Dry Creek Marina Open 12/4/21

I know I haven't posted a lot this year. Same for 2020. COVID made it hard to post, which is probably counter-intuitive. You might think that working from home in 2020 would have made it easier. Nope. In the time I wasn't at my computer for work, I was working around the house. Sure, I did fish. I just didn't update.

2021 was very similar, except that I started a new job that required a lot more time than I was used to having. 

Anyways, let's talk fishing. 2020 and 2021 were decidedly tougher. I blame COVID. Everyone was out fishing a lot more. Even in the wintertime when NO ONE used to fish. When I would fish Ditto Landing, there might be a few trailers in the parking lot and most of them were crappie or catfish rigs. The past two winters, there might be a dozen bass boats on the river. 

It's definitely made the Alabama Bass Trail tougher, with everyone able to fish a lot more. But, hey, we made the championship (finally) and had a decent finish along with a Top 10 finish on Weiss Lake. 

But let's talk Wheeler and winter time. 

You may recall that Josh and I won the 1st Annual Dry Creek Marina Open back in 2019. COVID caused the 2020 event to be canceled, so this year was the second ever event. You can read about that tournament and how we sacked up 21 pounds of smallies by clicking this link. 

I've been spending a lot of time on the river, as I typically do in the winter. Last year, the fishing wasn't nearly as good with smallmouth and the big spots being hard to find. This year has been even rougher. I blame fishing pressure and the fact that we haven't had a lot of current, equally. The fish simply are not schooled and the smallies are impossible to come by.

That's not just for us, either. We've had two Ditto Landing Winter Wildcat Series events and there have been less than five smallies weighed and we've had 15 and 20 boats, respectively. I've yet to catch a measuring one. And the massive schools of spots? Nowhere to be found. 

What we've found the last few weeks is, there are more largemouth biting than any of us can ever remember. It's not in typical largemouth places, either. It's out on the main river. But, to my discredit, I've essentially ignored this until the last week. I've hunted spots and smallies day after day after day, to no avail. But, I could go down very specific stretches and catch largemouth by the dozens. 

So, starting a week ago, I completely abandoned my typical current-driven fishing with my go-to baits, like swimbait, A-rig, and jig and started evolving the rods on the deck focusing on what those largemouth were biting, and it truly was one bait: a shakey head. 

In practice, Wyatt and I decided that we would spend all of our time expanding a very specific pattern in preparation for the Dry Creek Marina tournament, although he did spend one day down around Decatur, but he was doing essentially the same thing I was doing up river. He had a good practice. I had a good practice. We had a great practice together in the one full day we spent in preparation. It was so good that when we wanted to check one of our spots and a crappie fisherman was sitting on it, we politely asked if we could make two casts on it, which they happily agreed to. Wyatt shook off a five pounder and I shook off a three pounder and we left among the laughter of our fellow fishermen.

When asked by fellow fishermen Saturday morning, I said that I expected to catch 15 pounds, but would be surprised by anything over that. I knew we would have a limit quickly and it would be decent. But would each spot give up a five? That remained to be seen. I had serious doubts as we just weren't seeing that kind of size. Plenty of 3s. Occasionally a 4. With over 60 boats and a lot of really, really good fishermen, that wasn't going to be enough, without a lot of things going right. In truth, my feelings had gone from wanting to win the now-$5000 pot (thanks to Dry Creek) to just wanting to put on a good showing and not being a one-hit-wonder in 2019. 

What we needed: stable water level, about 30,000 CFS of current and a lot of sun. What did we get Saturday?  Water had dropped another foot, virtually no current and 100% cloud cover for the entire day. Bad for us. Worse for ANYONE not fishing for largemouth. 

After the 45 minute run up river, Wyatt caught a heavy four and a heavy three within the first 15 minutes. He also put several smaller fish in the boat, all of which we quickly threw back. But, since they seemed to actively feeding, I picked up the spinnerbait and tossed it. The rod loaded up, I yelled for the net. It was a monster. And the monster simply pulled off. 

