Read about all of my Fishing Adventures!
Follow my Fish of 2018
Any other year, I would be on Pickwick. We have had such phenomenal days on Pickwick in the winter months that it has been hard to justify going anywhere else. Typically, we fish Pickwick until mid-January before picking up Guntersville for tournaments. Sometimes we mix in Wheeler, but it's pretty rare. Doesn't mean that we don't, because it's hard to turn down a quick trip to Ditto in the cold months.
To say that Josh and I have grown as anglers on Wheeler is an understatement. I really don't know what happened, whether it be blind luck or being forced to get better because of the Alabama Bass Trail. We've been fishing Ditto for over 10 years at this point and we've occasionally been competitive in tournaments. Up until this year, our best bag was 13 pounds. I believe watching to the electronics and listening to what they had to say has provided some major dividends.
Starting in the spring, we won three straight Thursday night wildcats at one point and were in the money or danger close in most of them until the summer set in. During that time, we were fishing ABT and other clubs, so we weren't on fish. When the ABT ended, we got back on the fish and won three straight Friday nighters.
All well and good. We had some good bags and some big fish but never together.
Thanks to NASA going to Flex Fridays, I've been able to fish Wheeler at least once every other week, but frequently at least once a week.
The patterns have shifted, but on Wednesday, Wyatt and I got out. We didn't find fish in the places Josh and I had found our 15-pound bag the previous Saturday, which you can read about below.
So I went back to a stretch I had caught a ton of good spots a few weeks ago. Nothing special, just rip-rap with some current breaks. Tons of those all over the river, but this one had very specific points where the fish were piling up.
Throw out a crank. BAM. Brown fish goes airborn. A smallie? Strange. But, wouldn't be the first time a smallie mixed in with spots. Netted a 4.3 pounder.
About that time, Wyatt is yelping from the back. He's got a 4.75 smallie. Before I could pick my rod back up, he makes another cast and boats a 5.75!
Ok, so at that point I tell him to put the rod down. I gotta tournament in two days! Quit catching the big ones!
So, let's see if that pattern works elsewhere. We pull the trolling motor up and run to a similar spot. Wyatt has one pull off on the first cast. I have a couple of swats. On his next cast, he catches another giant smallie. This one goes over 5 as well. We've hit 20 pounds in four fish. While we had caught a few measuring dinks, I wasn't about to claim her had 20 pounds including a one pound dink. But, it was time to go.
I told Wyatt I was gonna stop at the point of Ditto and make one cast. That cast netted a three pound spot and pushed us over the 23 pound mark.
All well and good, but would the pattern hold on our Black Friday tournament? My experience has been, take your practice and knock down the weight 25%.
Josh and I ran to our first spot and caught a limit that included one smallie over four and several decent spots. We had around 10 pounds. The area wouldn't put up any more big fish.
We ran to the second spot and that immediately paid off with our big fish of the day, a 5.75 pound smallie.
From the back of the boat, all I could catch were small fish. By the end of the day, we had ZERO fish in the livewell that I caught. To be fair, I also threw back a 10 pound limit that I, myself caught. Josh was able to only get big bites, but he did a great job with that, landing all but one big fish.
We ended the day with over 18 pounds having caught just around 15-20 fish, total.
TVA was pulling around 78,000 CFS with water clarity having improved from zero to around a foot. Water temps on Friday were 52 degrees.
Water level fluctuations are drastically affecting the shallow bite. It's tough to throw any plastics, as well.
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