launched at bayou liberty well before daylight this morning and noticed a few vehicles already parked with empty wet trailers. the first thing i though of was specks. the game plan was to get on a decent flipping bite for bass today. i had recently started pouring my own plastics and i was dying to test them out, but the whole hour and a half drive i had specks on my mind. anyone who knows me or has fished tournaments with me know im a bass finatic. i eat sleep and breathe bass fishing. i have no idea why i was thinking about specks this morning on the drive over from denham springs. maybe it was a gut feeling. good thing i keep a ton of spare tackle in my truck, because i needed it this morning. after launching and noticing those wet empty boat trailers in the parking lot before daylight i had to give the specks a shot. i ran to the lake before daylight to graph out a few deep areas out with my electronics. after graphing for 15 or 20 minutes i drop the trolling motor and start out for specks. i notice a bunch of jacks blasting mullet in the distance. they must have been knocking mullet 4 ft out of the water. i fish for 15 mins or so and graph some more, not a speck in sight. as a die hard bass angler i give up on the specks and head for bass territory. the first stop i notice bass chasing shrimp again, first cast a healthy liberty bass. a few more cast in another. i pick up 6 bass in no time and the bite slows. i make another move north closer to the launch and i pick up another 2 bass. as im swinging the bass over the side i hear my back graph pinging fish. i look at my front graph and the screen is lit up with red streaks. i unhook the bass and release it. i pick up my drop shot rig and drop straight down 12 ft to the school of fish. i feel tap tap and the rod loads up. i swing aboard a nice fall speck. i drop the fish in the livewell and make another drop at them. same deal tap tap and the rod loads up. speck number 2 was a pretty fall trout that spit up a ton of glass minnows on the front deck. the minnows matches the optimum baby opti shad i was using perfectly. i fish for awhile and put a few in the box with a bunch of throw backs. i meet 2 guys who were catching a ton of whites but no specks. i shoot the bull with them and offered the fish that i had to them. they didnt have many fish so they jumped on the offering. i told them what i was using and they started catching a few. a little while later i find another school of specks and start dropping them in the livewell as fast as i could. after picking up another 12 i get a call from keith who was on the bank watching as he passed through the area. i talked to him for a few and gave him the scoop on what was going on. as i was passing i noticed a few guys fishing from the bank. they were hammering the whites. i split a dozen fat trout between 2 guys on the bank and i took off in search of some green fish. i picked up a few bass north of the launch on liberty and headed back to the speck grounds before making my way home. the final tally was 24 nice size specks, 11 bass (caught and released), and a ton of mixed throw backs. most of my specks were caught on a drop shot rig with an optimum baby opti shad in the ghost rider color. the bigger specks were suspended just off the bottom in 10 to 12 ft of water. i used my electronics to find schools of specks and dropped my rig straight down to them. i also used a custom swimbait as another search bait to locate schools of specks. once i found the school i would pick up the drop shot and work the school over before moving on to more fish. the specks were caught from just south of the liberty launch up to the bridge. the bass were caught on a junebug craw pitched to heavy cover north of the launch in liberty. long story short the specks are starting to move in to the area and now is the time to get on them. the bass are still holding in thick cover with current. fish liberty and bonfouca and you can target both in the same day. if one option fails you can always resort to the other.
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