What proceeded for the next three or so hours was me getting in my own head. Wyatt caught fish after fish. I couldn't connect on any bites and I was getting severely frustrated. When I did eventually get a big bite, I pulled a drum off a lay-down. Right spot for the big fish. Right type of bite. But not the right type of fish and that just made more questions start swirling in my head. Our first stretch might have provided a limit quickly, but it was also quickly obvious that the 50 yard stretch of productive bank had shrunk to more like 5 yards and eventually we caught all the fish on that stretch. 

My next spot was a collection of brush piles about 100 yards long on a point directly across the river. In practice, I had noticed that there was another boat that had been fishing it, but I had hoped they hadn't figured it out. They must have, because they fished it all morning. We didn't bother fishing it and moved to our next spot, a spot that is probably my 3rd most productive spot, historically. Another boat sitting on it. No surprise. It's obvious. 

Moving further up river, to the most up river spot I planned to fish, we began fishing a spot Wyatt has made a ton of money on in the last two years. But, it's also current driven, even for largemouth. It did provide a nice spot and a few other fish, but no big ones. That was quite a surprise because that 200-yard long stretch consistently provides big fish. 

So, now what? We ran back to the spot that had been occupied a few hours earlier. It now had a catfish boat on it and another bass boat that had obviously given up on it and was now drifting down river. Nothing there but a few small ones. 

It was now noon and I knew that it was a 45 minute run back to Ingalls Marina and I wanted to save an hour to fish the spot that Wyatt had found in practice. That left precious little time. I pulled the plug on the up-river stuff and started the run down river. We stopped at a few junk fishing places that sometimes have good fish on them. Nothing but small ones. 

With an hour remaining and about 12 pounds in the live-well, we finished our long run down to the 100-yard stretch that Wyatt had found. We were still dealing with cloud cover and water levels and I was afraid that might have killed what bite he had found. Still, while he went to work with his shakey head, I decided that I would cover water with a spinnerbait. 

First 100 yards yielded one short fish. But, I had faith in my partner and kept my head down. Finally connected with a good one and boated a three pounder. Another 50 yards and another one a little smaller, but clearly a cull. Wyatt pulled off a miracle when my spinnerbait came flying out of the fish's mouth right as the fish made its last attempt to escape. Wyatt literally caught the fish in mid-air with the net. 

With 15 minutes to go, I turned and told Wyatt that I was putting the trolling motor on high and for him to pick up the spinnerbait. We covered water as fast as we could, to the point where he was essentially dragging his spinnerbait behind us, but that didn't seem to bother the next three pounder he boated. 

Both of us were ecstatic that we had turned the day around and we were proud of our finish, even though we knew that it wasn't enough to even scare for the lead. 

Except that the dock talk told us something different as we loaded the boat. At the time, 15 pounds was in the lead and I knew we had something around that. We were about two spots from weighing in when the winning sack of 18 pounds was weighed, so I knew then that we weren't winning and there were another 10 sacks behind us. Knowing fishermen the way I do, I knew it was likely that someone was grand-standing and even if we were in the Top 5 now, someone would edge us out.

But I was wrong. We weighed in over 16 pounds to finish second. A huge surprise, but a welcomed one. 

I had always thought it possible that maybe we were just missing something when it came to how the fish were biting, but Wyatt and I suspected that the pattern we were on was so oddly specific, it was possible that it was the only truly winnable pattern. Unlikely as that thought had been, watching the lack of smallies get weighed in, I am forced to really wonder. Them reality is, we didn't have a truly big fish and the winners did, which was the one thing that really separated us from winning. 

Congrats to the winners for taking home over $5,000 winnings. Wish it had been us, but I will take our story, any time. 

Thanks to Dry Creek Marina for throwing another great event. They provided food and drinks, tons of door prizes, had demo boats, and lots of tech service for those interested. Highly recommend them and I can't wait for next year. 

Make sure you follow our Ditto Landing Bass Fishing page. Our next event is this coming Sunday, the 11th. Information can be found on the Facebook page. 

