Ditto Landing (3 trips), May 4,5, and 7th

Follow me on Facebook, YouTube,  and Twitter!

Read about all of my Fishing Adventures!

Follow my Fish of 2014

As most of you know (all 3 of my readers), you know that I fish the Thursday night Ditto Landing Wildcat tournament. Since I hadn't been out on the boat in about 2 weeks, I decided that Wed night would be a good night to get out...not only for fun, but to prefish for the tournament on the following day.

Aubree wanted to go with Josh and I, and since I love taking her with me, I loaded her up and we headed to the river. Josh and I decided that we would not be going down river, as we had in previous weeks. We simply hadn't caught the numbers that we needed to catch. We started out on the lower point of Hobbs Island, but caught no fish. At about 630 or so, we opted to go upriver to Butler Basin, a gated (and wealthy) community. It is a community hole but ALWAYS has fish. They have nice slips and even have their own lighthouse! Baller!

we didn't have to fish long to find success. You can see my notes below on the different areas. we started down the south bank to the drainage ditch. It is a large concrete culvert with usually has water flowing out of it. It has big chunk rocks under the water. With my trusty Strike King Series 3 Powder Blue Chartreuse, I quickly caught 2 small bass and a crappie.

I was asking Josh what he thought about the up coming tournament. He made a flat out statement that, unless convinced otherwise, he wouldn't fish it..opting instead for Thirsty Thursday at Joe Davis. I couldn't say I blamed him. We just hadn't caught any good fish.

Almost to punctuate his sentence, he snagged a MASSIVE bass, which shook loose at the boat, but not before giving us a great view. It was easily the biggest bass I have seen on the river, and I have caught a couple of low 5s.

While not convinced, he proceeded down the south bank, catching a few more decent ones, but nothing that would build a winning sack. Now, I will admit that we had a few shake loose at the boat that were OK. Here is one that Aubree got in the boat , down in the corner by the slips:

We swapped banks, sitting on the point in front of the concrete retaining wall. We kept seeing BIG swirls REAL shallow under these 3 overhanging limbs. We began to target them with the series 3. One after the other, we caught GOOD spotted bass and a few smallies!

We proceeded down the retaining wall, catching more decent fish. Even in the back corner, we picked up fish after fish. While Josh did catch some on a shaky head, and I caught some on a Sammy, we didn't catch any good ones on anything BUT the series 3. One fish DID catch me, though. As I was getting it out of the net, it managed to snag me, the barb went into the skin and out the other side. Before I could say "ouch", it jerked it out.

We went back to those overhanging trees and boated at LEAST 3 fish over 3 pounds. By that time, it was getting quite chilly and Aubree wasn't properly dressed. Josh gave up his coat.

That sowed it up. We would give it a try the next night. Unfortunately, there isn't much to say about Thursday night. We caught fish...even some good ones, but we NEEDED that kicker fish and just couldn't find it. In fact, we culled at LEAST 5 times on the way to a respectable 9 pounds. However, the winner took the check with 14 pounds! AGAIN! I tell you what, some of those guys know where the fish are. More amazing is that 4 out of their 5 fish were SMALL MOUTH!


On to the better times! Saturday, Aubree didn't have a softball game, and Alyse wanted to get out on the boat with the kids. I was happy to oblige. We packed up a cooler and drove to the army rec area. since there was a benefit tournament out of Ditto (which my partner didn't want to fish), I was interested in seeing how full the parking lot was. It was fairly packed, I guess around 25 boats. I was curious to see where they were fishing, so I ran up to Butler. I wanted to show Alyse where we had been fishing...and the type of life that maybe we could have one day :-)


While we were there, I tossed the old Strike King, but had NO BITES! Hmmm...only a few days ago they were KILLING it. So, I swapped to the Ghost Minnow Sammy

First cast to those over hanging trees:

I got greedy and started plugging those trees even more. But sometimes I get over zealous. Alyse thought it was funny that I would go through so much effort to get my bait:

Even Aubree was allowed to get into the action!

Meanwhile, Griffin found ALL the fish on the fish finder!"There! Fish! There, Daddy!"

Griffin even got to drive! He wouldn't let me steer!

We had a terrific day. I lost count of the fish, but we caught a lot in the 2 hours we fished!