Zach's Pages

Monday, January 30, 2017

Fishing Report for Smith Lake 1/28/17

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Things weren't so good on our last trip to Smith lake. You can read about that fishing trip by clicking the link below.


To be honest, between our grand total of 6 fish on 6 total bites all day and the information that we gathered from others, it sounded like the first trip to Smith was a combination of the wrong end of the lake and the wrong type of weather. Sure, the weather was horrible: high skies and post frontal. The water temp was in the mid-40s and the lake was at the 498 foot elevation. Still, we had a limit and, all things considered, it wasn't a BAD limit. 

So, Brad and I decided to get out and keep learning the lake. This time, we would put in at the dam instead of Smith Lake park. Though the weather looked to be against us (again) the water elevation had improved drastically. It was up to the 504 foot elevation, which meant that some of the rip-rap and laydowns would be in the water.

Furthermore, we had watched some videos on fishing Smith this time of year, ranging form Tim Horton Outdoors to coverage from the 2015 FLW tournament. We thought we could figure it out and we believed it started with finding the bait.

So, we started scanning. We scanned and we scanned and we scanned some more. We found a grand total of two bait balls. It was so bad that we began to wonder if we were reading the Lowrance units incorrectly. We swapped between the 800kHz and the the lower frequency transducer (435kHz?) trying to get a combination of penetration and resolution. Still, we went from point to point and bluff to bluff. Nothing. 

We covered who creeks with a combination of jigs, crankbaits, and shakey heads. We didn't get a bite. We never felt like we were around fish, which seemed impossible because we scanned and scanned to the point we began to wonder if there were any fish in the entire lake. 

It really isn't a good feeling when you have a tournament coming up and you can't muster bites on multiple days of prefishing. 

But, hey, that's fishing, right? 

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