Our best overall bait last week was a 1/4oz B'Fish'N Tackle Orange Tiger Glow Precision Jig tipped with an extra large fathead minnow. The big saugers definitely had a taste for meat last week. Late Sunday afternoon was the only time when another jig color actually outfished the Orange Tiger Glow and that was a 1/4oz Sunburst Precision jig tipped with the same extra large fathead minnow.
Our second best bait was a 1/2oz blade bait. There was no one specific color that out shined all others. We caught good fish on no less than six different colored blades.
The blade bite takes a lot of persistence. You can spend a lot of time jerking that blade around with no results and then out of the blue, "POW" fish on! Usually right about the time if felt like you're arm was going to fall off.
Early in the morning definitely seemed to be the best time to vertically jig a blade bait but they did also produce at other times of the day. The middle of the day was by far the hardest time to entice a bite on any lure regardless of what it was.
Baitfish on the sonar screen was the common denominator for finding these big saugers. If you didn't see fairly large schools of baitfish in the area, then you may as well keep looking before dropping a line.
Our best overall depth's were 19' on the shallow side and 25' on the deep side. Shallower was definitely better early & late in the day. There were actually a few times where we found some active fish moving up into that 20' zone during the middle of the day but for the most part, the baitfish and the better saugers both moved deeper during the brightest times of the day.
