Fishing Report for Wheeler 11/17/17

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Last week was soooo gooood and word was that the fish were still biting. Early in the week, Josh and I had planned to fish the Gray's Outdoors tournament (you can fish Wheeler/Wilson/Pickwick). But, weather started looking really, really bad so they canceled it. 

But, I was so excited about fishing that I was COMPELLED TO FISH. Not only did I want to catch more fish, but I needed to get Big Booty Judy out. Really, the only option was going Friday to Ditto. My buddy Naaman agreed to fish with me. You may recall that we went out the week before and had a really, really good day catching solid 2.5 pound spots. You can read that report below.

Fishing Report for Wheeler/Ditto Landing 11/10/16

Anyways, it was cold with the water temps diving into the 50s. But, current was ripping, so we figured we had a chance to get on a pile of fish. We recognized that, like last week, we may have to hunt for them for awhile.

We started out fishing some areas that we had been catching fish. A fish here, a fish there, but never more than one fish. That had been pretty common last week. We caught fish everywhere we went but it wasn't until around 11 when we found them piled up, up by the dam. 

The only thing the fish would bite was a jerkbait. I was throwing the Smithwick Rouge and it would get bit fairly often. But, despite moving around and catching a fish here or there, we didn't catch anything over about a pound.

We covered water from the Flint river to Ditto and never found a pile, but ended up catching around 15. Only two fish came on baits that were not jerk baits. 

If you are out searching for fish, here are some thoughts:

The cool temps and dropping water levels are forcing the fish to back off to the main channel break (I think). We continued to fish the 13-14 foot break but we were not marking fish like we had been after the warm spell last week. 

It is certainly possible that they may be in the backs of creeks, but as you probably know, there aren't any of those where we fished. 

We did mark big groups of bait and fish on major contour changes like the upper point of Hobb's island, especially around the gravel pit. Same story, though. We would get bit the first cast and then wouldn't get another bite. 

At least the boat was running good!

Fishing Report for Wheeler/Ditto Landing 11/10/17

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Part of being and adult (and father of three) is being unable to drop what you are doing to go fishing. Even on holidays, as last Friday was, it takes some serious work to arrange things to work out. But, Josh and I were able to get things arranged so that we could get an afternoon of fishing in. Now, with him having to arrange kid care and me trying to makes sure my three couldn't burn the house down, it meant we couldn't go anywhere other than Ditto.

That's ok. Reports had been good that both numbers, size, and type of fish were being caught. Both Josh, our friend Naaman, and several other associates had sent reports back that the fishing was superb. Most reported that 12 pound bags were easy to come by and that mixed bags up to 18 pounds were being caught. 

So, we figured we would give it a go. 

We were on the water around noon and decided to fish current breaks local to the marina. Fishing a combination of A-rig and jerk baits, we were able to catch ones and twos at every stop we made. But, there was no size and the bites weren't very plentiful.

Elsewhere, our buddy Naaman was reporting great success on the same lures, so obviously we weren't fishing the right things. There weren't a lot of boats on the water, but there were enough that all the obvious current breaks were getting fished, or had been fished.

A quick look at the TVA App told us that TVA was pulling 70K CFS out of Guntersville dam. That should be more than enough to make for a good dam bite and both of us hoped we could find some smallies. 

We made the run up to the dam and began fishing the wing walls and rip-rap around the dam. Again, we could get a bite here and there, but nothing consistent. The best thing we caught was a gentleman's rod. He had accidentally thrown it in the water (quite funny to have seen in person) and couldn't reach it. We fished it out for him.

We moved down to the other side of the damn and couldn't get any bites, despite finding fish grouped up really tight.

Moving down to the ramp, we caught two or three short fish off of the wing wall of the ramp. I happened to look down at the Lowerance unit and see a pile of golf balls under the boat. There seemed to be around 7 or 10 fish laying on the bottom right under us, right on the current break line.

Josh let the boat drift back about 10 yards and that made all the difference. 

Throwing a combination of jigs and shakey heads, we boated 7-10 2.5 pound spots and several smallmouth. None of the smallmouth were very big, but it was fun to catch! 

Eventually, the bites tapered from every cast to one bite every 15 minutes, so we began to move down river. 

We covered a few other spots, but, again, just one fish at a time.

Eventually, we tried the 431 bridge with jerkbaits the last 10 minutes of day light. 

Man, that was an exciting few minutes! Every cast, for both of us, we caught a fish. 

On the day, we caught around 20 fish with our best five going around 12 pounds. None of the fish went over 3 pounds. Naaman had several nice fish on the day and probably caught the same amount as both Josh and I. 

This time of year, you have to really cover water to find the fish, but when you do, you can catch a lot in a very short amount of time. Add into the equation that most outdoorsmen are in their deer stands and you have the opportunity to catch a lot of fish! Really, you only need an A-rig, a jerkbait, and jig or shakeyhead.