Fishing Report for Wheeler Lake 4/19-21

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If you follow me on Facebook, you likely already know how the Alabama Bass Trail went for me and Josh. Two ABT tournaments, one fish weighed in. Chances at making the Championship are now virtually gone. In case you forgot how the ABT went on Guntersville, here is a recap.

Fishing Report for Guntersville/Alabama Bass Trail

This time, it wasn't our fault. About a mile up river from Triana, my motor came apart. We were able to eventually make our way to Ditto, which we did less for the fishing and more for the ability to catch a ride. After a call to the tournament director, our options were incredibly slim. We couldn't fish out of another boat UNLESS we met him in Decatur. It would take 3 days to troll to Decatur. We could catch a ride back with another competitor, but no one could fish once we set foot in the boat. Of course, the other issue was that really no one we knew was fishing that end of the river. 

Ok, so let's back up to Thursday. We wanted a few more data points before the ABT, so we fished the Thursday night wildcat out of Ditto. We had caught a 6-3 the week before in the Wildcat on the way to a 3rd place finish. You can read about there below:

Fishing Report for Wheeler Lake 4/12/18

We wanted to do some different things, see if we could add on to what we had found already, which was slow rolling small swimbaits down rip rap banks. Since the water was up, we went into Cotaco Creek to flip bushes, but didn't find any fish shallow quite yet. We didn't really weigh in any more fish at weigh in and weights were pretty sad (11 pounds to win?). 

Friday, Josh and I split up and he covered Decatur while I covered First creek. I wanted to check some of my smallie stretches, but found out really quick that they were not biting. I varied my gameplan, fishing the back of pockets by flipping and throwing a wacky rig stick bait, nothing seemed to work. I moved into Spring Creek and fished dirt shallow by flipping bushes, dragging a C-rig, and even checking ledges. Nothing. 

To end the day, I began running shallower bluffs and began catching fish, but virtually none of them measured. All of them were smallies and they came on a red series 3 Strike King crank. 

Josh didn't do any better aside from having a voltage regulator go out, forcing us to take my boat and we see how that worked out.

Over the last few weeks, the pendulum has swung back and forth on what we needed to fish during the ABT. It began with fishing inside Ditto were we were sure we could catch 16 pounds. That bite died and we began to think it would have to be down river, but as of Friday afternoon and catching only around three or so measuring fish between the two boats, we thought we needed to do what we felt comfortable doing: fishing from Ditto to the dam. In the absence of catching anything down river, we would take our chances catching numbers of smaller fish and hope to run in to a big one here and there. We knew there were some to be found. Not only did we catch the 6-3, we had missed some good fish, too. So, the pendulum came all the way back. 

At no point was the plan to fish inside of Ditto all day, which brings us to around 9AM, when we finally wet a line. From 9-10, we caught several fish including two solid keepers and a lot of dinks by fishing between the boat slips with shakey heads. The sun got high and that bite really died. We thought surely the bigger fish, namely the females, would be under the docks so we worked really hard throwing wacky rigs and swimbaits under docks and into slips, but never caught a single fish.

Now is the bad news: even though we didn't have a good limit, we had come to grips with today just being about the points. We had a buddy willing to pick us up when they headed down river. The issue was, they scrapped their game plan and wanted to head down river early, at like 1PM. They had some good fish and if we got in the boat, they couldn't fish any more. We didn't want to do that to them, so we DQ'd ourselves and caught a ride back to Decatur where I got my truck and picked Josh up. 

I didn't go back to weigh in. I didn't check weights. I haven't talked to any one. It's been a tough two days because I am really starting to doubt if I will ever figure out fishing larger tournaments. I had so many people come up to me after the Guntersville tournament and tell me not to worry because we fish Wheeler so often and people were just sure we would do really well. I think I even began to believe that and after seeing how hard prefishing was for us and people I know, I thought, hey, we know what to do here. 

Maybe I am putting too much pressure on myself. I've felt this way before and it was when I joined a bigger club due the success I was having in smaller ones. That first year was down-right brutal and I felt this same way that entire year. The feeling of "what do I have to do?" One thing is for certain, I am working as hard as I can. I can't do much more than I am already doing, though better decisions at the Guntersville tournament and better luck this past one sure would have helped.

