Zach's Pages

Tuesday, May 14, 2019

Fishing Report for Alabama Bass Trail on Pickwick 5/11/19

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Just when things were looking up and we were continuing a push to make the ABT Championship, we threw out a clunker that likely torpedoed our chances. That being said, this wasn't one of those times where we didn't find or catch fish. I can't even say that I am upset with the finish. If you missed the report for Weiss, click the link below.


Now, I am a little upset with the weight we caught compared to everyone else. If you look at the weights, you will see that we finished something like 130th with a little over ten pounds while it seemed like 15 pounds was the benchmark for everyone. One of the reasons I like writing about fishing is to give the story within the story. In this case, it would be easy to make some assumptions based on where we finished and what everyone else did. For example, you could say that based upon our finish and our weight that we were way out of our class and don't know what we were doing.

I made the comment during weigh on on camera that I caught every 14.5 incher on the lake. Yeah, it was a stretch, but boy did we seem to wack on those little guys. 

One of the though parts about being our age with our families and the things they do is coming to grips with this: no matter how good you are, no matter how hard you work, you can't replace experience or time on the water. For Josh and I, that means trying to overcome one and a half days of prefishing with a combination of talent and luck. It's worked for us some times but it won't work the majority of the time. This tournament was one of the latter. 

Josh got a day to prefish a week before the tournament. He caught some fish, but didn't get a pattern. 

A month ago, we experimented with some new offshore humps and while we did catch fish, they were small. We speculated that fish may move out on the humps on the main river, but we simply didn't have time to check, so we stuck it in our back pocket. Ultimately, we never fished them though we hope to make it part of the rotation going forward. We caught fish on all of these humps, most of them coming from 18 feet up to 14 feet and we caught fish on Strike King 6XDs and jigs.

Friday, we spent over half the day idling around offshore looking for schools of fish. We did this for several reasons, but the most important being we feel like we have at least some edge on others when we fish offshore. A lot of people avoid it at all costs. Also, we've learned that if you wait for guides and others to tell you the deep bite is on, it's too late to win any big tournaments.

Alas, we never found any schools, though one spot I found last year had a boat on top of it every time we looked. Eventually, the afternoon moved in and the spot opened up. We idled it and it had a decent little school. Here's where I made the first mistake. Because weather was moving in and I didn't want to get caught in it, I told Josh that I didn't want to fish it and see what size fish were on it. I based this on the fact that the same spot held 3 and 4 pounders last year. 

Though we caught fish here and there, mostly we found two fish on every hump. These humps had scattered grass on top and if you could target these small clumps, you could get bit. None of the fish were big, but it was consistent.

Saturday morning, we were boat 21. We decided to forgo the dam and run to the school we found Friday. Next mistake was this: we had assumed that we would have to fight people all day to get on a school and that the shallow bite wouldn't be a factor and by midday, everyone would be offshore. We were the first boat on it and though we did have two boats come idle around us, no one stopped to fish.

The day started out perfectly as we located the fish and began catching them. We had three measuring fish very quickly and were getting bit pretty much every cast. The issue was, everything was 14.5 inches long. The three we did have were barely keepers. But, you never leave biting fish, which we had JUST been bitten by last week on Wheeler when we did just that. So we caught and caught and caught. While there were some lulls, the bite was consistent. The size never improved. We caught them on everything we threw. 

We should have thought about a few things. First, we've had the most success on Coosa River, mainly because we've learned that fish school in similar sizes. After about the 5th fish of the same size, we should have left. Second, the fact that they were biting everything we threw should have told us it was less about the spot and more about the fish being active.

But we doggedly stuck to the spot for 6 hours and before we knew it, it was noon and we had just three measuring fish. We began junk fishing some history, which we had agreed to do for just an hour and just to get a limit. First spot we fished, I caught a measuring smallmouth and another short largemouth. We had several other bites. Next spot, more short fish. 

It was about this time we learned that the fish were biting, and they were biting everywhere. We had limited ourselves to only fishing for small fish. But we had plenty of time to fix that. We went super shallow to throw spinnerbaits on wood. Wouldn't you know it, we caught our best fish and started getting bit by better quality. The bad news was, we ran out of time. 

Coulda woulda shoulda, but we took ourselves out of the game by going deep and while the winners and several other big bags came from deep, we had limited ourselves to a school of small fish. Word was, the better schools were even further downriver than we were in Brush Creek. However, the situation we find ourselves in make it virtually impossible to fish that area because it is just so far from our homes, That's six hours of drive time alone. But, we at least acknowledge that we have made that decision and if we want to get better, we have to figure that out. 

