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. 

Fishing Report for Guntersville 2/29/2020

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Boy, do I have a story for yall. If you've been keeping up, Josh and I finished 16th in the Alabama Bass Trail event on Guntersville and Brad and I were set to fish a club tournament this past weekend. Normally, we would get out in Brad's boat and prefish a bit. But, as life (and weather, mostly) would have it, there was no way to get out and fish. You can read the report on that by clicking the link below.

Alabama Bass Trail Event on Guntersville

Anyways, the weather was set up almost identical to the previous weekend. That is, from overcast and rainy to post-frontal with a slight warming trend. Josh and I had run a pattern the Friday before of fishing points with shakey heads (now that we are done on this lake for awhile, I can talk about it more). On Saturday, the fish were off those points and while we could get a bite occasionally, we couldn't hang into them. We eventually found the fish had moved shallow onto docks, probably because of the lack of clouds and bright sun. 

In other words, in 24 hours, the fishing had flip-flopped, but at least we were NEAR the fish.  So, Brad and I planned on doing the exact same thing, since the conditions were so similar. We put in at Waterfront and waited until it was time to make the run up river to Roseberry. But when Brad put it on the floor, the boat wouldn't get up on plane.

So, he tried and tried to get the boat on plane, meanwhile I'm sure we looked like newbs that didn't know how to trim down. It was about the time that I could hear all the laughter from the pros that were prefishing for the Bassmaster Classic that I looked back to see that the rear of the boat was under water. 

I'd seen this before and after hastily getting it on the trailer, we discovered that a livewell inlet had been sheared off. After wrapping some plastic worms in electrical tape, shoving it into the inlet, and then taping it some more, we were ready to go. Unfortunately, we had lost an hour of fishing. 

About the time we passed Goosepond, we noticed that the net was gone from the front deck. Where it went, we still do not know. So not only did we lose an hour of fishing, we had lost our net, too. I wasn't too worried because I didn't have a ton of faith that we would need it, but I digress.

We started out on one of the points in Roseberry. After getting two or three very tentative bites, it was obvious that the fishing was indeed going to be the exact same as last week. So, I headed to the one dock we had caught fish on the previous week.

We were rewarded fairly quickly with the fish pictured above on a square bill. After an hour of fruitless fishing, we began to move around to other points Josh and I had caught fish on. A bite or two aside, we put nothing in the boat and returned back to the magic dock. I produced another solid keeper on a chatterbait. 

We repeated this process, but managed to run into just one more keeper in other areas before we spent the remainder of our day on this one boat dock. By this time, the sun was very high in the sky and the water had warmed to around 52 degrees from the 48 degrees we saw earlier that morning. 

About that time, we discovered that there were a pile of decent sized males on the end of the dock and for the last hour, we consistently caught fish. By the day's end, we had caught just five keepers with a host of non-keepers. I had also broken off two fish, for reasons I don't know. We also missed a ton of bites as they just didn't want the shakey head, but wouldn't eat ANYTHING else. 

It took 16 pounds to win, 15 for second, and we checked in at 3rd with 13.5 pounds. There were few limits and the big fish of the tournament was just over five pounds. The ramps were covered up with pros and there was a lot of traffic on the lake, though about the same amount as there usually is. 

Anyways, it was the first time in YEARS that I had caught five keepers on the G in February and while we have caught some TOADS this time of year, you gotta have five. Water clarity was still an issue and the continued rain is going to cause the fish to be in disarray for the time being. So, if you find an area that produces more than two boats, hunker down. 

Alabama Bass Trail Event on Guntersville

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When we signed up to fish our last tournament on Wheeler, we had some concern that we were misusing our time. The first event for the Alabama Bass Trail was on Guntersville and neither Josh and I had fished the Big G in in months and months. Some of that is because the winter on Wheeler can be special and some of it is because I just don't like Guntersville. Here are a couple of those stories:

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

Fishing Report for Wheeler Lake Late December/January 1st

Fishing Report for Wheeler (Late January 2019)

The thought was, we were on fish on Wheeler and we were consistently cashing checks each and every tournament, which is a far cry from what we expected on Guntersville. Truly, it wasn't just that we struggle on Guntersville this time of year, we also struck out on Smith for the first tournament of the year last year with the ABT as well. You can click on the links below and read those sad stories.