I guess this is just more of "paying the dues." I guess I can except that. I'm certainly paying the dues in terms of dollars. 

Fishing Report for Pickwick 4/13 and 4/15

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So Josh and I ended Thursday evening on a really solid note as I weighed in my second biggest fish of the year with a 6.30 for the Ditto Thursday night wildcat. You can read about the results by clicking the link below.

Fishing Report for Wheeler Lake 4/12/18

But, the fishing for the week wasn't over, not by a long shot. Our club was fishing Pickwick this weekend and while the tournament was moved from Saturday to Sunday, Friday was the only time we could try and get on some fish. Brad and I hit first light to see what we could find. 

I was so busy last week that I forgot to write the report for our other club tournament on Pickwick on 4/6. It wasn't a great day. I fished with my buddy Naaman and we simply could not find any sizable fish, despite all the inclinations that huge bags were being caught. If you read Lou's Pickwick Fishing Reports or any of the various guide reports from Pickwick, you know big fish were coming to the scales. Most had said the Horseshoe was the deal, but I really didn't want to mess with fishing alongside 40 other boats. The 'Shoe is worse than any ledge on Guntersville in terms of walking across the lake and never getting wet. 

Look, don't misunderstand. I KNEW the big bags were being caught there and I had no problems grinding it out. I've done it before. I just don't LIKE it because you are likely to only get five bites a day and while they are usually GREAT bites, if you only get four, then the entire day was wasted, anyway. So, Naaman and I didn't even bother fishing there and we did get on a great bite down river, in terms of numbers. While it was less than a stellar day, it was still enough to cash a check for second place despite not catching a single female. The pattern was fishing current inside of Seven Mile Island with either a chatterbait or a spinnerbait. It didn't seem to matter which one. We left them biting. Not great, but it was a data point and it was something that COULD be really good IF weather cooperated. And, there were some warm days on the horizon.  

Brad had fished the weekend before and the results were less than optimal. He had fished all over and the 'Shoe was the only place he got bit, and they were good fish. So, we needed to ferret out a game plan. We agreed that if the females DID come up, the tournament COULD be won down stream, which was preferable to both of us. So, we didn't fish inside the Horseshoe all day Friday. 

And, truthfully, we didn't get bit either. At the end of the day, we did put together a small limit fishing a small swimbait along bluffs. We didn't find any females. So, we had to make a choice and that meant factoring in that water levels were going to fluctuate due to 23 hours of rain and the weather was going to be really cold following two days of a warming trend. 

Eventually, we settled on fishing the Horseshoe all day without any discussion of leaving it. We felt like, with the weather, water temps and levels, and current, smallmouth were going to be the deal and any largemouth that had pulled up would be pushed back down. 

We launched and made the short run. On my very first cast, a smallie loaded up on the PowerTeam Lures 4.8" Swinging Hammer and I boated a solid three pounder. Brad followed with his Scottsboro tackle swimbait just two minutes later with an identical sized smallie. I followed that with a nice Warmouth. Two fish for around six pounds just five minutes into the day AND the 'Shoe wasn't packed.

And that all changed, real quick. See, the college series is on Pickwick next Saturday and there were a LOT of guys prefishing. And while these guys are LIGHTYEARS better than I was at that age, they haven't quite learned some of the intricacies of sportsmanship on the water. Before we knew it, we had two boats sitting on the rock pile that were fishing. The rest of the crowd filtered in and so began the day of trying to to cast on to other's boats or cross their lines as we aimlessly wondered around trying to find the fish.

We went several hours without a bite and when the sun tried to peak out, we went to the rip-rap inside the 'Shoe and Brad picked up the A-Rig while I threw a shakey head with a PTL 7" Finicky Tickler on it behind him. Just a few casts in, a fish popped the worm and we boated a nice three pound or so largemouth. Brad caught a non-measuring largemouth soon after. The sun disappeared and so did that bite. 

