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Follow my Fish of 2017
The struggle.....continues. Man, I guess we are just out of touch with Ditto. Seems like fishing the river has gotten tougher and tougher the last few years. But, to be honest, I only fish it during the Thursday night tournaments and typically ONLY during the hot months of the year. That sure stacks the cards against. Still, back in the day when we ONLY fished the river (for the most part), fishing never seemed that hard. Heck, seemed like we cashed a check every other tournament.
Maybe I just remember things wrong. Anyway, we had a lot of rain, as you surely know, but the river hadn't quite flooded....yet. That wouldn't happen until Friday. So, Josh and I threw our money on the barrel head (so to speak) and headed down river.
A few weeks ago, we fished the Wildcat and we decided to hit the dam since there was good current (50,000 CFS, if I recall).
We caught a great fish on the first few casts but were unable to really add to it. We weighed in three fish for around seven pounds. It was just enough for 3rd, but 3rd didn't pay that day.
Conditions were very similar except that the water temp was bit higher than it had been. We decided we would go the opposite route. Instead of fishing current on the river, we would ease way back into Cotaco creek and flip grass. It seemed like the perfect idea, with rising water levels and all. Josh even boated a couple of decent fish flipping while I alternated between a frog and flipping. The bite never turned on and the lone bite I had on the frog came as I was watching white bass school behind me.
With about 45 minutes to go, we decided we would try our best to fish a couple of old spots on the river channel that had been good to us, especially in high current. These included the pumphouse below Triana creek, the pumphouse by the army docks, as well as the Army/NASA barge area.
Both of us boated multiple fish from the pump house, but none of them were over 10 inches long. Between buzzbaits, a mixture of cranks, and shakey heads, we could have caught a boat load of short fish, but that's not what we needed.
We ran up to the small pump house. In heavy current, only one fisherman can fish at a time. Josh flipped a shakey head in the eddy and immediately pulled out a solid two pounder. As he wrestled with the fish and the livewell, I made a few casts and pulled out a couple of short fish. Between the low weight shakey head, the wind, and the current, I missed a lot of bites I really shouldn't have missed.
We moved up 100 yards to the cove that houses the docks. We pulled out another keeper and many more shorts.
In the end, we still didn't have a limit and we were 4th place...one out of the money.
Sad thing is, we weren't that far off the pace. The winning boat was a father and son pair who caught the big fish of the tournament at the docks 5 minutes before weigh in!
At least we caught some fish. Like I said, we could have caught all the 10 inchers we wanted! I joked with the guys that whatever I think we should do....perhaps we should do the opposite. Hopefully we will find out soon.
Water was really clean in Cotaco, which was interesting. The river was flowing a solid 3 MPH with the 60,000 CFS flow and had a little stain to it. Water temps had dipped to the high 70s.
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