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Wednesday evening, 3/25
My partner and I put in at Jefferson Springs about 4:15 yesterday afternoon and we headed up river to see what we could find. We hit the flat on the right of the channel after the dogleg left after the Jefferson Pike bridge. The flat has stumps and crappie stakes on it that sets up perfectly for this time of year. As we got near the end of the flat, there are two TWRA crappie poles about 20 ft apart. My partner threw behind the 2nd pole and had one slam his chatterbait. With the wind blowing directly down the flat, the fish were positioned facing the wind and they were hungry. We boated 5 fish in about 10 minutes and I let several others unbutton on my trap. As hard as it is to believe…every fish was a keeper with the largest being about 3 pounds. And as quickly as the flurry started…it ended. No more fish.
We then motored up to the fork and fished the flat on the right before you get to the fork. There were fish all over the drop and suspended off the drop. Based on all of the carp activity and the size of the fish on down imaging we figured that was them. With no action up there we went back under the Jefferson Pike bridge and hit the flat at the pump house. Nothing there. We dropped the hammer and ran into Spring Creek for the late evening bite and bite they did. We missed several fish around the island on the left that extends out toward the green buoy before you get into Spring Creek. We jumped across the channel into the small cove on the right and there was activity everywhere. We had two small fish blow up on spooks but they didn’t connect.
We trolled out of the cove and started going around the bank to left (toward the mouth of Spring Creek). I tossed my trap where the chunk rock turned into gravel and one slammed it. My partner tossed back into that exact same spot and caught another one. We ended up boating 4 fish within a 10 feet radius. We cruised on around the bank and picked up a couple of short fish. What happened next was unlike anything I had ever seen on Priest. At the end of that bank is a small pocket that is about 2-3 ft deep at the deepest point. As we got to the mouth of the pocket the water started boiling with activity…bass were chasing minnows everywhere. They were running minnows completely onto the bank. We started throwing our traps and literally every cast resulted in a hooked fish. All fish were around 14 3/4″ to 15 1/2″ and they were chunks. We stayed there for about 20 minutes before it was getting dark enough that we needed to be heading to the ramp. The fish were still feeding when we left. They were busting in the shallows and in he channel. Literally everywhere you looked were fish chasing minnows.
All in all in that 3 hr trip we boated about 25 fish with 10 of them being solid keepers.
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3 Replies
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Nice report! They were feeding like crazy shallow Tuesday, but I couldn’t find any bigger fish. I could catch all the little ones I wanted though.
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I don’t know that the big females have made their way into the spawning flats just yet. The fish we caught had pot bellies but that may have been from gorging on minnows.
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Great report!!!
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