Read about all of my Fishing Adventures!
Follow my Fish of 2015
One of the major benefits of having your fishing partner get a job where you work is being able to get in those late afternoon trips.
However, the last two trips resulted in zero fish, though I did miss a super solid Wheeler beast while flipping a jig. You can see that in this video.
Anyway, we put in at the Redstone Arsenal ramp after work and headed up river. Josh had a new 3 blade prop that he wanted to try out. When he hit the loud pedal, next to nothing happened. The boat refused to get on plane. I had to stand on the bow to get it to level off. We figure that there is a fueling issue somewhere, but regardless, that limited the fishing we could do.
Water temp was 68 degrees. Water is about 3 feet low. Current was 46,000CFS.
Water temp was 68 degrees. Water is about 3 feet low. Current was 46,000CFS.
We started fishing the entrance to Ditto Landing, throwing a variety of baits. We ran in to some of our regular Thursday night Ditto Wildcat competition and we stopped to talk to them. They were working the downriver point and mentioned that they had caught around 15 fish, none over 12 inches, since 7AM that morning. Crazy, considering that there was 46,000 CFS being pulled from Guntersville on a beautiful day. I had one lone bite as my PowerTeam Lures 7" Tickler on a PTL Triple-X pea head was washed over rocks.
Kind of a comedy of errors on my part, as I had loosened the drag on the 6'6" medium heavy rod and Citica baitcaster just days before on Smith lake. I had been using 8-pound line and fishing for magnum spots. After breaking off a 3 pounder, I backed off the reel. You can read about that trip here:
Fishing Report for Smith Lake 10/27/15
Well, I respooled with 10 pound line, which I can now do since I order my line in 1,000-yard spools, which I have written about before.
But I forgot to set the drag. So, when I set the hook on this fish.....nothing happened. I can just see the fish looking at the boat and spitting the bait out, then laughing at my stupidity.
We headed in to Ditto since common thought is that bait is going back into creeks and the bass will be following them. Again, no bites.
But a funny thing happened. Well, "funny" to you guys. As I was flipping a jig around docks, the GoPro suction mount decided it wanted to quit sucking. Plop. Splash. Into the drink and to the bottom of Wheeler. That sucked.
But, I try to keep my temper in check these days. So, I sat down and cried instead, knowing I had to report the financial loss to my wife. Just kidding. I didn't cry. I did yell.
I figure I got 3 years out of it. And, I didn't really like the GoPro 3 White anyway. Don't bother. Buy Silver or Black.
Without a big motor that worked, all we could do was fish rip-rap banks close to Ditto. Imagine our surprise when we got in to a mess of fish!
It started with Josh catching two on a walk-the-dog bait. I broke off two fish on a shaky head because I can't tie a knot.
But, I picked up my Luckycraft Sammy and quickly caught two and evened the score.
Over the next 20 minutes, which were the last 20 minutes of daylight, we had around 30 hits on top water. Most of those didn't stick, but around 15 did. The size ranged anywhere from six inches to around a 1.5 pound spot. Nothing big.
Which was fine, because after figuring out that the fish were located in a very small stretch of bank adjacent to an off-shore rock pile, we decided that we would save the fish for a tournament on Saturday, which our friends that were fishing the mouth of Ditto had told us about.
We were catching the small stragglers on the bank, but the bigger fish were on the rock pile, which we graphed several times with Josh's Lowrance unit.
Anyway, I had one of the best days I've had in the last few months. While boating 5-6 fish is far from a great day, we had a lot of bites, shook off a lot of fish, but enjoyed a low pressure atmosphere from a quick afternoon trip that resulted in fish.
Now if only I hadn't lost the GoPro.
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