Read about all of my Fishing Adventures!
Follow my Fish of 2018
Last week wasn't so bad. I got off the slide and we won a wildcat. In case you didn't know, I haven't been fishing a lot since I've been coaching our 14U travel softball team. You can read about those adventures by clicking the link to the first article and linking to the rest through there.
It was nice to get back to some winning ways, even if it wasn't a big bag. You can read about that bag here:
Anyway, we felt like we had the upper end of Wheeler pegged. Of our 15 or so junk fishing spots, there were three that seemed hot. So, we started out on those three.
Ice. Cold. Like, we didn't get a single bite on the first two.
The third spot is a ledge-like spot that has running current on top of some submerged rock in about 18 feet of water. TVA was pulling over 60CFS due to the hurricane so we thought we should get bit. The week before, we caught our three biggest fish, which included a largemouth, a spot, and a smallie that ended up being the big fish. We did get bit, but none would really chomp on the bait. They would thump jigs and shaky heads, but wouldn't commit. Eventually we decided that we needed to run to the dam, since the current should have the fish turned on real good.
So, we made the trip up to the dam at around 7. With the sun going down, we struck out on our first spot, then we managed two keepers on crank baits on our second spot. The third was a complete bust.
It was around 8PM and we had two fish. As tough as it was, we kinda knew all we needed to do was get a limit. So, we went to the place we knew we should fish, a spot we call "the nursery."
This is a current break near the damn that a back flow creates an area that bait piles up, and so do the bass. The issue is, we've never caught any big fish there and it doesn't turn on until dark-30. Even then, there is a tiny stretch that holds bass.
Luckily, it was dark and we hammered on this spot for the last 30 minutes. We quickly began to catch fish and while we got up to four real quick, the size went down and we began to catch a lot of shorts. I did lose one at the boat that would measure and broke one off on the next cast. At that point, I thought that was probably going to be the end of our chances to win. The fish were in 14-18 feet and were all on chunk rock. Additionally, they didn't want to eat the bait. Some would thump the bait for 30 seconds or more, but when you leaned on them, they weren't there.
Luckily, I was able to set the hook and boat swing a super chunky spot in the last five minutes or so before we started our way back down river.
We ended up winning with a little over seven pounds. The spot went 2.5 and was the big fish of the tournament. Once again, that end of the lake isn't fishing very good, probably because the water temps are still in the mid-80s. Seems like it doesn't matter how much flow there is on the river, the water temp dominates the fish.
We caught around 10 fish, total. Nearly all of them on shaky heads. The other boats had one limit among them, many of them not even hanging around for weigh-in.
It's time to get on Pickwick for the last ABT tournament!
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