Fishing Report for Smith Lake 2/16/19

Fishing Report for Guntersville/Alabama Bass Trail

In the ABT, you can have bad tournaments, but you cannot afford to strike out in the first one of the year if you hope to fish in the ABT Championship. That's exactly what we had done both the last two years and we came up short last season simply because we didn't weight a fish in the first tournament of the year. Literally, a limit of fish on Smith would have put us in the Championship.

Enough about the past. Let's talk about this tournament and the practices leading up to it. 

As all of you know, the weather has been beyond pitiful for fishing so far. I am willing to fish bad weather. Cold weather. Wind. Whatever. But one thing you can't fish is flooding conditions that keep you from getting the boat in the water. With that said, we fished the few days that we could. 

The first trip was Martin Luther King Day. It was 15 degrees and windy when we put in at Alred's and we moved into Brown's Creek. Hours and hours of fishing yielded two bites and one fish, a barely legal keeper caught on a chatterbait. Josh added a second trip on a decent Sunday afternoon where he found some deeper fish on points on the upper end of the river as well as some fish that were pulled up in flooded brush and trees. Of course, the latter wasn't a stable pattern with the water levels constantly fluctuating. 

On President's day , Josh found that the deeper fish were still in the same place and he had a consistent day, but there were no size among the fish. Still, it was consistent and it was better than anything else we had found. 

Just to recap, thus far: In two trips, I had caught two fish. Josh had fished two more trips and had at least caught a limit each trip, but nothing to get excited about.

From here, the discussion wasn't about winning or even cashing a check, but how to get five fish to keep us in the middle of the standings. Based on the prefishing, we decided that the week of the event, we would focus on Roseberry creek, only. Not that there seemed to be anything magical about it, but that we simply hadn't had any luck outside of the creek and we hoped it might get ignored. We knew that Brown's Creek and Spring Creek were where most of the Guntersville sticks would fish, based upon the results from the Waterfront Wildcat Two-day, the Rattletrap Tournament, and just dock talk. In addition, word was that even among these guys, the spots holding these fish were extremely small and it was a boat race to them. Since we didn't know our boat number, we couldn't bet on that, even if we found it. 

Thursday rolled around and we were boat 11. For us, this wasn't a good thing because it meant we would be dead last for Wheeler in June and we weren't on any fish to make that early number pay.

Friday, our prefishing wasn't great, but it was consistent. The fish were extremely finicky and refused to hit moving baits, but they were locked into the edge of grasslines. At the pretournament meeting, we found that we had more success than most people we talked to and mentioning that we had caught around 10 fish and had 30 bites was miles better than most people had experienced. So, even though we were sold on where we were going and what we were going to do, we suddenly felt like we had a chance to make some noise.

Of course, the issue was that we had been catching only buck bass and while they were all keepers, we had no indication that there were big fish around them. So, we speculated a little. It had warmed some on Friday and Saturday was primed to see fish move up, especially the females. If we were catching the bucks, the females were behind, somewhere. Saturday would be a good day for them to move up from the first drop. 

The run from State Park was long, mostly because it was cold. We settled into our pattern and were surprised that the only boats that went into Roseberry were headed to the very back. It wasn't a bad plan and we had planned to do just that, considering the numbers of big fish we've caught back there, including a nine-pounder two years ago. However, we wanted a limit first.

That limit was harder to come by than we thought. None of the deeper fish wanted to play. We might get bites, but they weren't committed. An hour went by with only short fish, so we began venturing off our spots. Despite not having been bitten on a moving bait on Friday, I picked up a crankbait. I quickly caught a short fish and a few yards later, the rod loaded up. Josh asked if I needed the net, but I was convinced that the fish was foul hooked. I told Josh not to bother with the net.

That was a mistake, but Josh had seen the fish and knew it was a good one. I went from thinking I had a short fish to boating a six. 

Josh added a keeper about an hour later, but we fished until noon, recycling our spots, without boating another keeper. Truly, I was a lot of the problem. I could not get the fish to hook up on soft plastics. I don't know how big they were, but I couldn't get them in the boat to find out. 

At noon, we returned to the exact spot the six came from. Two casts from me and one from Josh later, we had a limit that included a four and a couple of two-and-halfers. Again, we moved around and again, the pattern broke down. 

An hour later, we returned to the spot and I had another good one pull off, but Josh caught another couple that culled us up. We had a solid bag, but time was running out.

