Freshwater Largemouth help

[notime]

I have a few lakes near my house (Holliston, MA) that I may fish this spring when I have the itch but no time for the salt. The lakes have pickeral and largemouth. Most of my fishing will be done trolling from a kayak. If you could only buy one or two lures what would you use? How about if I troll a fly, what is your favorite fly or two?

Assume lake averages 5 - 15 feet deep, some weedy areas but mostly fairly open water. Clarity is moderate. Thank you!

[Bob Parsons]

I often use my canoe for fishing freshwater. If targeting lm bass. I like to slowly bounce a rubber worm around structure. Trolling will be less productive and less fun. Work all sides of the structure. A spinner bait can be worked at all depth levels depending of speed of retrieve. In the evenings, especially around weeds I like a surface plug. I still like the old fashing jitterbug and hula poppers..

[striperboyz]

Flies for bass,
get the biggest wooly bugger patterns you can find, there is this one pattern that is just awesome on bass, it looks like a standard wooly bugger, but it has orange rubber legs and an orange bead head, they sometimes call them eggsucking leaches. This is pretty much all I use on bass, use black, brown, and olive colors.

josh

[jo53mo]

Most of my fly fishing is for largemouth. I have good success with chartreuse and white clousers, sneaky petes, red and white hackle fly. When fishing a top water fly by structure let it sit after the cast until all the ripples are gone then give the fly a little twitch to get the hackle or rubber hackle to move again. After that you may want to twitch it again or try another cast. I find the bass don't move far from territory.
Good Luck Joe

[silverado mike]

I have a few lakes near my house (Holliston, MA) that I may fish this spring when I have the itch but no time for the salt. The lakes have pickeral and largemouth. Most of my fishing will be done trolling from a kayak. If you could only buy one or two lures what would you use? How about if I troll a fly, what is your favorite fly or two?

Assume lake averages 5 - 15 feet deep, some weedy areas but mostly fairly open water. Clarity is moderate. Thank you!

go down the street with a small popper at dusk or an over cast day and hit the outside edges of lillys and you'll grab a big one...

[aws]

go down the street with a small popper at dusk or an over cast day and hit the outside edges of lillys and you'll grab a big one...


I agree w/ the popper, but generally go with larger hair bug type patterns, as I find too many annoying sunnys/rock bass play with the smaller stuff. Not the best pattern for early spring, but come warmner weather I believe its the best fly for big largemouth if fished correctly. I tie bugs that look like small mice, bumble bees and frogs. I've also to my suprise caught some big browns on the mice bug when fishing for bass on the Cape. That being said, my biggest largemouth to date(9lbs) was caught on a 3" sunny that I caught on a popper and then live lined on my 6 weight--123-3. In early spring I'd probably go w/ something akin to what striperboyz mentioned. He's right, go big and also slow in early spring for bass. I try to stay away from them when they are on their beds in late spring.

[silverado mike]

I have a few lakes near my house (Holliston, MA) that I may fish this spring when I have the itch but no time for the salt. The lakes have pickeral and largemouth. Most of my fishing will be done trolling from a kayak. If you could only buy one or two lures what would you use? How about if I troll a fly, what is your favorite fly or two?

Assume lake averages 5 - 15 feet deep, some weedy areas but mostly fairly open water. Clarity is moderate. Thank you!

I was around the corner from you the other day and got a largemouth 2#..first on one the fly(streamer) nice fight on the 6 weight rod even though it was sluggish in the cold water..I was just out praticing the fly cast, by the way I'm getting pretty good already..consistantly thowing 70-80 feet with no wind.. --127-3- this season is going to be fun..

Mike