Read about all of my Fishing Adventures!
Follow my Fish of 2017
The last two years, our club has moved from fishing Guntersville to Lewis Smith Lake in Cullman, Alabama. It's a bit of a departure from most clubs. Guntersville has historically been a hotspot and a must-fish lake early in the year, but not because of the number of bites, but the quality. Just take last weekend's tournament for me and Josh, which you can read about here. It's one of about four or five lakes in the country with that kind of number of double-digit fish, but while you can run across 9 pounders, like I did Saturday, you can also fail to get bit.
Now, factor in the recent downturn of the Big G, and that sometimes meant fishing weeks without a bite. That's changed this year, but the schedule was made already.
Smith lake, on the other hand, has no double digit bass. But, it isn't the lake from the 80s or 90s that simply wasn't worth fishing. The introduction of blueback herring has turned Smith lake into a magnum spotted bass fishery. You can go to the Smith Lake Bass Tournament Facebook page and see how, week after week, you better have 16-20 pounds at the scales to expect a check, which is insane considering there are no fish over five pounds being caught. In other words, you better not be just catching numbers, but numbers of quality.
That doesn't mean it's easy. Just take a look back at last year's event. You can read about our prefishing and how we turned in a 2nd place finish. In summation, prefishing was stupid tough with only about five bites a day, but those bites put us in the right locations.
Still, we didn't find any magnum spots last year and had to cull up by ounces to get our limit.
Fishing for Smith this year started out the exact same way, though we did find one really good fish and thought we might have a pattern that involved hydrilla and sandy points for largemouth. You can read about it in the link below.
Fishing Report for Smith Lake 1/15/18
But as days and weeks went by, Brad and I continued to fish and struggle to put together a real game plan. We might catch five one day, two the next, ten the next, and not get a bite, which is essentially how we ended prefishing last Tuesday. One thing we learned from lasy year was those few bites tended to turn into good spots when the weather improved.
So, that's how we started our tournament. We ran from the dam all the way to Rock Creek, which is a long way when you aren't really on fish. We began in a pocket that we used last year and while it produced two unders on crankbaits quickly, it didn't produce anything else for the next 30 minutes. We had hoped to get active fish on cranks early, but it wasn't meant to me. So, we went to the shakey head.
Rounding a point to a cove we have typically caught fish, I picked up a spinnerbait and cast to buck bushes, which were now under water thanks to the rain. A fish slammed it and I boated a very, very solid spot. It wasn't a 4-pounder, but it was solid three.
Brad began to get bit on a skakey head, adding an over and two unders. Meanwhile, I couldn't buy a bite on the stick bait I was throwing, so I went to a bigger worm. Then we both began to get bit. By 8, we had a limit of three overs and two unders. Not good enough.
We fished the pocket harder and did leave at 930 with a full limit of overs for around nine pounds.
We made our way to a nearby rocky point that we had prefished, had caught a decent chunk, and had a history of producing fish for us. The main stretch didn't produce. That wasn't uncommon. We expected to find a fish, not multiple fish, which is what it did for us. But when we got to the rounded edge of the point, the rain clouds disappeared and the sun came out.
The fish decided they wanted to play.
First, it was a bite every five casts. But as we figured out where the bites were coming from and what angle the boat needed to be in, we began to boat over after over. At one point, we caught five consecutive overs.
The rain came back, the bite died. We roamed around the point and still managed to get bit, but still couldn't find the big fish. At this point, we were sitting on 11 pounds or so with two decent spots and three clones.
The sun came back out around noon and the bite began anew. This time, Brad caught our big fish of the day, which still wasn't very big, but was a solid 1.5 pound cull and boosted us to our final weight of 13.47. Along the way, we ended our day with around 30 fish that included two unders, two slots and around 25 overs.
Thank goodness for culling beams! Word to the wise, every time you cull, know which fish is your smallest that is already in the livewell. It will prevent you from having to fish them out every time you catch another fish. If we had been smart, we would have known this.
Come weigh in time, almost everyone had a limit of fish. We took home first place with the 13.47. Second and third were right on our heels. Big fish was a spot a little over 4 pounds, but we didn't catch it.
Water temp was 61 degrees in most places. We fished moderately stained water on the main river channel, specifically points in Rock Creek. By far, the most damage was done on a shakey head with a seven inch worm in green pumpkin. I fished a 3/8ths ounce while Brad used a 1/2 ounce. He fished braid and I fished 10 pound Segaur. It didn't make a different.
The fish were definitely feeding up, as we had most of the fish spitting crawfish and shad everywhere. I caught one spot that had so much shad and crawfish in its mouth that I don't know how it managed to get the worm in there!
Get out there and fish Smith. The next month or so is going to be a riot. I sure wish I knew how to catch them big spots, but 30-plus days are A-OK with me!
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