Fishing Report for Wheeler 1/12/2019

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Let me just say that yes, I realize I haven't put up a report in a month. If you've been following me on Facebook, which you should, you'd know that I HAVE been out fishing. Now, you would think that since I currently don't have a job, thanks to the government shutdown, I would be fishing a TON. 

The answer to this riddle is really two-fold. First, before the shutdown, we had been going to Smith to prepare for the upcoming Alabama Bass Trail event as well as our first club tournament and I have been put under strict orders to not talk about Smith. Again, if you follow me on social media, whether that is Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, you know that we have been catching fish. I'm happy to talk about it on messenger, if you are interested but I'm not going to talk it here. 

Secondly, we haven't fished a lot during the shutdown because the amount of current on the Tennessee river has made fishing simply a crap shoot. I noticed in late November and early December that any current over 100,000 CFS wasn't good fishing on the main river. And, over the last few rain-soaked weeks, current hasn't really been below 170K, which is down-right dangerous. 

The current eventually got below a level that I felt like we might be successful, but then there was the problem with weather stability. Finally, we had a day were we had a few days of stable weather AND the current was fishable, so my friend and co-worker Nick and I put in at Ditto Landing. Nick has never caught a smallie and I thought we had a chance to not only catch a smallie or two, but maybe catch a giant. But, I also knew that the current was still a bit higher (20K higher than experience had told me to fish). 

About the second cast, I catch a decent spot on a Strike King crank and I thought, maybe, just maybe, they would be on. But, I quickly noticed that the fish weren't grouped up and neither was the bait. We did a lot of scanning, but quickly figured out that the fish weren't on the main river again. So, we moved into shallow bays. 

We didn't get bit until we got into the very back of the bays and were around docks. I began to scan larger bait balls and a lot more arches but to get bit, we had to really soak plastic worms. After hours of having just one bite, I finally got bit and broke off a fish. I retied and caught the chunk pictured above on the next cast on a PowerTeam Lures 7" Tickler. Nick caught two or three but it was taking soaking the baits up to five minutes per cast and the fish weren't THAT good. I was also getting a lot of taps from uncommited fish and I decided to leave. 

We fished another bay and Nick got a ton of short strikes but none got in the boat. It was more of the same and I wanted to fish one more current break because I had found that while the fishing may not be great on any of my handful of main river spots, one out of five was likely to hold five or more fish,

Didn't take Nick long to get bit and he fought a 3.5 to 4 pound spot to the boat, but as I tried to pin the fish against the boat, the fish threw the bait. Nick got a few more bites on his swimbait he was throwing, but as we drifted, I went across one of the rockpiles I've caught them good on in the past and sure enough, there were around three large arches sitting on it. 

So, we drifted over and I picked up the jig. I had five bites on consecutive casts that landed two really nice spots of around 2.5 pounds apiece, but I missed several more bites. Nick was able to get a few more bites including another decent fish. 

Both Nick and I were out of time but after several hours of just a once bite, we figured them out and even put together a really solid 11-12 pound bag.