Zach's Pages

Monday, May 24, 2021

Fishing Report for Wheeler Lake/Ditto Landing 5/20/21

I promised that I was going to try and do a better job updating my fishing adventures. Like I said, it's been almost impossible to find the time to sit in front of the computer for any length of time. Luckily, I've gone back to work in person, which means I am here for eight to nine hours a day, regardless, so I have some down time. 

If you didn't get a chance to check it out, read my report from our seventh place finish in the Alabama Bass Trail event on Weiss lake. The link is just below:

Alabama Bass Trail on Weiss Lake

As most of you know, I've been fishing the Thursday night wildcat out of Ditto Landing on Wheeler lake for over a decade. It's where I cut my teeth on tournament fishing and is still my number one source of getting better at tournament fishing. 

Last year, Josh and I were asked to take over running each event. We knew that it would be tough to make every single one, but we've got a great group of dudes to lean on when we can't be there. 

Anyways, to cover the last two months of fishing, I can tell you that the weights have been pathetic with only a single sack exceeding 15 pounds. That should be the bare minimum to win every event up until this time of year. In the past, the end of May to early June marks the "who's got five" stretch of the year. Not this year. There has been some combination of events that have kept weights really, really low. Personally, I believe that the rainfall this winter and spring has been sporadic, causing days of massive current and then drastically dropping water levels before ending in essentially no current at all. The fish were never positioned (for us or anyone I know) in big groups, with the exception of one singe ABA Division 91 Tournament that I fished back in February. 

Anyways, let's get to Thursday's report. 

Josh JUST got his boat back from poking a hole in it in the ABT/Smith Lake tournament last year. Some of that time, he had one of the new Garmin live imaging systems sitting in his closet. Thursday was the first time we had even powered the thing up. 

We had 24 boats out of Ditto and since Josh and I have to be the last boat out, we decided to fish the point of Ditto. Initially, we had a battery issue so while Josh was fiddling with that, I was able to use the live imaging. Straight out of the box with no adjustments, I was able to see my bait coming through the water and I was able to see fish that were suspended that we would not have seen, normally. We quickly caught two keepers and one dink and thought that it was going to be a good day. The bite died. 

We moved around a good bit for the rest of the day, fishing a mix of bluffs, points, and wing-walls at the dam. In all, we caught just six fish with five being keepers. Luckily, one was a really nice three pound largemouth I caught on a shakey head in about 20 feet of water, but it took beyond thirty minutes of fishing this particular point to get her to bite.

The most frustrating part was being able to see the fish suspended and moving, bringing a bait through them, and watching them follow it, but not bite. 

At dark, we moved inside Ditto where we normally can catch one or two better fish if we give it enough time. Alas, we couldn't get bit. So, we put the boat on the trailer and started weigh in, fully expecting to see some good weights come in among the 24 boats. 

Imagine our surprise when no one was left to weigh and we weighed in a 9.20 pound sack to take second. It was literally the last thing I expected. It took just twelve pounds to win and less than nine pounds for third and fourth. 

Our six fish came on a mix of baits with three coming on shakey head. 

Wish I had more to tell yall, but that's the long and short of it. 

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