Bass anglers find Black Friday bite at Caney Lake

Changing from a buzzbait to a shaky head will keep bass biting even when cold fronts pass through.

My wife and I have an agreement: I get to go hunting and fishing as much as I want as long as I don’t make her go with me.

In turn, she gets to go shopping as much as she wants as long as she doesn’t make me go with her.

The agreement worked like a charm this past Friday, also known as Black Friday.

While my wife was out insanely searching for bargains, I hooked up with Kenny Covington, an old fishing buddy from West Monroe, to search for bass at Caney Lake in Jackson Parish.

Covington adamantly insisted that we could catch some bass early on buzzbaits even though the water temperature hovered around 55 degrees.

Passing 15 or 20 boats ganged up and fishing deep on McDonald’s Point on our way to a small pocket on the south side of the lake made me wonder.

Just to prove his point, Covington hooked up with a slot fish only five minutes after we started fishing. And he didn’t mind rubbing it in a little that he called his shot by informing me that he was going to catch one off of a small, submerged tree top.

Covington had expected we would find bass suspended over coontail grass in the backs of the pockets, but he quickly discovered that the shallow bass on the morning of Black Friday were handing out around hard bottoms and wood cover.

A second bass slurped his buzzbait under as it inched away from a concrete boat ramp farther back in the pocket.

“You got to remember: It’s easier for a big fish to hit a bait on top than it is for a big fish to chase something under the water,” he explained when I asked him his opinion on why these bass were eating topwaters. “He has it pinned against the surface… he knows (his) chances of catching him up there are a lot easier than (his) trying to catch it chasing it around and around me like that.”

The buzzbait bite soon came to a stop, so Covington decided to do something he really did not want to do.

“I hate a shaky head,” he lamented as he pulled out his spinning reel and bag of 4-inch finesse worms. “In fishing, the worst thing you can do is say, “I’m never going to. The object is to catch fish, so don’t start trying to dictate to the fish how they’re going to bite because they’re going to burn you.”

Although not giants, Covington caught several nice bass off of the docks on the eastern side of Smith Branch, the first major creek to the north from the spillway.

Before too long, an approaching cold front passed by. The wind dramatically changed to the north, and the temperature fell into the lower 50s — perfect conditions for shutting down a bite completely.

But that did not happen. As it turns out, Covington’s willingness to fish a way he wasn’t particularly enamored with turned out to be a blessing in disguise because there is nothing better for catching post-front bass than a little 4-inch worm.

That change kept us on the Black Friday bass bite, but I knew in the back of my mind that my wife was finding just as many Black Friday bargains.

Now if I can only get her to agree to pay the bill.

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About Chris Ginn 778 Articles
Chris Ginn has been covering hunting and fishing in Louisiana since 1998. He lives with his wife Jennifer and children Matthew and Rebecca along the Bogue Chitto River in rural Washington Parish. His blog can be found at chrisginn.com.