Bass Fishing Forum - Westernbass.com

My first tourny in about ten years, you know the story... marriage, family, career but it's now time to get back into the game. Im gonna start out slow on the small local club trail and wouldn't ya know it going to be lopez next week. A lake I havn't fished since I was in college. I was hoping to get some heads up on the conditions or aleast a starting point. I will not have time to pre fish so I'll be going in blind, any help would be greatly appreciated and I would gladly trade info on my home lake of Isabella. Also I'm a huge swimbait fan and I hope Lopez is on a swimbait pattern. Thank you in advance

jlbison@gmail.com

Crank. Throw a Deep Little N or a DD22 in chartreuse/blue. Throw it all day.

I'll be doing the same thing at Issy on Saturday

I have a similar story, except I live 15 minutes from Lopez and it is obviously the lake I fish the most. It has received more traffic this year then previous. The extra pressure has made it more challenging to fish. I have not had any luck with swimbaits over 6". From my experience it is a smaller bait lake. It is usually windy from 8-4 or later. I have also heard that blue and chartreuse cranks work well, although I have never tried them. I usually fish subtle baits in subtle colors, greens and browns etc. Last week I started to see medium size schools of shad being pushed to the surface late in the day. Usually around this time of year you can see bus size schools of shad brought to the surface at sunset. Goodluck

I always throw a chart color at Lopez be it blade/crank/anything but the Norman deep little N Tennesse Shad got me and a partner over 100 fish crank'n there one day in years past. They literally ate the paint off of it! I never go anywhere without three of them now. Something about that Norman bait makes it exceptional at fishing the brush yet not getting hung up. It seems to pull free with a pause and a rip....and that is when you'll get hammered. Have a great time on a great lake.

Rip

Make sure your trolling motor batteries are up to the task. When I was up there last month it got WINDY. Not sure if it helps but all the trout we cleaned had stomachs full of whole shad. It kind of amazed me how intact the shad were going in through a trout mouth.

I'll 2nd the crankbait, except our guys won it all this last weekend with a red crank. Take both and see which is working. Good luck.

Thank you all for the great info! I gonna sneek away and pre fish tomorrow and try to find swimbait fish first then go to my deep lil N or the dd22. Than you again! I'll let ya know when I stick a pig!