Fishing Report for Wheeler 6/5/14

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With ball season over (for the kids, that is), it has left Thursdays relatively free. That's been great news, as far as fishing is concerned, as I can shake free to fish the Thursday night Wildcat out of Ditto Landing.

A few years back, we were able to fish tons of them, but as we had more kids, time was harder to find. In 2011, we had a lot of success in cashing checks. I started out 2012 on some fish, but ended up being a done, mostly. As ball season picked up for Aubree, I quit going. I didn't fish any in 2013 because we played softball between 3 and 4 days a week.. But, Josh and I decided at the Bassmaster Classic that we would make more this year, even if it meant we didn't play softball on Thursdays. Well, that's KINDA happened. As in, I have made 1 other Wildcat, which you can read about and watch the vid HERE.

Things worked out for this Thursdays, which was doubly good as we are fishing a large tournament this coming weekend and this would be a good time to prefish a little.

As luck would have it, the weather looked terrible all day. Like, BAD BAD BAD weather coming out of Arkansas. But, it's Alabama. You never know WHAT may happen. So, despite the constant warnings and threats coming from my wife, I headed to the ramp.

Sure enough, the weather rolled in right at blastoff. The tournament director asked around on what everyone else wanted to do. Most people decided to head home, which I can't say I blame them. We decided to wait it out and hope the bad weather blew through. After all, I already was in trouble with my wife. I might as well make the most of sleeping in the dog house.

Sure enough, the weather did blow through and at 6, we hit the water with a little drizzle. By the time we hit the first spot, the rain had all but stopped.

But, we noticed that there was ZERO current. On that stretch of river, current is a MUST. With all the rain, we had expected there to be good current. But, it wasn't to be. Just the week before, Josh had cashed a check with only 2 fish. Only 9 fish were weighed in between the top 3 boats. We already knew that it was going to be a slow day.

So, we decided that we wouldn't do too much casting. We would use the graph and do a lot of idling, which everyone should do, especially on those tough days. I finally got in the habit of doing that once I dialed in my own graph, which you can read about HERE.


But, after finding some interesting areas, we couldn't help but make a few casts. Josh went to the finesse stuff, so I went to the Strike King 6XD. Cause, that's backwards from usual fishing etiquette of speed up front, slow in the rear. But, that's how we do. After breaking off one of my favorite cranks, the silent series sexy shad, I tied on Citrus Shad, since the water had a lot of stain to it. I want the fish to see it coming.

It didn't take but one cast to thump it off the rock bottom and find it's way into a fishes mouth! But, the fish fought too hard to be a largemouth, especially the small ones we find on this end of the river. It never jumped and made several hard runs. I figured it was a drum. But, when I got it to the boat, it flashed us and  I was amazed to see a green fish on the other end! It was the biggest fish I had hooked on this end of the river and I was totally unprepared for it. Luckily, I was throwing the crank on 17 pound line, so I boat flipped it.

What a hawg!

We fished a little while longer and then decided to take the rest of the day to graph more spots. We found a few nice areas, especially some on Hobbs Island that featured standing timber in 25 feet of water. We called it a day early.