We made one stop on the way back to weigh-in and fished channel swings in Seibold where Josh culled us about half a pound. 

We were probably the 15th boat to weigh in and the first ten or so bags were all around 20 pounds and it seemed pretty obvious at the time that 18.50 wasn't going to be enough. In fact, we loaded up and started to leave when my wife texted me that half the field had weighed in and we were still sitting in 13th. 

The way the fish had begun to bite when the sun came up, we figured the afternoon crowd would smash them. Still, the boats kept coming through and we stayed in the same place on the leaderboard. At the end of it, we finished in 16th, which surprised us to no end. 

We caught around 10 fish and had around 20 bites. There were some things to feel good about. We did make adjustments. We had a feeling the fish were around. The issue is that most of it felt like luck. 

But, hey, we are headed in the right direction. 

As always, the ABT shines. There is a reason that teams from across the country come here to fish and it isn't just because the fishing in Alabama is THAT good. Of course, that certainly helps.

Kay, Clay, Robbie, and the ABT crew do a phenomenal job on each and every event and make it fun and almost effortless, despite having 225 boats to compete against. 

Fishing Report for Wheeler (Late January 2019)

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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

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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!

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

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Got a lot to unpack from this weekend and I will try and make it not turn into a novel. As many of you know, mid-November and December have been FANTASTIC to me over the last year. It's not that previous years haven't been good, I just haven't fished as much in the winter. But once I started figuring some stuff out, it has made for must-fish days. You can read about some of those by clicking the link below.

Fishing Report for Wheeler 11/22-23/2018

Ok, so let's get right to it. We've had some decent days this winter, won some small tournaments, caught a lot of fish, but we haven't had big bags like we had last year. On my birthday, I got out by myself and, wouldn't you know it, the big ones were biting. I racked up around 21 pounds of smallies, largemouth, and spots while catching around 20 total fish. You can read about that by clicking the link below.

Fishing Report for Wheeler (November 2019)

But over the last two weeks, I've been practicing for the Dry Creek Marina tournament. I wanted to prove to myself that we could do more than win smaller events and occasionally get a check in the Alabama Bass Trail. With three kids and a job, "practicing" became an hour here and there but never enough time to really nail down the finer points of where, when, and how of catching fish. I'd usually have time to fish three spots and decide if they were there and what they would eat.

Thursday, I fished Aldridge Creek and the mouth of Ditto, two areas that I consistently catch fish when there is current, and on Thursday, there was over 100,000 CFS. I didn't get bit on either of these spots, nor could I get bit on any of the individual rock piles that have been holding big smallmouth. I also fished a couple of new areas that I hadn't fished, but had some of the same features, but nothing seemed to be home. I ended Thursday catching one measuring fish, but I wasn't terribly concerned. The river was blown out and muddy. Plus, I knew that it might take a day or so for the fish to settle down after the flooding and extreme current. 

Friday left me with cause for concern. I went back to those two spots and caught fish. They did seem to bite whatever I threw, whether that was a Stike King 6XD, a swimbait or a jig, but they were all small. Now, I am glad I didn't catch any monsters, but I didn't expect monsters to be at those two places. 

Aldridge and Ditto are mere litmus tests for the rest of the upper end of the river. If they are there and they have decent size, then I know exactly what I need to do elsewhere to catch the big ones. So, when I went to my other areas expecting to catch decent fish, I was disappointed to find that I simply could not get bit. Leaving Friday afternoon, I wasn't really sure what to do. I knew we could get a limit of spotted bass from around Ditto, but it's a long way to ride from Decatur just to catch a limit of spots, and even if big spots showed up, we knew there was no way to exceed 15 pounds. 

So, you can imagine my level of concern when we pulled up to Ditto and had exactly two bites that resulted in me dumping a two pound spot at the boat and nothing else. We wondered if we needed to let the sun come up, as it hadn't cleared the trees quite yet, but that meant fishing another hour or so in a critical part of the day. We knew one thing: the current had stabilized to around 80,000 CFS and there would be high skies, meaning that the off-shore bite should be phenomenal. 

Instead of waiting, we decided to make a move to the off-shore areas earlier than we normally would. Just like summertime on Guntersville, all we've done is scanned the main river channel for abnormalities in the form of rockpiles and current breaks. Of course, there are a LOT of those, which is why it is imperative to get out and fish leading up to your tournament to know which ones have fish and which do not. 

