Wauconda's Bangs Lake delivers bounty of big bass

It was a good thing I had a light rain suit with me because the weather wasn't cooperating. A constant drizzle kept hands wet and noses dripping.

Dale Bernstein, son of the late Buck Squancho, met me on Bangs Lake in Wauconda for a morning of bass fishing. Rain or shine, we stuck to our agenda.

We used a friend's small fishing boat with an electric motor this day, and that proved to be all we needed.

Bangs Lake has always been my "big bass" lake during the soft-water season, while also providing me with excellent crappie and bluegill fishing during the cold, long, ice angling period.

Taking a page from Bill Siementel's book of bassing knowledge, I suggested to Dale we start dropping baits into deeper weed pockets and work the lures back towards the shallows. That proved to be the right choice.

Here's the gear and lure rundown.

I was using a 7-foot medium-action XLH-70 Grandt casting rod, a 7-foot light-action XLH-70 Grandt spinning model with 8-pound and small Mini-Mite II jigs and tails, and Little Action Mac pre-rigged plastic worms with fire tails.

A slight westerly wind pushed the boat along on an inside weed edge while we made casts to the open, deeper weed pockets.

On his third cast, Dale reared back and set the hook. That hookset was so strong that we almost tipped over. His first bass of the morning scaled at 3 pounds, and he used a standard Texas worm rig in the process.

It wasn't more than 30 seconds before I felt a light twitch on the end of my line. I lifted the rod and took up the slack and set the hook, all in one movement. A 2-pounder came skyrocketing out of the water and headed for the underside of our boat. Both of these fish were males.

The slow drift continued, going from west to east. Dale picked up another 3-pounder. All the while, I was dealing with big bluegills inhaling the Mini-Mite. I switched to the Little Action Mac and made a long cast to deeper water, and then slowly retrieved the worm across the weeds. My line straightened out and then moved sideways.

"This fish will take to the air," I yelled to Bernstein.

He didn't answer because he had his own battle to fight. We both tied in to larger, pre-spawn females, fat with eggs. Dale's fish weighed close to 6 pounds, while mine was a solid 5-pound beauty.

It's been a while since I've seen or let alone caught largemouth bass over 5 pounds from Bangs. We caught a total of 23 bass in less than two hours, ranging from 2 to 6 pounds. Not bad for half a morning.

And here's what we discovered.

We were sight-fishing one section of the lake where we saw a few spawning beds guarded by the smaller males. There didn't seem to be a female fish anywhere near the beds, which was better for us. We found the big fish (female bass) hanging further out and on weed edges leading to deeper water. We also discovered the biters wanted smalleized lures instead of the jumbo baits.

Our presentation had to be extra slow, and we literally had to lift and drag the lures right past a fish's nose.

I personally don't like to cast to bedding fish. My theory is that if I pull a spawning bass off her nest, I'm liable to interrupt the process. So it seemed that we happened to be on the lake at the right time, fishing in a window of opportunity, where some of the fish cooperated by inhaling what we threw at them.

In the past I've had bigger numbers of fish from this lake, especially right before darkness and just before sunrise. On this outing Dale and I were glad we were able to accomplish what we had set out to do. And that was target some big fish and enjoy ourselves at the same time.