JACKSONVILLE —





 

            Mike Smith called me last week to go fish Lake Naconiche one more time before winter sets in.  I agreed.  Smith and Frank Lusk have made a total of six trips recently to this lake, and they have easily caught over 100 bass over their last four trips.

            “On our last trip we caught 49 bass.  Seven bass were over 18 inches,” Smith recalls.  Frank caught an eight and a six pounder that looked like butterballs,” exclaimed Smith. 

            The two caught 37 bass on a road bed way up Naconiche Creek on black and blue Sienkos, Texas rigged.  Then they went exploring up Telescope Creek where they caught 12 more bass on another inundated road bed.

            Smith said that Lusk fished by himself one day and caught 22 bass on a Shakey Head with a Zoom, black emerald worm.  His best bass weighed 10.3 pounds.  This is probably the largest bass caught out of this lake so far. 

            Smith said, “You get me and Frank in the same boat and we can get the numbers of bass.  We like fishing plastics exclusively.  My thing is a Sienko and Frank’s is a Shakey Head.  One day we pulled up and stopped the boat in the bend of the creek and caught 20 or more bass before we even got to the road bed.  I’ve never caught so many big bass.”

            Smith and I fished Naconiche on Friday, November 23, during pre-frontal conditions, and we boated 26 bass up to five pounds.  From 7:00 to 8:00 a.m. we boated 11 bass.  Six bass were over four pounds.  Then it started raining.  We continued to catch bass during the rain as a front began to move through. 

            After the rain the bass continued to bite, but most of the bass ranged from two to three pounds.  I did catch a five-pound bass on a Nichols’ 1/2 oz. black and blue jig with a black and blue crawfish trailer.  Smith had four rods rigged up with Sienkos.  I chose to fish the Nichols’ black and blue jig exclusively.  Jigs are known to catch big bass.  I did land the largest bass, but Smith caught three bass to my one.

            There was one place on the road bed that produced several bass.  It was a rough spot in the road where you had to shake the bait to get through it.  It could have been rubble from a small bridge that crossed the creek, but I’m not sure.  We caught about a dozen bass off this spot.

            There was one other boat in our area and we saw him catching bass on a swim jig.  He was fishing the shallow end of the road bed and was catching smaller bass.

            Lake Naconiche is a good lake for numbers of bass and, obviously, big bass.  This lake does fish small, and you need to know what areas to target.

            We both ended up with 5 bass that weighed approximately 20 pounds.  After about three hours the bite dropped off dramatically.

            The bass are still shallow because the surface temperature is about mid-60’s.  When winter arrives and surface temperatures drop to the lower 50’s the shad will move into the deeper creek bends where they should be readily caught on a spoon or a jig.