Alabama Bass Trail on Neely Henry Lake 6/19/21

 

When we started fishing the Alabama Bass Trail, our goal remained the same as it was going into Saturday's practice: make the ABT Championship. For three years, we didn't accomplish that goal, which was very, very frustrating. If you are unfamiliar with the process, the top 75 boats from each division, plus an additional number based upon double qualifiers, get to fish the two day event in the fall. Our first two years were pretty rough. Although we cashed a check both years, we had too many duds for tournaments. That started the first tournament of they year in both years with us essentially zeroing each event, something you simply cannot do. 

Last year, we started much hotter, finishing 16th on Guntersville. However, over the course of the season, we slowly fell apart including a do-or-die event on Smith that we just couldn't make work. We finished something like 85th in points and just missed out. 

I didn't write about it, and I will, but we had a strong start to the year on Pickwick. We finished right around 50th, bombed on Guntersville, did ok on Wheeler, and finished 6th on Weiss lake. Going into this event, we were sitting 35th in the points. Based on historical data for Neely Henry, a limit of any five keepers or a big fish, alone, would likely put us in the Championship on Smith Lake. So there was our goal. It's not fun to fish a tournament and not think about money, but it takes a lot of the pressure off. 

Josh was able to pre-fish several days in the two weeks leading up to the event. I joined him Thursday afternoon. We caught two fish. Yack. We did a lot of different things, but we had decided that we would concentrate up river. 

Friday, we fished all day and were able to find two stretches up river in pockets that we were able to get multiple bites flipping. I also had a few blow ups on the frog. Didn't catch many, but say enough to know that we had at least a little confidence in those areas, especially considering we flipped miles and miles of over grass without a bite. We ignored areas down river of the Rainbow City bridge where we had caught grass fish before. 

However, we did eat a shore lunch at Little Bridge BBQ, which we discovered last year. They've recently gone through a renovation but the BBQ was just as good as ever. I had the BBQ pork plate with baked beans and cole slaw. It was fantastic.

Leaving the marina, we decided to stop off and fish an off-shore spot that Josh happened to find. It was a high spot coming up to five feet from the main channel. We quickly caught a few very small fish, but it was a departure from every other off-shore spot we had fished on Neely Henry. The rest of the afternoon was uneventful. 

Saturday, we were boat 224 of 225 but we were pleasantly surprised to find no one in this rather large cove. We pulled up directly to the good stretch of grass, brought out the flipping sticks and the frog and went to work.

Probably the second flip, Josh set the hook on a two-pounder. He worked it out of the grass and the fish simply spit the hook out and stared at us. The next stretch of grass, Josh hammered one, it flew out of the grass and hit the boat and came unbuttoned. It was another solid fish. I caught a short fish. He broke one off in the grass.

We knew that we only had until 9AM or so before the bite died and 9 was rounding the bend on us. We swapped directions and headed towards another smaller cove inside this larger cover. There was a boat that was fishing the far point of that cove, but they were facing the other way. We assumed they were headed toward the main river and started fishing down the far bank from them. Josh boated a keeper and a short in the mean time. As we converged with the other boat in the middle of the cover, I watched with horror as they boated a five pounder on a frog. 

Seconds later, I had a blow up on my frog. I waited to see if the frog was gone, but it wasn't. The big fish came completely out of the water but also managed to completely miss the frog. Things had gone sideways on us, real quick. 

Our luck seemed to change when we went back down the same stretch and I noticed what looked like a blow up hole in the grass that hadn't been there before. I tossed the frog in and boated our big fish, one pushing four pounds. At that point, we knew were probably in the Championship. But all we could think about was already having missed enough fish to put us firmly into a check.

The rest of the day was absolutely miserable as the rain pounded us. We caught a few short fish, had a couple more blow-ups on the frog, but still had two fish all the way until 2:15. 

Desperate for anything, Josh suggested that we fish the spot down river and see if a school of fish had grown. 

