There are two things you can always count on from Kelly Jordon: 1) a string of astonishing fishing and hunting tales; and 2) big bass catches with, of course, a story to go with them.
Jordon’s latest tale has a bedding bass tip that might be as helpful for you as it was for him yesterday, when Jordon caught the big bass of the day – a 7-pound, 13-ounce female largemouth.
“I fished this bass for an hour (Thursday) and it was frustrating as heck,” Jordon said yesterday. “I went back about 11:30 today. It was sitting down pretty good, and I said, ‘Man, there’s a chance. It looks like this fish is going to be catchable.’ I caught it in 30 minutes. But it was still really hard to catch.”
Jordon employed a trick he learned from Brett Hite 10 years ago when they were “fun fishing” on Lake Fork – the 316 Mission Fish.
“I pulled the Mission Fish out,” Jordon said. “It looks like a big ol’ bream. That fish just lit up when I threw it in there. I’ve used it a lot since Brett showed me the trick many moons ago, to get a big fish to react when I couldn’t get it to react with anything else. It’s a big ol’ swimbait, seven or eight inches long. You throw it in there and they get mad as heck.
“I got it fired up with that. It would chase it off the bed and kind of hit at it. Then I put on another bream bait, a little (Big Bite Baits Dean Rojas) Warmouth. On my first pitch with it, I let it sit on the bottom. I saw her swim across the bed and leave, and my line was leaving with her.”
Jordon remains puzzled about where all the spawning bass went that he’d located in practice.
“I had millions of bed fish found on Tuesday,” he said. “They were paired everywhere, and they were rolling. I thought, ‘Man, they’re coming with that full moon that’s coming Tuesday.’ I couldn’t really check on them Wednesday because of the wind.
“It’s really frustrating. I had pockets that were just loaded up – beds every 10 feet – and they’re just gone. They did not all get caught. It’s just weird.”