Fishing Report for Wheeler 10/21/18

Follow me on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter!

Read about all of my Fishing Adventures!

Follow my Fish of 2018

"Fun fishing" isn't something that I've been able to do in the last few years. With three kids who are all playing at least one sport at a time, the only time I can get it out is typically to prefish. It's certainly caused some mental changes, in terms of every trip out is about finding the fish and preparing for a tournament. It's also made it hard to just relax and JUST FISH. 

With our jobs now on a flex schedule where we are off every other Friday, I was thinking it would be really easy to start having a low stress day on the water. Alas, with a wife who works not one, but two jobs and having to pull my weight with the kids, I have yet to get on the water on one of those Fridays. 

This past weekend, our NASA club had their Classic but Aubree has a tournament. Since I am the coach, skipping it wasn't really in the cards, though I have on occasion done just that. Not this time. 

Wouldn't you know it, the tournament got canceled. So, Josh and I decided we would take a leisurely trip out Sunday morning to Ditto Landing on Wheeler. 

We got on the water around noon and started poking around some of our spots. With a good amount of current and a lot of sunlight, I really thought the smallies would be on fire. But, a fish her and a fish there, no brownies. More importantly, the fish weren't grouped up like we thought they would be. Or, at least they weren't biting. 

After messing around down river, we began a slow migration up river, hitting some places as we went. The further up we went, the more bait we saw. Eventually we started catching white bass. Then, occasionally we would catch a spot or largemouth. The further up we went, the more we caught.

By the time we were within sight of the dam, we started to figure out something.

After catching no more than one fish on any one spot, I caught back to back spots on a Strike King 5XD on the exact cast. We were pretty excited, at least until it became obvious that two was the magic number and we should move on. At this point, we had caught five keepers with some decent size amount them, maybe hitting the eight pound mark. All the fish were fat, just fairly small.

As we began hitting current breaks (TVA had the flood gates open and there was a lot of color in the water) I finally figured out that these fish wanted exactly one bait and one bait only: a jig. It took Josh catching three consecutive fish on the same cast for me to put down the collection of baits I had been throwing. I had thought a jerkbait would be the deal, but the water had too much clarity. I had caught a few on a Pop-R, one or two on the A-rig, and about three on the crank. Nothing on the shakey head, which I doggedly stuck to as he was catching some really good quality spots.

Eventually, I picked up the jig and made the same cast Josh had been making with terrific success. Thump. And the drag went to screaming.

Now, it wouldn't be the first time that I didn't set the drag on a reel. If you recall, we missed a Top 10 finish in the Alabama Bass Trail event on Logan-Martin because I didn't set the drag on my new reel and a three to four pounder tossed the jig. 

But, when I realized that the drag was set, it was just a big fish...

I boat swung a four pound spot. 

Before we knew it, we had put together a solid river fish limit of around 12-13 pounds. 

Then the siren sounded and TVA turned the turbines WAY up. While the Ultrex could keep us in the right spot, we couldn't get our jigs down to the fish. We worked our way around some other spots, but never found another pile of fish. 

We didn't catch a ton, ending the day with 10 fish, but there was some good quality among them. Jigs are definitely what needs to be thrown. The water level is almost at winter pool but the warm temps have kept bait from really transitioning and with them, the bass have still stayed fairly spread out.