Fishing Report for Wheeler (Late January 2019)

Follow me on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter!

Read about all of my Fishing Adventures!

As all of you are probably well aware, the Alabama weather is doing what the Alabama weather seems to do each year. Lots of rain followed by some brutal cold for a day or so and then when you finally get good weather, it's on a Wednesday and you can't go fishing. 

The current and water color seems to run a lot of people away at the thought of fishing, especially the upper end of Wheeler. Can't say I blame them, sometimes. If you don't have the experience and equipment, it can be down-right frustrating. The last three trips have been like that, even for people who fish Wheeler a lot. 

Last Sunday, I took my daughter out for a few hours. It was windy but the sun was shining a bit, which is really the key ingredient to getting on a good bite. I had a couple of places that have been solid over the last month. Nothing special to them, just wood along the shoreline where current is pushing and we could get consistently bit on a spinnerbait. We caught a few but we had to cover hundreds of yards to get bit. This doesn't produce any big fish, but it can be fairly mindless and you can forget about fighting the current or working a bait really hard. 

We tried a few other current breaks where the fish get stacked up, but couldn't get bit. Eventually, we headed up river to fish the mouths of some major creeks and did find one that was holding fish. Unfortunately, we had some crappie fishermen that were sitting right on top of the bass, so we were forced to fish the edges of the school. It produced some fish, but it was fairly tough.

This past weekend, I was able to get out for a short afternoon trip and found much of the same conditions. After fishing several high probability spots without a bite, we begun running the mouths of these creeks again. Eventually, we found a school.

After not getting a single bite, I was able to connect on five straight casts that resulted in some magnum spots and the largemouth pictured above. Working a bait in that kind of current, especially when they want it sitting right on the bottom and at the end of really long casts can be frustrating. Each cast would take several minutes and the fish would bite the bait several times before finally committing. But, if we worked it all the way to the boat, they would eat it, some of them directly under the boat.

We caught around 20 fish, but they were very very picky on the baits we threw and it was very obvious that while they would eat a crank or a jig, they really wanted a swimbait. We had around 16 pounds in our best five fairly quick and continued to catch them consistently for about 30 minutes before we tried to find some smallies. 

Unfortunately, we never caught another fish off of the one spot and once we idled back to it, we couldn't get the fish to fire back up. Still, it was hard to be upset with the numbers and quality. There were several four pound spots in the mix along with that big largemouth.

On our way back down river, we stopped at a very small creek and while I haven't caught them good on that spot in a month, it is one of the few spots that largemouth frequent in the current. After throwing a swimbait and losing about the tenth of the day, I decided that I was done with that bait and picked up a jig. 

Again, I had to work this thing dead slow but a fish absolutely slammed it on my first cast. It didn't fight like a spot and I didn't think there were any largemouth that big on this point. So, when the fish rolled to the surface and wasn't a drum, as I expected, I tried to boat flip it.

The problem with that was, it was a five pounder on a 7-foot medium rod and it wasn't going to happen. I ended up lipping aboard a beautiful largemouth that was covered in spots. I really wish I would have taken pictures of it. Our best five were a little over 20 pounds with the two five pound largemouths anchoring it and three big spots. 

This will likely be my last winter report for Wheeler as the ABT is on the horizon. 

Fishing Report for Wheeler Lake Late December/January 1st

Follow me on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter!

Read about all of my Fishing Adventures!

Boy, has it been an interesting few weeks out on Wheeler! Last time I checked in, Josh and I had just won the Dry Creek Open with over 21 pounds of smallies. You can read about that week of prefishing and a recount of the tournament by clicking the link below.

Fishing Report for Wheeler/Dry Creek Marina Open 12/7/19

The next Saturday, we decided to fish an open tournament out of First Creek, not because we thought we could win, but because I'd never really fished that end of the lake during the winter and wanted to see if some of the same techniques might transition. I knew of a lot of points and pockets that typically hold smallmouth in the early spring, so it was a reasonable assumption that we could find some. Also, the tournament weights on that end were really low and I thought that we could come up with 12-14 pounds, which is what it takes to win.

Wrong. 