For everyone else, a lot of them just went fishing, beating the banks and whatnot and they had great days. Our buddies had over 15 pounds and didn't even cash a check. In other words, we could have gone fishing without any practice and would have been better off.

Then again, we caught around 30 fish and had a ton of fun, so I ain't even mad. I am slightly miffed that we didn't figure out some things earlier, specifically about the school fish, which raises a lot of questions. Do these fish always run in schools of the same size? Do the schools move over the year? Do they rotate each year? Did those other boats catch all the big ones from that one school? So many questions. So little time. 


Monday, May 6, 2019

Fishing Report for Wheeler Lake: Weekend of May 4th

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After our solid finish on Weiss Lake, I was thinking I turned the corner. 

This report is actually for two different days on two different ends of the lake. First, we fished the Thursday night Ditto Wildcat tournament. TVA was pulling about 45K CFS and we simply haven't had enough luck junk fishing to warrant sticking around the Ditto area, so we ran towards the dam. I had gone through some of my older fishing reports and had seen that while the off-shore bite wasn't likely to be great, it was likely better than fishing shallow stuff. Suffice to say, we expected weights to be down as they typically are the first week of May. Usually it is the third week of May before the fishing really gets hot. 

We were able to get on one of the points from one of the creeks above the Flint river. As expected, the bite wasn't quite the fast and furious that it should be in two weeks. In two weeks, the fish will likely be hitting anything you throw and the deep cranking bite is phenomenal. This week, the fish were extremely skittish and it took around 20 minutes to catch the first measuring fish. I definitely noticed that my bite came on a shell bed at the bottom of the drop. When I made my next cast, I didn't get on that shell bed and I didn't get bit. 

I spent the next few casts just trying to located that spot and eventually I did. First few casts, I worked a shakey head across them and didn't get bit. So, the next cast, I just let the worm sit on the bottom. It took what felt like 2 minutes and eventually a fish bit. I continued to repeat this pattern and was able to call my shots. The issue was that we began culling, but the culls were so small they weren't worth doing. We were catching plenty of fish, but it was taking five minutes per cast with no real gain in weight.

We decided to go looking for a big bite. First spots we wanted to fish were on the face of the dam, but the wind was bad in one spot and a barge came out of the lock and blocked an entire wing-wall. Our other spot was covered with bank fishermen. We decided to fish for smallies for while, but couldn't get bit on the north bank, a spot that has typically been solid this time of year. 

With the sun winding down, we ran back down river to fish some junk fishing areas, but to no avail. At weigh in, we found out that we had made the mistake of leaving biting fish. Essentially everyone had done the same thing we had done: left biting fish to find a kicker, but no one had a kicker. The winning weight was just a tick over 10 pounds thanks to a four pound smallie. Second was around 9.5, third was 9 and we had just 8.85. Had we just waded through the fish, we likely would have caught a larger one to put us over the top. Alas, we didn't. 

Saturday, we had a club tournament out of First Creek. I had not fished down there since last year, but Brad had been twice. Both trips had solid results. His better trip had been a ledge spot in Spring Creek where he caught a six and a four before leaving the fish. His other trip had produced a 10 pound limit, which would have been a solid day, considering what I had seen Thursday night. He found those fish on a secondary point near First Creek. 

We started the day at the second spot and I quickly caught a small smallie on a spinner bait. Considering the weather, with the overcast skies and rain, I thought I had the right bait in my hand. But, we covered the 50 yard stretch without catching another fish where he had caught five or so in 15 minutes the day before. Maybe it was just a timing thing.

We moved into spring creek to find the ledge fish had completely disappeared. Brad had said they were post-spawn fish when he caught them, so it was a surprise to find they had moved. We then decided to fish real shallow and while we did catch fish on chatterbaits and spinnerbaits, none of them were worth much. 

Around noon, we did what we had hoped we wouldn't have to do: resort to history. We moved out to main river points and pockets. First pass through these didn't yield anything. We used a collection of baits, specifically moving baits. 

The sun eventually came out and the fish flipped the switch. The only thing they would hit was a shakey head, but it didn't matter where in these little pockets you threw it, they were eating. We were catching great numbers and culling, but we could not get anything more than 2.5 pounds to bite. The later in the afternoon it got, the less they were biting, which I suspect had something to do with the cloud cover. 

We had around 9 pounds with the winning bag being 12. Everyone seemed to catch fish and we ended up having a solid day that made me feel better about losing.