Mazonia South Unit First Trip

I drove down to Mazonia this morning to do some bass fishing from my kayak and I ended up trying three different areas in the south unit today.  My first stop was two lakes that were that were connected by a narrow passageway.  I started off trying to see if I could get a few topwater bites before the sun got too high but the fish weren't having it.  The frustrating thing was some large fish that I assume were bass were occasionally coming to the surface eating small minnows and insects around the lake.  I did pick up a few small bass drifting a Crabby Bass Helgie behind my kayak while casting topwater baits around so I eventually just switched over to fishing the helgie most the time.  I found some narrow coves on the back lake that had some tree lined steep banks and the fish seemed to be a little larger here compared to what I was catching along the reeds.  My biggest bass of the day was caught near the point of one of these coves, a very fun fight on the ultralite.

16" Largemouth Bass caught on green pumpkin helgie.

After catching ten or so more bass(mostly dinks) in this area I noticed a submerged tree in some deeper water and let the helgie fall into the middle of it.  The line tightened up and I pulled out a decent bluegill.

The Mazonia bluegills had some great coloration.

After catching a few more bluegills out of the tree I decided to get out of the sun,  go grab some lunch, and take a break.  While driving through the small town of Godley, IL I noticed a small pond packed with fisherman.  They were having a fishing derby and it looked like a good turnout.

Children's fishing derby at K Mine Park, Godley, IL.

After lunch I returned to Mazonia to fish a long narrow lake I had noticed on satellite imagery earlier in the week.  I'm glad I remembered the area where you could enter the lake, otherwise I would have had a difficult time finding the entry point for this lake as the vegetation has been doing very well with the wet spring we had.

A tight squeeze!

After navigating through the reeds, the lake was actually pretty easy to navigate around.

I had high hopes for this spot after my first two casts with a walking topwater bait produced bass but the fish must of spread the word quickly to their friends that the imitation bluegill was not the easy meal it appeared.  I switched back to the helgie and action was pretty steady here for small bass.  I tried a bigger bait as well with a houdini colored super fluke to try and coax some larger bass but my catches didn't increase in size unfortunately.  I fished one more lake before dark that was very clear, probably close to 10 foot visibility and landed a few more small bass fishing the edges of the reeds with the helgie.

While I didn't land any big bass on this trip it was nice to get away from the traffic noise and crowds that are typical of most suburban fishing spots.  The occasional shrill of red-winged blackbirds and the distant knocking of woodpeckers were the only sounds for much of the day and it was a nice respite after a long week of work.

Fish Caught: 20-25 Largemouth Bass

                      5 Bluegill

Successful Baits: Crabby bass helgies with small split shot(black/green pumpkin)

                            H2O Xpress Model TWS Topwater Bait(bluegill)

                            Zoom Super Fluke weightless(houdini)

Weather: Increasing clouds, light and variable winds, low 70's.

Water Temp: 73