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Follow my Fish of 2017
It's been tough to find time to fish the last month or so, between travel softball and MORE travel softball. In fact, we had a scheduled tournament for this weekend as well, but it was the NASA club's Classic and is the last regularly scheduled tournament of the year.
Of course, we pulled Smith lake out of the hat, the one lake I haven't been on since February. Now, the good news is, that was a really, really good tournament for us. The bad news is, it was February. Here is that report.
Fishing Report for Smith Lake 2/18/17
And, add in some absolutely nasty weather and a cold front moving in around 9AM that day....
....I really considered not fishing at all and just going to the softball tournament. But, Brad and I drew out so that we could fish together. I decided I would drive to Smith Lake park so that I could leave directly for the softball tournament.
I polled some of the local guys on a Smith Lake Bass Tournaments facebook page and they gave me a little info. They also said "don't fish that end of the lake." Well, thing is.....it's a free tournament and the money wasn't quite worth driving too far. So, we decided to use the techniques they had told us, but fish the places we knew.
It was cold (in the 40s) and raining at blast-off. We started on a nearby main lake point. Brad was throwing a white buzzbait and I a chrome and black Rapalla DT-10. This paid off quickly with a nice chunky over spot. Then, nothing.
We moved to the next point and Brad was tossing the white buzzbait around a boat ramp and a fish slurped it. After a fight, we boated a NICE four-plus pound spot.
We quickly found out a couple of things:
First, they only wanted the buzzbait.
Second, there was only one active fish per point.
So, when we would move to a new point, we would get one bite. Sometimes it would stick. Most of the time it wouldn't. Brad was getting the vast majority of the bites, but they weren't hooking up. Meanwhile, I tried to alternate baits in attempt to find something they would bite. I had some short strikes on a jig, shakey head, and a drop shot. But, none of them connected.
We would move spots and eventually we had three overs and one under that I had caught on a buzzbait.
But, when the rain died and the cold front descended, the bite died. The lone bite we had after 9AM came on a PTL 7" tickler, but it was a slot fish that had to be thrown back.
We went to weigh in with just 4 fish: three overs and one under. We knew the chances were that we would have the big fish of the day and any time you have that big fish, you have a real shot to win. Of course, we didn't have a limit and we did have a tiny under.
So, the pucker began when the best fisherman of the club unloaded five clones for around 7.5 pounds. However, it was the under that put us just above that mark and we walked away with the win by the skin of our teeth.
It wasn't a fun day. The fish had absolute lock jaw even though we found at least three spots that were holding bass. We would find them close to the bottom on the first major drop of main lake points, always adjacent to some bait balls. Nothing could convince them to bite, from spoons to jigs, to drop shot.
But, winning is winning. That's about all you can say about catching five fish all day.
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