Zach's Pages

Thursday, January 2, 2020

Fishing Report for Wheeler Lake Late December/January 1st

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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!

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