I had ZERO bites all day. Josh had two bites and while it was a nice largemouth that went over four pounds and another dink, it wasn't enough to win. However, it was dangerously close to second place, which was just seven pounds in two fish. 

Over the next two weeks, I fished a good bit due to the holidays. As you may know, the weather has gone in a very interesting cycle. We will get a lot of rain, then a cold post front, then a few days of stability with several days reaching into the 60s. 

As it happened, that third day (sometimes second, depending on how much rain) post-frontal could be knockout fishing. Of course, the issue is that you can't always choose when you want to fish, which meant that I fished several days that weren't optimal. 

Those days were brutal. Some days, we would catch between five and seven fish, all day. Some days we wouldn't catch but one or two. Typically, when it was only one or two, they would always be really good spots, like the one below.

What was really interesting is that the only consistent spot we could get bit was on a stretch of wood around Ditto landing and they would only hit a spinnerbait. It wasn't fast and furious, but it was consistent. We'd drift 50 yards and we would catch a couple. However, they were all spotted bass and pretty small. Still, consistency is key. 

Josh and I got out last Saturday and wacked them, though it took fishing three or four spots. All we were doing was fishing main creek points but for some reason, only one was holding fish. By holding fish, I mean we caught 20-30 in an hour. It was a lot of fun and we didn't catch anything huge, though we did pile up a solid 12-13 pound bag of spots. What was interesting is that they wouldn't bite anything but moving baits and only certain moving baits at that. 

Since there was a New Year's Day tournament out of Ingalls, I decided that Wyatt and I would do a little prefishing. I knew what I was going to do if I went up river and I knew that if things broke right, in terms of weather and water color, we would do excellent. But in the event that the weather and water didn't stabilize, I wanted a backup plan. While most people assume that we've caught all our fish upriver, for most every tournament, our bigger fish have come from around Decatur, so I wanted to check those spots.

The water was muddy and try as we might, we caught exactly ONE bass all morning, so I was a bit nervous about fishing the tournament, especially over the prospect of using so much gas. It takes about 32 gallons to run to Guntersville dam and back. Not to mention that Wyatt and I got beat to death by the wind and waves and I wasn't signing up for that.

It was a bit over freezing when we blasted off from Ingalls and we turned right. Luckily, there was no real wind all day and it was smooth sailing as we headed up river, as did most of the boats that were fishing, which was really interesting. By the time we made it to Ditto Landing, both of us needed to warm up, so we decided to start fishing there. Once again, the mouth of Ditto and Aldridge Creek didn't yield any fish, which it continues to do during tournament days. 

After almost two hours of fruitless fishing, I suggested we try the little stretch of bank that Wyatt and I had caught them on last week. We covered the spot and didn't get bit, but about the time we decided to leave, Josh caught a nice spot on a shakey head. Weird, but ok. Then we boated one on a spinnerbait. Every large tree seemed to have one spot on it and we fairly quickly boated a limit. However, both of us were well aware that we were using a lot of time and covering a lot of water for limited fish.

About that time, we drifted to a tree that was holding a PILE of fish. We ended up catching 15 or so off this one lay down, but the size was obviously not going the right direction, though we were up around 11 pounds. 

We decided to leave this spot and start running our typical pattern. What we found was that the water clarity was better the further up the river you went. We stopped on a high spot and I boated a really nice spot that culled, but that was the only fish it produced. Next few spots had boats on them. We finally settled into fishing current seams and found an area that was really holding fish.

Over the next two hours, we caught around 20-25 fish while sitting in the same place. We culled up by ounces time and time again but eventually got to the point at around 13-14 pounds that we didn't think we could get any more weight from catching spots so we changed it up a bit and went looking for smallies. We ended up boating two smallies with one of them being a really, really good one that I felt confident would take big fish. Aside from one fish I caught on a jig and one or two that Josh caught on a worm, all the fish came off of moving baits. 

We ended up in second with 18.25 pounds, getting edged out by about half a pound. The real shocker was that my 5.90 smallie wasn't the big fish, which went to another smallmouth that was over SIX pounds. 

It was a great start to a new year!