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Jan 17
Yesterday I fished from 7-230pm with 10 year regular clients. I expressed to them my thought for the day and that I figured the bass would be biting well. Finally, the water temperature was in the 40’s, 6ft below summer pool, and clear! Our first run was up into the river into the West Fork. There was 1.5ft visibility at 49 degrees at the blown out bridge were we dropped the trolling motor. I tied on a 1/2oz chatterbait with a 4″ white Zoom
swimbait to my clients rod, 1/4oz green pumpkin shaky head with Zoom trick worm, and I tried a 6″ Shadalicious swimbait in citrus shad on a 1/2oz chatterbait. We fished down the left steep bank without any bites
while the boat sat in 16ft. Once we reached the end of the bluff wall I set the boat out in the middle of the channel. I directed the guys cast down the center of the channel. I told them to let the bait sink to the
bottom and the reel the bait in slowly. After 5 minutes we hooked into and landed at 2.8lb. That was the only fish we caught there.Next we moved up further into the river and stopped two bends in the channel on the right bluff wall. We fished all the rock and wood on both sides of the channel for the next 200 yards without a bite. Our lures stayed in 4-12ft the enter time.
With time ticking I moved infront of Jefferson Springs boat ramp where there is a little spring pumping out water. With the boat in 20ft we cast into 4ft around the spring retrieving our lures over the channel ledge. We tried the same baits in addition to shad raps and sexy shad rattle traps…….nada. I idled with the trolling motor towards the bridge and found a bunch of
scattered bass and bait on the channel ledge. We cast our swimbaits and a-rigs to the ledge and retrieved slowly. I know for a fact some were bass sitting in 10-12ft, but I could not get them to bite!I decided to move into Fall Creek to hopefully get some numbers in the boat. We idled in the shallow creek across from the Fall Creek boat ramp to enter the deeper part of the creek. After the depth dropped to
4ft we put the trolling motor down started fishing the left bank with shad raps, a-rigs, and jerkbaits. The water temperature was 49 degrees at 2ft vis. We caught 3 short bass on off the rocks on the left with
shaky heads and a-rigs and one on the right mud flat near a stump. Only one was a keeper. The next hour we fished back futher into the creek catching just 2 more short fish.I motored over to Spring Creek and straight to the back where I was hoping we could fire up some topwater action! When we arrived the water was 54 degrees and clear….perfect! We tied on Heddon spook in shad
pattern and shad poppers. We fished the entire flat as boulders up to the rock wall and did not get a single sniff! After the flat we moved to the feeder creek and fished the mouth. We caught on short bass on
the a-rig and 3 short fish on the shaky head. We were not catching big fish, but a least we were getting a few bites.The last few hours we spent in Stewarts Creek. I did not plan on creek hopping all day, but the river was not producing and I had to find fish. We idled to the back and started just passed the back boat ramp.
Casting to the boulder rocks on the backside of the island I had a good bite on a red trick worm. I set the hook and fought a good fish for a few seconds before it unbuttoned! At this time we were all casting shaky
heads trying to get as many bites as we could. Again, on the back side of the island around the rocks we caught another short bass on a green pumpkin trick worm and lost another. I had the boat in 9ft while we
cast to the bank in 2ft. From there we fished all the way to the back with maybe one more short fish, but that was it. The water temp back
there was 52.All and all it was a tough day. We had a good time and I was glad we were able to catching some fish, but I was thinking we were going to have a great day and see several biggins! With the river not producing
I ended up creek hopping which I don’t really like to do unless I have to. I like to find bass off the beaten path. Anyways, fun day on the lake we great company!
Ill be out Saturday for my 3rd and final Major League Fishing tournament before the Championship. Currently we are sitting in 10th and they take the top 10 to the Championship. Hopefully between Center Hill and Old
Hickory they pull they most active lake and we can execute well! -
2 Replies
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So, a week or so ago…I was getting ready to fish a point (sorry I don’t know the names in this area) close to the water park and while getting set up thought I had spot lick on but drifted out over 35-39 ft of water and just before starting the trolling motor noticed I was marking a lot of bait fish and some slightly larger dots down deep on botton…I scanned around and noticed there was a whole lot of this….so I used a 4 ” spoon and then a knock off if a “silver buddy” (5/8 oz) and tried vertically jigging…turns out these were small stripes (blue Gill size) but after catching several love and behold I catch @3lb large mouth. @35ft deep…maybe 2ft of visibility up top…temp of water 51… I haven’t been out since but curious has anybody else got them that deep?
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I’m on my way to the PPL Friday from 11:00 – …
Would you go down lake or stay in the river / creeks today?
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