, and with another tournament done I figured it was time to do so!  We fished Brushy Creek this past Saturday, and needless to say the fishing was tough!  There were 19 boats there competing for a first place prize of $1064!!  Out of 19 boats, 5 spots were paid and an aditional spot is paid out thanks to Bass Pro Shops for the amount of $100 in gift cards.  No boat walked away without a prize as 19 envelopes were handed out, as well as several prizes such as hats, shirts, and BBQ sauce!  Only two boats managed to bring a limit of fish to the scales, but many fish were weighed.  The winning weight was 11.75 pounds, with second place coming close with 11.60 pounds. 

Our next tournament is going to take place on Red Rock.  Despite the belief that this lake doesn't hold good fish, I'm positive that healthy bags of fish will be weighed on August 7th! Like always, I hope to see you there!