The klaxon sounded and flood gates began to open on Wilson dam. Then, the fish began to really bite, just not for us. Now, obviously I can't watch every boat all the time, and it is possible that several boats caught big bags, but I never saw the same boat catch more than two. However, the action was palpable, we just couldn't seem to find the same bite every one else was finding, which included two fish that I am very comfortable were well over six. Many, ff not the majority, of the boats in there were live-baiting. 

But eventually the work paid off and what I was SURE was a catfish or a drum ended up being a magnum smallie that took several heart attack level jumps and one run towards the motor before we got her in the box. 

We knew we had four really good fish. Now we needed one more bite. We fished for three straight hours without a single bite before it was time to weigh in. Could we have found a squeaker? Absolutely. I could have caught a second limit on the bluffs down river, but what good would that do? We have changed philosophies this year. While we have done well the last few years, it has been "limit first, quality second." But that typically only brings heartache. After all, no one remembers who just had a limit, right? 

With the quality of fish we had seen caught and we had caught ourselves, we knew someone was going to sack them up, if not most everyone. Sure enough, it was 20 pounds for a win, followed by 19, and then us with 15 pounds in four fish which included a five-pounder that was AMAZINGLY the big fish of the day. So, while we could have found a fifth fish, we needed another five pounder to win. While I KNOW we did the right thing by fishing hard and staying where the big fish were, it's tough to accept that sometimes luck isn't on your side.

And I say that knowing that the two boats that beat us didn't just have luck. They were on fish and we know what they were doing and it was very specific. We just had a general plan that wasn't really backed by any evidence, more of a lack of, which is the difference in that last fish. We needed luck and they didn't. 

Anyways, it was still a solid day and to see and catch those big fish is always awesome, even if the weather isn't. For those interested, most of the smallies have spawned. Water temp was 60. Numbers are tough. 

Fishing Report for Wheeler Lake 4/12/18

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It's been a whirlwind the last few days, and I don't mean just the 25 MPH wind that's been churning. This year continues to be jam-packed with fishing for me and the guys and it makes me really appreciate the pros and the guides for doing this 300 days or more per year. 

Of course, they are GOOD at this sport and that certainly helps them stay motivated. I guess I am on the other end of the spectrum, but it ALSO keeps me pretty motivated. While I am not guiding, nor really fishing any big-money tournaments, I AM fishing a lot and we've had a fair amount of success, despite tournament days being fairly rough. 

I've been telling people that the best way to prepare for a big tournament is obviously more days on the water, but one of the more understated ways of gathering information is to fish wildcats or club tournaments on the same body of water in the weeks preceding your big tournament. So, the with second stop of the Alabama Bass Trail looming, we've been fishing the Ditto Wildcat on Thursday nights. You can read about our first tournament by clicking the link below.

Fishing Report for Ditto/Wheeler 4/5/18

So based upon our experiences the week before, we decided that we wouldn't fish history, although that's nearly impossible for a stretch of river that offers so few holes that hold fish consistently. Case in point was the area that had been so good to Josh in the weeks before that had shut down that week, but we still fished it for almost half of the 3.5 hour tournament to only produce one fish. It was basically agreed that we spend all last week up river of Ditto, so we would go down river this week. 

We decided to fish hard and fish fast and not stop unless something really grabbed our attention. That took burning a lot of water, and I mean A LOT. We didn't get bit in the first two or three spots we fished. 

We were throwing the typical mixture of Ditto-type baits: shakey heads, jigs, and cranks. But it was the PowerTeam Lures 4.8" Swinging Hammer swimbait that suddenly started catching fish. We were paralleling chunk rock when the Lowerance started marking bait and suspended fish. That's when we got bit. We'd catch three or four fish, all of them either 12 inch spots or 15 inch largemouth and many of them short fish that we had to throw back. Then we would go through a dead area. There wasn't anything that we could tell that separated the areas. No channel swings or changes in banks. Just bait. 

It became obvious that the bait was key but we weren't catching the bigger arches that were suspended. We were catching the buck bass. We couldn't get the females to bite. We zoomed down around a mile of bank and culled a few times but simply could not find a big upgrade. In all, we caught around 15-20 fish on swimbaits and crankbaits but we left them biting due to the lack of quality. We also never fished the same stretch twice. 

