Springtime Cotton Port Bass

4.5 lb Largemouth

Scott with a healthy 4lber

Scott, Ethan, and I fished out of Cotton Port today.  We started fishing some shallow water in the back of Goodfield Creek where we quickly picked up a couple of small bass (on an X-Calibur jerk bait - parrot colored).  The back of the creek gets kind of narrow with lots of marsh type areas which had a great variety of beautiful birds.  We saw a couple of Prothonotary Warblers and I'm almost positive I saw a couple of Common Yellowthroats.  They were slightly smaller than the Prothonotary's.  I will NEVER fish down in this area again without taking my binoculars - UGHH!  I could have gotten a positive id on a new bird species.  Anyways, back to fishing...We then fished out in the secondary creek feeding into Goodfield Creek near where it enters the main river.  Scott and I both lost a bass on a  Choo Choo spinner bait.  I was throwing bleeding chartreuse with with gold blades, and Scott was throwing an ecstasy with gold blades.  We then ran down river to Barley Brance and fished a cut that runs parallel to the main river between Barley Branch and Crawford Branch.  The wind was pretty strong so we were limited to modifying our tactics to work with the wind.  We allowed it to blow us down the shoreline, the water color was stained but good (not muddy), 65-67 F, and the skies were overcast, so conditions were text book for the Choo Choo spinner bait.  I caught a drag squealing 4.5 lb sow (full of eggs) that fought like a ton of bricks.  We then moved a little deeper into Mud Creek - focusing on finger feeders - Scott and Ethan each picked up stocky keepers on spinner baits, and I broke Luke's Castaway Skeleton casting rod (oops! thank goodness for the lifetime replacement guarantee.  It pays to buy the best!).     The Choo Choo spinner baits really got it done today.  As the day progressed, the skies began to clear a little and the sun began to shine, so we switched to crankbaits (lipless XR-50 X-Calibur, and XCS100 X-Calibur shallow diving crankbaits).  Ethan and I threw XCS100s in sexy shad and Scott was throwing an XCS100 in Tennessee Shad.  We worked the back of one bay with a nice gravely bottom (traditionally a great shellcracker and bluegill bedding area) and Scott picked up a nice 1 lb. 14" black crappie.  As we moved out toward the main creek shore we rode the wind and picked up several other keeper largemouths - Scott picked up a really nice 4 lber.  He then hooked into a monster, brought it to the boat only to discover it was a ~5' gar. Once it saw the boat it took off breaking his line taking his XCS100 with it- Ouch!  We worked this stretch of bank over and over picking up a fish or two with each pass.  We also picked up a few other odd balls - Ethan fooled a channel cat, I finessed in a nice drum, and Scott's panfish skills earned him another keeper crappie.  One of our last stops was back along the parallel cut that coughed up my 4.5 lber.  As we started our progression down the shore line I lost a nice fish and then picked up a really healthy 3 lb largemouth on the foxy shad XCS100.