Follow my Fish of 2014
How many times do you get the opportunity to fish in early January with the air in the 70s? Not often enough. I guess this is one of the benefits of Global Warming (J/K).
Jon and I spent several days earlier in the week determining where we wanted to fish. It came down to Pickwick or Guntersville. After the atrocious year I had on Guntersville, I was really hesitant to vouch for it...despite the thought that it just HAD to turn around at some point. With the plethora of tournaments coming up, many of which I plan to fish, I felt like I should at least give it a try.
So, we put in at Waterfront Grocery around 8am. We were both pretty excited about getting out on the water in January. There was a nice misty rain and the water color looked great. There was little to no one on the water. We fished our way out of the cover without a bite. Jon's friend Keith decided to come by with his new Bullet and fish too. Boy, what a pretty boat....but I digress.
We fished mostly shallow water, occasionally looking at ledges. But, Jon caught 1 fish and I didn't have a bite. Keith caught 3 fish. I threw a good mix of Xcalibur XR50, River2sea jerkbait, Bama rig, and Gambler jig. No luck.So. I won't waste any more of your time other than to say that someone was out throwing blasting caps in the water. That's the second time in the last 3 years that I have seen it. Wonder what's going on? I'm sure it isn't good for the fishing.
Anyway, I should have known I wouldn't catch anything because I was borrowing a Go-Pro to start doing webisodes. Go figure.
So, fast forward to Saturday. Because I had spent the last few weekends taking care of sick babies and chores, my wife told me that I should get out and fish. How sweet, huh?
So, Josh and I decided to get out on Wheeler. Like me, he hasn't done well on Guntersville and Wheeler hasn't been real kind either. He has adopted a new philosophy to fishing which he calls "catch what's biting". While I have resorted to catching white bass when the largemouth aren't on, I haven't ever gone solely for stripe and/or whites. In fact, I hadn't caught a stripe in almost 15 years. My grandad and I used to fish all the time at Tim's Ford for them.
So, we loaded up and put in at the dam. I have only attempted to fish that stretch 1 other time, during a Ditto Thursday night Wildcat, but the lower unit trashed a hub and we had to get towed back before we made it. There were 3 flood gates and the current was whipping! I don't care how many times you get on really rough water, it still should humble you. We were wearing our jackets of course, and still managed to get water of the side a handful of times. Water had really good clareity despite the rains over the last week. Water temps were 47 in most places.
I turned on the Go-Pro since I knew we would prob catch a good amount of fish, but the batter was dead. Go figure, huh?
We started out throwing Bama rigs. Josh caught several nice stripes on his while I couldn't really get a bite. I did catch a few good sized white bass on the bama rig backed by Gambler swimbaits .
Yes. I know the jacket doesn't fit. It's Josh's wife's. LOL! Better of safe, right?
I think running the trolling motor took it's toll on Josh ( I know it would bother me) so we decided to fish a few other places just down the river at Paintrock. One thing we both noticed were the vast numbers of boats on the river. They were everywhere. Turns out, one of my readers was fishing his club tournament, the Brindley Mountain Bass Club were fishing out of Ditto. Turns out, the bass WERE biting and it took around 16 pounds to win. That's a heck of a sack on that stretch of the river.
Anyway, throwing mostly spoons, we were able to rack up on numbers. I believe we caught around 30-40 fish. We had 4 doubles. It certainly soothed a lot of my frustration from the day before. Sadly, I managed to loose 2 Bama rigs, 1 spoon, and 1 Strike King 6XD Silent. Ugh.
Anyway, we had a great time catching fish without having to work too hard. Special thanks to my wife for letting me fish 2 days in a row.
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