We returned to Ditto about 15 minutes before weigh in and began fishing docks. Obviously docks can be a factor. Josh has success and I have been with him when he's caught fish. But I can't. It isn't that I can't flip docks or anything, I just don't have the luck. Much of that is likely because I am on the back of the boat and the angle is all wrong.

So when Josh caught a solid upgrade while flipping a dock, I wasn't surprised, even though I was aimlessly casting my swimbait. That isn't to say I wasn't hitting specific spots or trying, because I was. I just had no faith that I would catch anything that mattered.

Boy, was I wrong.

I was throwing into the "T" section of one of the docks when the swimbait just stopped. Like I had hung one of the cables or a brush pile. I was throwing this on a Denali Lithium x-heavy rod with 50 pound braid and this fish just stopped me in my tracks. 

I had a great hookset and Josh netted what we knew was a beast for a Ditto fish and I didn't really think about it when I put it in the box and tossed out the squeaker that was our fifth fish. Good fish. Maybe a money fish. Maybe five pounds.

So imagine my surprise when, five minutes later, the scales said 6.30. 

With the four other little fish, we had enough for 3rd place, but I did get big fish which paid well enough for us to eat some Burger King. Heck of a fish! Sadly, still not enough information on Wheeler to convince me to stay up there. We will give it another try on Thursday! 

Fishing Report for Ditto/Wheeler 4/5/18

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The Thursday night wildcat was supposed to start up last week but it was canceled due to rain and I was at the beach, so it worked out well. Josh had been on some really good fish and I was super excited about getting started fishing Thursday nights again as well as preparing for the second stop of the Alabama Bass Trail. 

After such a fast start to the year in fishing tournaments, things have cooled off dramatically. Really, though, only the Guntersville ABT was a bad tournament. The last two tournaments were on Wilson and we caught plenty of fish, just no BIG fish. Turned out that BIG fish were needed. You can read about our last tournament on Wilson by clicking the link below.

Fishing Report for Wilson 3/24/18

Ok, so Josh had been out while I was on vacation and had sacked up around 16 pounds pretty easy and he did it without any 5-plus fish. He went out again days later and struggled, but still caught fish where he had caught fish before. I went out Wednesday with my wife and dog, Nova, and I really couldn't catching anything other than a migraine.  I should have looked at the weather and said "Nope." 

Truth be told, with the high pressure, post frontal, and not a lick of current, we shouldn't have bothered. Anytime there are high skies and high pressure, I get a migraine and I don't know if its from just the weather or because the fishing. 

So, I began to temper my expectations of fishing last night knowing that my and Josh's last trip hadn't been very good and the weather still wasn't conducive to good fishing, nor was the current looking very good. Really need at least 30K CFS to trigger a good bite. 

But, at blast-off, we made our move to where Josh had been having success and on the first cast he boated a nice spot. We both thought "here we go." Last time he did that, he said it was every cast. 

But it wasn't. In fact, we didn't get another bite. So, we moved into little river and began drifting down rip rap banks in front of Whitesburg and still couldn't get bit other than a catfish that I tail hooked with a Strike King 6XD. While fishing trash on the bottom with a jig, I did set the hook on a fish and fought it to the boat. It was a magnum spot and exactly the kind of fish we were looking for. But as soon as the net went into the water, it spit the jig out. My guess is that I never set the hook into the fish and it was just pissed off enough to fight me. Truth is, it hit under the boat, essentially, where I had dropshotted it after marking a group of fish on downscan. The fish had run in a way that I never really popped it. That was really disheartening because it was such a good quality fish. I am guessing 3.5 pounds.

We pulled up to Butler and doubled up on fish. Mine came on a jerkbait and didn't measure, but Josh's fish did. That put us at two and a long way from where we needed to be. We also noticed that there was no current in little river, which meant there was REALLY no current on the main river. I never verified with the TVA app, but I bet they put the breaks on. On the other hand, the water level was also dropping. Both were very, very bad for fishing.

We moved into Butler and Josh missed two 4-pound fish on essentially back to back casts. We saw both of the fish.

We didn't get another bite for the rest of the evening. 

