Follow my Fish of 2014
With my sisters wedding coming up, and 3 different showers or parties in 3 days, I knew that a Friday morning fish was the only option that I would have. My friend and Co-worker Jon was interested as he had been wearing the fish out on the Big G on a new-to-us spot that featured a long slate rock shelf. He had been catching 20-30 a day, but that was with the spawn in full swing.
We wanted to start early, so at 2:30am, I was awake and getting ready. It didn't help that lil Griffin was wanting to snuggle, having gotten out of his bed and pitter-pattered to our room!
I passed the Hardees in Gurly at a little past 430, and they weren't open. I tell ya, that place has more problems! So, I stopped at the shell on 431 and bought biscuits there. They sure were good, especially after I thought I might go hungry! I pulled into Seibold Camp ground right at 445, as we had planned. Jon and another co-worker, Jeff McCaleb, were waiting on me. I hadn't fished with McCaleb, but he shares my affinity for making swimbaits! Neither of us said anything, but secretly I wanted to compare! Now, I admit that he makes a Rago BVD knockoff which is huge...whereas I make a MUCH smaller bait:
But, hey, isn't fishing a competition?
One of the first things I noticed was that it was a full moon on a cloudless night. Right at the shad spawn. I knew, right then, that we would have trouble catching fish once the sun got up. But it should be easy for awhile, judging by the shad fry in the water and the busting bass! Here is where we fished:
We started on the downriver point. The fish were going nuts on top water, but I noticed that they were pushed out from the bank a good bit. Jon and McCaleb were fishing in the front, casting towards the shore. Not wanting to fish behind two people, I opted to cover that deeper water. As they threw swimbaits, Reaction Innovation skinny dipper in Bad Shad, I believe:
I went to top water with the Lucky Craft Sammy 100
Second cast, a bass annihilated it. A good 3 pounder. This fish came all the way out of the water by two feet! Next cast, another. Next cast another. I had 5 fish in the boat in about 10 minutes. You can see from the map above that there were two points. I found that if I cast parallel to either of them, or even towards the channel, that was shen I got bit.
Jon stuck to the swimbait, but McCaleb swapped over to a sammy and caught a few.
As soon as the sun peaked over the mountains, the fish started slapping at it. By about 7, I had caught around 10 on topwater with McCaleb and Jon adding another 5 or so. But, those slaps kept coming. I missed a 5 pounder on two consecutive casts. It is infuriating to have so many weak hits. By 715, the slaps were gone and it seemed the bite had died. We pushed deeper to an underwater hump (circled on the map). I began throwing my swimbait and was able to catch a couple of fish on it:
We moved to several older honey holes, but couldn't catch the numbers. We finally went back to where we started and Jon and McCaleb had the skinny dipper bite turn on. They were able to catch a good number of fish including at least one 4.5 pounder each, which beat my big fish. However, every fish we caught was VERY spawned out.
I was able to tempt the fish with a few other weapons, although I didn't land any of them. I had a solid hit on a new Spro frog:
As well as a new XCaliber square bill crank
I also lost one on a Carolina rigged Ole Monster, which got off at the boat.
We called it quits at 2pm as the bite had all but died...although I did catch this guy on a Zell-Pop:
As we returned to the ramp, I noticed the damage to the campground:
It was a great day, even if the bite died. It told me that night fishing during a shad spawn MUST be done! Can't wait for that! We caught around 30 fish total. Best 5 would have been around 20 pounds.
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