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Follow my Fish of 2017
I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of readers I had on last week's post. In case you didn't read it, click the link and see how Brad and I braved hurricane Irma and caught some toads on Wilson. It's received 830 hits, so yall must have liked what you read! I appreciate that!
Fishing Report for Wilson Lake 9/12/17
So, the reason we went out wasn't just because it was the perfect conditions for smallmouth, though it certainly that. We also had a club tournament on Saturday and we wanted to be prepared.
But, we also knew that the conditions would be polar opposites from Tuesday to Saturday, which is why we went out Friday as well.
Man, things couldn't have been anymore different. First, there was no current. TVA held the current at under 10,000 CFS, so we didn't even bother going to the dam. In fact, judging by prediction for Saturday, we needed to plan NOT to fish the dam at all.
With that said, we headed into Shoal Creek, where we have had a ton of success in the past, but not the last few years, for some strange reason. The idea was to find some topwater fish, at least early. With our experience this time of year, especially with no current, catching them early was key.
Alas, the fish were not on board with that. I guess that shouldn't be a surprise because they haven't wanted topwater all year. It's crazy to think that I caught more topwater fish in March than in September, but I digress.
We did, however, mark some fish on ledges and were able to catch two very quickly on finesse baits. Neither were very big, each weighing under two pounds. But the quickness of these bites told us to leave them for tomorrow. Both bites came in 20 feet or more of water.
We then ran across the river to a similar spot in McCarren creek. This resulted in a single bite from a largemouth, but several stripe were caught. This bite didn't come in the same 20 foot depth, but it was the deepest part of the creek. Running to similar spots resulted in nothing. We ended the day fairly early, having boated no good fish nor numbers. We did have one spot that we had confidence in, but we worried about being able to get on it, due to another large tournament coming out of Lock 6 the next morning.
In summation, here's what we knew: weights and numbers were going to be exceedingly low. Like, to the point where we should expect five bites and we better fish clean and get all five bites into the boat. Again, this was experience talking to us. We had no ambitions of another trip like last year's classic. Wilson can do that, in a heartbeat. She's done it plenty of times.
Sure enough, we blasted off behind this other tournament but we were able to fish the spot on Shoal creek that we wanted to fish.
It resulted in a series of quick bites and we landed fish. Again, no topwater bite and we had to really, really feed these fish finesse baits.
Brad checked the TVA app out of habit and noticed that they had turned current on already. We weren't expecting any until at least noon. So, we made the run to the dam. Initially, the wrong generators were turned on. That wasn't unexpected. Then, they turned the right ones on and we moved into position and got ready to catch them.
But, we got no bites. We typically catch them on deep diving cranks, but that didn't work. So, we threw swimbaits, the next best thing. Still nothing. Everything was right, aside from high skies.
We knew this was a possibility. Sometimes you have to wait them out. Just stay the course and keep casting. So, we did. And we nearly threw our arms off without catching anything. Not even drum or stripe, which told us that they weren't in the current, or at least where we were fishing.
So, despite telling ourselves we wouldn't move, we moved. It isn't like we moved far. We just left the hard eddies that we typically fished and moved to fishing hard placements like the wing walls of the dam and rockpiles off the current as well as areas further down where the current spreads out.
This allowed us to slow down and throw finesse baits. We never found a pile of fish and we REALLY had to work, but we began to get a bite every 30 minutes. The issue was, all of them were small. I've never caught so many small fish at the dam. Typically, I catch small ones and that allows me to hone in on the big ones.
Not so on Saturday, as frustrating as it was.
However, when Brad boated this massive smallie late, late, late in the day, we knew a tough day was now on our side. If we weren't getting a lot of bites nor size, even after two trips on the lake that week, the chances of someone else getting them were slim.
That ended up being the truth. We weighed in 12 pounds with second place having just four fish for five pounds. Third place had three fish for three pounds. In fact, you could take every fish caught by the club, add it together and it wouldn't weigh more than our five. That's not bragging on us, that's telling you how tough it was everywhere.
With that said, I did see a nice bag similar to ours, but without the spread between a five pound smallies and a half pound dink weighed in, in the other club. We saw what they had been doing and it was the same thing we were doing: covering water. Except these guys were drifting further down river, by several hundred yards.
In the end, it doesn't matter how the day went, if you win. Of course, I wish everyone could catch as much as they want, as long as we catch more. Saturday was more of the same with Wilson, especially this time of year. Like I said on Facebook: Fish hard, fish clean.