As we put the boat on the trailer a few minutes early, we saw that virtually every one else had already done so. Weigh in went about as expected. My friend Jeremy and his father won with a 14 pound limit that included a solid five point largemouth. Second and third were around 11 and 10 pounds and included smallmouth that I assume came from the dam, though Josh did catch one non-measuring smallie down river. 

It doesn't take a math genius to see what missing 11 pounds of fish did to us. My wife made the comment that everyone misses giants and no one misses dinks. For the most part, she's right. But I don't exaggerate much and while I don't think we would have had 14 pounds, we would have had enough for second for sure. 

After months of fishing super clean, we had that one tournament where bites were at an absolute premium and we didn't get it done. The good news is, there's always next week! 

Fishing Report for Wilson 3/24/18

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Sorry it has taken me over a week to get this together, but I've been out of town. Truth is, I needed a week off of fishing. Following the ABT on Guntersville, I was hoping to get on Wilson for two straight weeks and make some hay. The first trip wasn't great. We had caught around 14 pounds in practice, but we had done that without catching a single big fish, now had we fished the dam. 

Then, on tournament day, a dead trolling motor kept us from fishing the dam at all, which was an integral part of our plan. Still, we managed 14 pounds but 3rd place didn't pay because we didn't have enough boats. You can read the whole report below.

Fishing Report for Wilson 3/17/18

Back on Wilson the very next week and I thought it should be a fairly easy tournament for us. My plan had been to hit my down river spots and get a good limit of around 14 pounds, then go for the big ones. However, a call was made by our tournament director to move to Safety Harbor due to wind in the forecast. Honestly, I didn't think the wind was going to be a big deal, but it was his call. It hurt our game plan a good bit because it basically forced us to fish the dam first.

So, we did that and didn't get a bite for two hours. We knew that the dam MAY be a factor late, but we needed to get a limit. 

We ran down river to the north bank, but the south wind made it hard to really fish thoroughly and I found out pretty quick that the fish didn't want moving baits. That wasn't a surprise, other than the occasional jerk bait bite the week before, we had caught everything on shakey heads and jigs, anyway. 

Continuing to try and fish points on the north bank, the wind pushed us into the creeks. However, we started getting bit on the jig. It was slow at first until we really zoned in what stretches they liked. Then we started loading the boat. For the rest of the day, we fished the first 50 yards of the creeks and caught fish after fish. The issue was that they were all two pound largemouth. We culled time after time, but it was by half or quarter ounces. 

We had to make a choice at this point: Do we hope to run into big one or do we scrap catching these fish all together and find something new? We decided that we would keep catching numbers until there was about an hour left. As predicted, the numbers remained and we simply could not get bigger fish to bite. 

With an hour left and after talking to some guys who said the dam wasn't producing, we decided to do what I felt comfortable with: cranking bluffs. 

This technique is a tough one to gauge because several things can happen. You can not get bit for whole stretches, forcing you to cover water. Even then, you might find one every 100 yards or you might find a pile. You have to know when to cut bait and give up, when to hammer down on the trolling motor, or when to break out the jig. An hour isn't enough to do anything other than luck into a 5-pounder. But we both felt like one would get us in the money and two might win. We had around 10 or 11 pounds at the time. 

So, we put the Minn Kota on high and I broke out my AKRods cranking stick and a deep diving crank. First stretch, nothing. That's not a surprise. 

Second stretch, rod loaded up. Boat swang a nice upgrade of around a pound. Dropped it in the livewell, next cast, BOOM. Another pound upgrade. 

And we were out of time. 

I really felt like an extra hour would have given us the chance to really do something, but weigh-in had been voted for 2PM with a 630 start, which I wasn't a fan of, but that's the way it goes.

We ended up at third place with second taking a similar bag but featured a six pound smallie that boosted the weight to 18. The winning sack was 22 pounds. I couldn't tell you where and how that happened, although I can say that those two bags had smallies and we had none, leading me to believe that the fish were biting at the dam, we just didn't wait them out. 

In the end, we caught a TON of keepers, just never ran into any big fish. Our bag didn't have a fish bigger than three pounds. We caught 75% on a jig with our nicer fish on a jerkbait and the next two on a crank. 

Back at it this Thursday!