Saturday, September 24, 2011

Dominique, Hayden, Ian, Alex and Thomas

Cloudy and Pleasant, Water Temperature 74* and Clear.
Dom's mother Carol wanted to take her son and a few of his friends fishing for his birthday so she set up this trip for today. We were concerned about the rain today, it was forecasted to have thunderstorms all morning but we got lucky, it never rained a drop. After fishing today, I kind of wish it had of rained to keep some of the boaters off the water. There were 3 bass tournaments with boats on every point and by 8 there were skiers and jet skiers buzzing us. A jet skier took out 3 of my planner boards on one side while another boater circled for an hour pulling 2 tubes. A friend Anthony was also out and he had a nut take out his whole side of boards! The kids took advantage of all the waves and had fun trying to rock the boat and knock each other over. Although it was not the best fishing day and the fish did not cooperate with us the boys had fun all day, they never slowed down. I am sure they are going to sleep good tonight, after getting up at O dark thirty and fishing all day they left the marina headed for Bass Pro Shops then had to go back to Gainsville this evening.

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

David "Chief" Gilchrist and Steve




Cloudy and Calm, Water Temperature 74* and Clear.

David recently bought a house on the lake and wanted to take his friend Steve out to catch a couple Stripers so I picked them up at 5am and went looking for bait. I was praying I could have the right bait by daylight this morning because the major feed today was early. As luck would have it bait was tough. We got lucky when Steve saw some trees up on the bank that he wanted to inspect. I took him over to the bank to drop him off and found the bait I was looking for. After a few throws we were ready to catch some fish. It was already 8 but there were not many boats out and it was cloudy so I felt the fish would not be too spooky. Once I hit the area that I wanted to fish we started hooking up with Stripers. On our first pass we caught the three Stripers that the guys are holding in the picture. We continued to fish till we ran out of baits so we attempted to catch more bait but again struggled for quite awhile. We put our spread out again and caught some very nice Stripers on the same pattern as we did this morning. We stayed away from the punks today and concentrated on catching decent fish and had a great time doing it. I can only imagine the day we could have had if bait was not such an issue.




Thursday, September 08, 2011

A day of Practice


















Cloudy and warm, Water Temperature 74* uplake, 78* midlake and 81* at the dam.


I have not been on the water lately [ earthquakes, aftershocks, hurricanes and tropical storms, etc] so I got out on the water this morning at 3am to check the lake out and to locate bait and fish for my next clients. I looked for bait the first part of the morning and also went all the way up lake to see the condition of the water. The left side is muddy above Christopher but fishable below Holliday Mill bridge. The other side is not as muddy, very fishable from Henry's down. Coolest water was 74* on both sides. I looked till 10 then decided to fish a little so I ran some areas that I thought would hold some nice fish. I had no interest in fishing for punks so I stayed away from scholling fish. The first area I pulled I had 4 hook ups in about 300 yards and after a guy in a Bass boat cut me off I pulled my baits in, caught some more bait and relocated to a similar pattern. I only put out 8 lines because I was by myself and I thought I could handle the action but I ended up busting my butt trying to keep up with the fish. Once I caught a fish I did not rebait because I did not want to hurt the pattern I was on. After catching 5 Stripers over a 200 yard area I got my remaining lines in and moved again. Had to try the same pattern a couple miles away from the last place and yup, same deal, caught more Stripers and an eleven pound Catfish. By now it was after 1 o'clock so I emptied my bait tank and went home. I released all the Stripers I caught and all of them swam away fine. I only put a couple of the pictures up to show the varied conditions of the fish. A third of the fish were very healthy [mainly the fish over 25"], a third had a sore on their sides and the remaining third had concave bellies, obvious they had not been feeding. Overall I think all the rain has helped the lake lowering the water temperature somewhat but replenishing the oxygen that it so badly needed.