Read about all of my Fishing Adventures!
Follow my Fish of 2019
To start off, I guess I would like to say that furlough life sucks, even with assured back-pay. I don't care who you are, you can run out of things to do and your cash savings PDQ after a month. I could deal with all of it, if the weather would cooperate.
It hasn't. You guys know this. It's rained, and rained, and rained. When it doesn't rain, post-frontal moves in and it gets real cold. Sometimes it's just rainy AND cold. What did I expect, being in Alabama in January, right? I'd love to start prefishing for Smith, but it's a long way down there on top of the not-so-optimal weather.
On Monday, it looked like the weather would break. Josh didn't want to take the time to go to Smith, and I was A-ok with that. So, we decided to fish out of Ditto. Of course, there were the small issues with a ton of current. That's been the marker for what has been good days and bad days. But, you know what they say about a bad days fishing....and that still holds true for even those of us NOT working.
I got a call as I entered south Huntsville from Josh. Ditto was closed. So was Whitesburg. Turns out, that's because the roads were underwater. If you watched the news a few weeks back, you may have seen an interview talking about how the roads into Ditto Landing are below the water level, so while the ramps may be out of water, the roads to them aren't. We tried going onto the arsenal, but we had to try three gates to get one open, so we didn't get on the water until around 11:30. Wyatt tagged along in his boat, too. File that away.
The way Josh and I thought, the current should drive bad fishing out on the main river. We decided to fish inside Ditto and other bay-type areas.
We began at the lower arsenal ramp area and didn't catch a fish. We moved into the NASA barge area and also didn't get bit. So, we proceeded into Ditto with a stop first inside of Aldridge Creek. Same deal, and though we marked a ton of white bass and could not get even one to bite. Inside Ditto was much of the same. We marked fish and bait, we could not get bit.
Ditto was almost completely under water and we figured the fish would follow the water level up.
Fishing around docks that were under water, I finally got bit. It was a very light bite and because I hadn't had the first sniff all day, I tried to set the hook way early. Josh set the hook on a big fish, but didn't get the hooks in her. Eventually, I connected on a fish with a shakey head and swung aboard a nice chunky fish, but pretty obviously a male. Minutes later, I boat swung another big male. Then, Josh connected with the fish pictured above when he played a ned rig out a little deeper.
After following the new sore line around for half a mile, we found seven bass inside of a spot no bigger than your dinner table. Still, by the end of the bite, we had a solid 12 pound bag without a real giant.
Now things get interesting. After following us for most of the day, Wyatt struck out on his own.
After the last few trips, I have found Wyatt has really good instincts, something that I think a lot of fishermen have about that third year of serious fishing. After that, sometimes they get in their own heads, similar to what happens to me a lot. You know, fishing history instead of fishing the moment.
When he called me around 4PM, I expected him to say he hadn't found anything. So, when he scoffed at our seven fish for 12 pounds with 27 bass of his own, I had to scratch my head.
I was REALLY scratching my head when he told me he was fishing the heaviest current on that end of the river and catching them every single cast on a crank bait. I know where he was. I just didn't believe it.
So, we made our way over there after he had signed off and put it on the trailer. Sure enough, we marked all the fish. I was simply amazed at the amount of fish and bait that were standing tall in a massive pileup of current.
AAANNNDDD.........we didn't get a bite. But this point, the sun was behind the trees and the temperature was dropping. Boy, did Wyatt get a laugh out of us!
Suffice to say, they can be caught, but you can't outsmart yourself.
Current was over 140K with visibility in the low inches. Water temp was 47 degrees.
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