Settling into the first off shore spot, Josh caught our first limit while I alternated baits. It became fairly obvious that either I wasn't throwing the right bait or the angle I had from the back of the boat was such that I wasn't going to get bit. So, I decided to throw the same thing he did. As I slow rolled a swimbait, I eased it over a rockpile, letting current take it. The hit felt like a smaller fish and even when I set the hook, it didn't feel like the fish had any weight to it. I told Josh not to bother with the net, but that became a mistake when I realized that the 5.25 smallmouth was running right at me. I reeled down and added a second hookset to make sure the fish was buttoned up and we netted her. That fish, plus a series of consistent culls by decent spots put us around 12 pounds by 8AM. 

Following that flurry of about 10 keepers, the bite died and we made our way to one of my big smallie spots. Typically, the big one will bite within five minutes, so fifteen minutes later when we hadn't been bit, we knew it was time to move on. 

We stopped on a bluff that I had randomly stopped at a few weeks ago and caught largemouth on before going back on the 24th and catching a five pound smallie. Obviously, there is something there that the fish want. They weren't EXACTLY on the same spot, but Josh boat flipped a three pound largemouth that helped the cause and brought us up to around 14 pounds. It was the only fish we caught on that stretch so we continued to move up river and stopped at the mouth of a creek. 

This creek is always hot or cold and it is that way year-round. It will either blank you or load the boat with nothing in between. I had caught a decent number of fish on the 24th on this spot, but none that would help. For the first ten minutes, it didn't seem like it was going to produce, but Josh made a slight boat position change that allowed the current to keep the bait in the strike zone longer. This paid off as we culled another couple of times, but we were spending more time on the cull beam than we were fishing. Still, we upped the sack to around 17 pounds, but three of the fish were all 2.5 pound clone spots and we hadn't caught but the one single largemouth and smallmouth, giving us serious doubts that we were going to cull up again, at least at that spot.

Now, Friday night and on the drive to the lake Saturday morning, I had said that 17 pounds would put us in the mix to be competitive. Knowing how the bite had toughened over the last few days, I figured someone would hit 20 pounds but the weights would plummet after that. My thought was that we should start rotating the big smallie holes I knew of and avoid areas that we knew held spots. That essentially meant there were three spots left that I had, one at the dam, one back around Ditto, and one in Decatur. 

Josh had a different plan and it is one of the best audibles, if not the best audible, that I have personally witnessed. 

This will seem like an aside, but just follow me. There are about three boats in the Thursday night wildcat crew that consistently win. Two of these, in particular, fish some areas that look completely and utterly random. Over the last few months, Josh and I have scanned all of these areas but we've never really fished them, nor have we seen fish on them. However, Josh noted that there was a SIMILAR area very close to us, so we motored over to it.

In the middle of his first cast, he made a comment that "if there are big smallies biting, we will catch them here." Before he got "here" out of his mouth, he set the hook on a fish, but we didn't think it was a smallie. It looked like a huge fish as it loaded the rod, but the bottom composition didn't look like anything a smallie would be on. For the most part, it was completely flat, but when the fish boiled yards from the boat, we knew we were in business. We boated a five pounder. Fist bumps all around.

Within five minutes, I had caught two more in the same ball park. We now had five brownies, only one of which was under four pounds and two of them were legit studs. It was only noon. 

We spend the rest of the afternoon just fun fishing, recycling areas and catching more and more fish. By 2PM, the size of the spots had gone up even more and we were throwing back three pounders consistently. Turned out, I was wrong on those spots. There was enough big ones to have been competitive on the spots alone. 

We weighed in 21.5 pounds and took home the win. 

Fishing Report for Wheeler (November 2019)

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November has been really, really special the last two years on Wheeler. I was starting to wonder this year because despite spending a lot of time on the water, it wasn't producing nearly the same as last year. Initially, I believed it was because this time last year, the water was up, the current was up, and we hadn't had such a brutally hot and long summer. TVA dropped Wheeler really, really low last month and there hasn't been a ton of rain. 

Pulling up posts from last year, which you can click on below, it was pretty obvious what the differences have been. Water level and current. We were seeing 75,000 CFS and high water, which positioned fish tightly to break lines and in big groups. A day here or there, we've had decent current, but it's typically been in the 30,000s. 