We ran down and he boated a solid keeper on his first cast. I boated another on my next cast and he followed that up with a short fish. But, we had four fish. And then I got the bite. I set the hook on it and I knew this was the perfect size to be what we needed to get a check.

But it was a 3 pound catfish. 

We caught a few more shorts, had a few more bites, but just ran out of time. I wish I had listened to Josh when he suggested this an hour earlier, but I had said we should fish some historical grass. 

I watched the results on the way back and I knew we had made the Championship. But what hurt was being told at the dock that if you had five fish of any size, you were getting paid. Sure enough, with our 9.08, any keeper would have put us in the money.

Of course, the missed fish we had likely would have resulted in a Top 10. I can't say that we've ever fished so dirty. I can only think of a few times we've ever lost even one fish that would have helped us, much less four. 

But, we accomplished our goal and ended the year ranked 42nd. 

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. 

Alabama Bass Trail on Weiss Lake

 

Has it really been a year? I mean, yeah, it has been. It's been OVER a year since I posted a fishing report. There's tons of reasons for that and if has nothing to do with having a bad year fishing and suddenly doing well in an Alabama Bass Trail event on Weiss. So, if you think that I am suddenly writing BECAUSE we did well this weekend, you'd be at least PARTIALLY wrong. 

The real reasons? I haven't been in front of a computer, at least, not for FUN. I, like many of you, have been tele-working for almost a year. The last thing I wanted to do when my work day was slow or completed for the day was continue to sit in front of a computer. There's stuff to do. Some of it fun. Some of it not. 

I built an apartment for my mother in law. I bought a project car. I renovated a camper. I started a new job. Then, there is the ever-present struggle with keeping up with the kids schooling AND sports in a pandemic. 

That's really just the start. 

And yes, if I am being perfectly honest with myself, some of it HAS been struggles on the fishing front, but not because we haven't been successful in tournaments. It wasn't winter 2019 to spring 2020 great, but it was good. It hasn't been fun, though, and I think that is because of the shear amounts of fishing pressure all the lakes have been seeing over the past year.

I plan on updating everything now that I am in an office and occasionally have a few moments since I have to be in front of the computer, anyway. 

So. Let's talk about  the Alabama Bass Trail on Weiss. To refresh you all on how we've fished there in the past, I am putting the links to the reports. 

Alabama Bass Trail on Weiss 2018

Alabama Bass Trail on Weiss 2019

Last year wasn't great and I didn't report on it. I will say this: it was tough and we caught five fish on essentially one dock as well as catching two decent fish on one stretch of main lake laydowns. That last bit is important for later. We did cash a check in 2019 when we finished 34th but the shear luck of finding three good largemouth on one dock makes it a good, yet forgettable fishing trip and story.

Josh and I rolled into Leesburg around 2PM on Thursday afternoon and fished until dark catching just two fish. We mixed it up a lot by fishing both new areas and some history and throwing a plethora of baits in all kinds of situations. Main river grass, shallow grass, current in the canal, long points, docks, just to name a few. Nothing seemed to work. That evening, we had dinner with a few friends who were down and they reported about the same. 

We fished all day Friday doing much of the same and until around 2:30, we had caught three keeper fish in completely different areas doing completely different things. However, of those three keeper fish, one came off a main river stretch of laydowns that we had caught some on the year before. That largemouth came on the first laydown on a spinnerbait and we immediately pulled the trolling motor and went to a similar stretch in front of Big Nose Creek and reproduced it. It wasn't a huge fish, but it bit quickly doing the exact same things we had done at the previous area. We moved on and filed that away.

We pulled into a cove where we had experienced limited success in the past and on my first four casts with a shakey head, I boated three fish and pulled it out of the mouth of another. Of those three fish, one was a spot pushing four pounds. We had found our starting spot. 

Saturday morning, we were a late flight and expected to find a boat on our starting spot. We were delighted that there wasn't, though there were plenty of boats around. Josh boated a keeper within the first five minutes on a top water plug, I missed one on the same bait before boating our second keeper on a worm. I missed another good bite on topwater before the fish all but disappeared. We moved to shore grass very close to us and I caught our third keeper on a frog. 

