Not too much to report. Since I (we) learned that we are expecting another little one, I have really put fishing on the back burner. Turns out, fishing costs money....and lots of it. In fact, I would venture to say that it costs between 50-100 dollars to fish Guntersville.
My last few trips to Guntersville haven't produced much. In fact, I have probably been there 4 times since my last post and haven't caught anything worth writing about.
Add in a boat that is really showing it's age....
We rebuilt the carbs back in early December, and that was no small feat...to the tune of $200. And that didn't fix the problem. That may not be much to most fishermen, but it was to me. Especially since I knew it needed something else. I was in no hurry to spend more money, and neither was my dad. I pretty much became dependent on other fishermen to fish and it turns out that nobody really needs a back boater these days.
But then the flyer for the NATA Open came (or was posted on the internet). I sent in a check real quick, before I really thought it through. But, Josh had told me he would be down. We agreed that we needed to prefish it pretty heavily. So, starting last weekend (13th) we (Josh, Bertus, and I) decided that we would fish out of Goosepond. We had consulted the map and highlighted areas that we thought would be good. Obviously, there were some community holes in the mix, so we decided to fish those just to see what would happen.
It was windy and cold. Water was stained. Probably the worst combination for fishing, but all of us were itching to fish, especially since Josh finally had his boat back together from a failed Motorguide trolling motor.
Fishing a submerged rock pile, I had a bite on a Strike King 6XD on the first or second cast. The fish loaded up but popped off. Good sign! Maybe we would wear them out. Next cast, pumped the rock pile, snagged another.
A moment of hope was dashed pretty quick. Having caught enough drum in my life, I knew within 5-10 seconds what I was dealing with.
Sadly, that was the only real bite we had, aside from a nice fish Bertus caught late in the day.
However, it was the first time I had been on the water in a month, and it was with two of my best friends. To be honest, I barely noticed that we didn't catch anything. In fact, I think we had more fun braving the waves than we did fishing.
Not exactly a great data point for prefishing....but we took it in stride. This past Sunday, we gave it another try....by fishing all new spots from Waterfront to goosepond. We had very high hopes. Two of the guides fished together the day before and posted on the bass fishing homepage:
http://www.wmi.org/bassfish/reports/alabama/index.html
They reported that they had just wore them out. The day seemed to be prefect. But, we quickly found out we were in for a long day.
A little aside here....the water was pretty congested, so we saw a lot of boats. It's real easy to tell what they are throwing too....the Ole (or new?) A-ring. Yep. EVERYONE was throwing it. I just kind of laugh at it. I have seen 1 fish caught on it, personally. I am sure it works...just not while I am in the boat.
Sorry about that....I admit. I went out and bought one...so who am I to laugh. I can't even throw it.....
So, if you do have a report on it...please...comment and let me know!
Ok...back to the last trip. It started out slow, but it was absolutely gorgeous and the company wasn't too bad. For those that read just for the fishing report, you can go ahead and quit reading, cause we only caught 4 bass.
For those that read for the story, we moved around a good bit, trying a little of this and a little of that. We got in the very back of Preston Island and noticed that there was a TON of bait. Bertus snagged a fish on an XR75
NO, it wasn't a bass. But it was a HECK of a crappie!
I backed that up with catching two fish at the same time....too bad they were minnows.
The next place we ran was to one of my secret spots (as in, I don't see others fishing it, so it MUST be secret!) We fished it for 30 minutes and caught 3 keepers. I caught two of them on an Xcalibur square bill
Well, that pretty much wraps that up! Slow year so far. I plan on prefishing at least 3 more times before the NATA Open.
http://natabass.com/NATA%20FEBRUARY%20OPEN%202012.pdf