Fishing Report for Wheeler 11/22-23/2018

I've fished several wildcats this November and while we've done extremely well in them in terms of winning, weights haven't been stellar. We've fished mostly out of Ingalls in Decatur. Some days we've stuck around Decatur. Some we've run up river. It hasn't seemed to matter. The best bags we've seen came on Veteran's Day when we had a tournament out of Ditto. Some competitors had a 17-pound bag with two massive smallies. Second was 12 pounds and the weights plummeted after that. When we've won, it's been less than 12 pounds to take the win. That's a far cry from what we were seeing last year. 

Interestingly enough, we've caught our better fish around Decatur, literally within two miles of the ramp. It makes it really hard to justify running to the areas we know best, especially early in the mornings when it's super cold. Until last week, we hadn't bothered to fish the upper end of the lake at all because it just hasn't produced. 

In regards to Decatur, the best baits have easily been the A-rig. I've tried not to throw it, letting Josh throw it in front of me while I fished a variety of other baits, but it's been mostly futility. We've caught them on a spinnerbait as well, with Wyatt having caught several nice ones in the same areas that the A-rig has produced. Find the bait and throw the flashy baits at them. 

Starting last week, we started fishing the upper end a bit more. The first trip, we found that the fish were acting mostly the same as the ones in Decatur. They would only eat the rig and occasionally a single swimbait. I would fish a shakey head and a jig and I simply could not get bit. They also wouldn't touch a crank or a spinnerbait. On Friday, our best five went around 14 pounds, anchored by this massive largemouth I caught. We caught around 20 or so and it was a good day, but we had to cover a TON of water to find them. 

Last Saturday, Josh did all the hard work, with me only catching a single one of our best five. We did find that the fish were starting to group up, but we couldn't find bigger bites and the smallies were nowhere to be found. All we could find were spots. We culled and culled, but could only get 10 pounds, which was still enough to win.

I was out on business the following few days and then decided to go fishing solo. I put in at Ditto and hit some of my favorite spots from last year. If you read those reports, what you will see is that I started catching small spots, then days later it was bigger spots, then the smallies moved in. So, when I started catching decent spots, I finally had some sort of confidence that the fishing was finally getting better. I moved around a good bit that day and found that they were finally hitting crankbaits, but still wouldn't touch a jig or shakey head. I caught around 20 fish, but nothing bigger than three pounds. Still, it was a positive sign.

So, I got out yesterday for my birthday. I headed down river to some bluffs with rock piles, marked some fish on the Lowerance, backed off and laid a jig in there. First few casts, I got bit with one pulling off as she went to deeper water. I could tell it was a big smallie. Fired it back in and boated what would be my biggest of the day, a 5.25 smallie. She went over 19 inches long and was completely fed up. 

Couldn't get bit again, so I headed to the mouth of a creek. Caught a few on a 6XD, which was a change. Mostly, these were spots but there were some largemouth. Was headed to a bluff when I saw a boat fishing it, so I stopped short of where I normally would fish and my first cast on a 6XD netted me 4-pound smallie. 

Eventually that boat left and I fished a deep drop off that has fish piled on it. Caught a few two pound spots on a swimbait, but they weren't biting as good as I would like so I kept on moving. At this point, I thought I had a good bag going. That escalated quickly.

I was running a rip rap bank were I've caught a ton of smallies, alternating between a jig and a crank, and when this fish hit, I knew it wasn't a smallie so I assumed it was a drum. Imagine my surprise when it turned out to be a five pound largemouth! It happened so fast that I had to boat flip her and boy was that fun. 

Again, I thought the day couldn't get better. I had 17 pounds or so. Boat flipped a 3.5 pound largemouth on a shakey head, the only one of the day on a shakey head. Now I had four nice fish and one decent spot. I decided to make a little longer drift down a bank of rip rap than I normally do and BAM, a smallie rocked my jig. Swung her aboard. Another four pounder. 

By the end of the afternoon, I had 21 pounds in my best five, catching around 20 fish. Amazingly enough, I had ZERO non-keepers. The majority of fish came on a 6XD. 

I talked to a guy at Ditto and he was asking me where and how I caught fish. Truth is, I caught fish everywhere I went, even places I don't normally fish. They were just biting yesterday. I think it had a lot to do with the water temps hovering around 58 in combination to the flow of 45,000 CFS and the cloudless skies.