We were not dismayed by the lack of bites as we had fully expected this to be an afternoon spot, anyway. It doesn't mean that we weren't disappointed, because we were. We thought we would at least have five fish off of it, considering the quickness we had gotten bites the last afternoon. We moved around the shallow point from side to side. We pushed deeper. We didn't get any bites. 

What proceeded for the next six hours was a soul-sucking experience of moving around a lot without being able to catch fish. Oh, we boated a few including a forth keeper, but that fifth seemed to continue to elude us for most of the day. We fished what we thought was the better stretch of mainriver laydowns without any success and were about to flush that idea, mostly because this bank wasn't nearly as washed out from boat wakes as the points of Big Nose Creek, which were completely muddied up. 

But, call it intuition or desperation, we gave it a shot anyway. 

Josh quickly boated our fifth keeper, which was easily our best fish of the day. We lost the next fish, a solid 2.5 largemouth that busted the spinnerbait at the boat as it came over the top of the laydown. Sure, we were a little dismayed, but at under six pounds in five fish, it was hard to get terribly upset over just one fish. 

We picked apart each laydown over the next fifty yards and essentially culled three of our small fish out on the first pass. Of course, the culls weren't huge culls, but they got rid of the barely keepers we had. 

Then the big one bit. 

Josh was finessing his spinnerbait in the elbow of a laydown on our second pass through and a four pound spot annihilated the blade. 

We knew that this weight would put us around the cut-line for a check, which we assumed was around ten pounds. I don't think either one of us thought that the stretch would pay off any more and considering how the day had gone, we didn't think we could improve our weight much, if any. We ran our other similar stretch of laydowns, which did result in a very small cull but it was the only bite we got. 

Now we had to make a decision. Do we go back to the well a third time? Do we look for similar areas? Do we go back to our starting spot? We wanted to do all these things, but we weren't sure which order we should do them in or how much time to devote to each. At this point, we had about two hours to do them all, so we decided to check a similar stretch we had found in years passed. Nothing. We started to run back to our starting spot only to find a boat fishing in the vicinity. 

Back to the well. 

At this point, we had one big fish, one decent fish, and three bigger than average fish. But those last three were hurting us. I boated another decent one that provided a solid pound-and-a-half cull, putting us in the twelve-pound range, which we figured was firmly in the money. Great moral boost. Fist bumping all around. 

With thirty minutes of fishing time left, Josh swung on a good one and I netted her. While there had been some excitement for getting around the check-cashing weight, certainly when I put us in what we thought was Top 20 money, now we were thinking of winning. We had one more small one left which would provide us a massive amount of growth if we could, say, find a five-pounder. 

Of course, that's a lot to ask for on a lake like Weiss, but the fact is, the fish were essentially getting larger with every bite and we were around largemouth, not spots, so it was conceivable that one could show up. 

She didn't show up but that didn't change the feeling of excitement and the swings of emotion through the day. To go from essentially zero at noon to a Top 10 finish within basically an hour window was such an adrenaline rollercoaster. 

We've now cashed a check every year, two on Weiss alone, but we've NEVER been within one bite of winning. Of course, at this point, we now know that the fish we didn't land would have landed us within the Top 5, perhaps even at 2nd place. It's also certainly possible that I missed one of those big spots early in the morning. They looked to be good fish. 

We caught only 12-15 fish the entire day with almost all of them being largemouth. All five of our keepers were on a spinnerbait fishing laydowns on the main river channel. We ended up in 7th Place with 14.70, moving us up in AOY standings from 80th to 35th. 

One of the things we've never done was consistently move up in standings. We've never made the championship before, typically because we fall apart in the last two tournaments of the year. Now we are poised to make our first Championship appearance on Smith Lake. All we gotta do is not suck on Neely-Henry....a lake we've consistently sucked on.