Lake Delavan experience delivers a bite to remember
DELAVAN, Wis. - I shouldn't have listened to Spence Petros after he told me to leave my tackle bag in my vehicle. I wanted a box of weedless frog baits because this lake had plenty of potential for a major "slop bite".
Petros called me right after he and guide Darrell Baker caught 73 largemouth here last week, with the biggest going 6 pounds. I had to make this trip.
"Green Acres Mike", as he's affectionately called by his friends, Spence and I headed for the shallow water and we immediately found largemouth bass in 2-4 feet willing to grab what we threw their way.
Mike's real name is Michael Ventresca. He should be re-named "Chef Green Acres". Aside from being a good angler, he makes a mean lunch as well. The same is true with every other meal he creates.
Lake Delavan gets extremely weed-choked early in the season. Petros was on this lake last week and he and Darrell Baker figuratively "slaughtered" the big bass using whacky-worm style techniques. The lure of choice was a Lindy Yum-Dinger.
Whacky-worming got its start in the South and slowly became popular with anglers in these parts. It's completely different than Texas or Carolina worming, in that the hook is run through the middle of the Yum-Dinger worm, thereby giving it more of a pulsating action as it's pulled through the water.
We were into the fish right away while being able to sight-fish them in the clear shallows of the main lake. Everywhere we looked, the larger females were scooting back and forth from their pre-spawn locations to heavier weed cover.
Color didn't matter as much as where we dropped the worms. The bigger fish weren't chasing the baits, so we had to plop them down right in front of the cruisers.
After catching a dozen or so nice bass, I asked Green Acres Mike if he had any weedless frogs. He reached in to his box and came up with one. I tried a dozen casts and no joy. I made one final cast with it and it broke off the 10-pound mono, landing some 30-feet away.
Mike and I watched the bait float on the surface for a while and then the water exploded. A pike came up and grabbed the frog and took off.
In the meantime, the Yum-Dingers worms kept bringing bass to the boat.
"We'll use the Snagproof frogs in about two weeks," Petros said as he diagnosed the situation. "The bass will be ready to hit them on the surface by then."
Lake Delavan has steadily improved in the quality and quantities of fish ever since it was drained and cleaned several years back. Even with the heavy sub-surface and top-water weed growth, this lake is still a super producer for bass, walleye, pike and panfish.
It was 10:30 in the morning and Green Acres Mike suggested we dig in to the cooler and go to work on the massive sub sandwiches he concocted. I held off, knowing full-well that if I gave in to temptation, I would most certainly have to get down on the deck and take a snooze. His sandwiches are more like a five-course banquet.
By the time I left the water at 2 p.m., we had caught more than 40 largemouth bass, each weighing between 2 and close to 4 pounds.
Spence said this was an average morning on Delavan. I've had other reports about this lake that were similar to our experience. And because it was early in the week, there were hardly any other boats experiencing the kind of action we had going.
And of course, I will wager none of the other fishermen had the kind of mega-sized lunch served with loving care.