Going to fish it on oct 31. Only have the one day . Hope to get into some smallmouth . Any reports on what depth they seem to be. And I see FLW Toyota series will be there. Any idea on number of boats it will have. Thank you
Going to fish it on oct 31. Only have the one day . Hope to get into some smallmouth . Any reports on what depth they seem to be. And I see FLW Toyota series will be there. Any idea on number of boats it will have. Thank you
The FLW will probably have around 150 boats. Smallmouth will probably still be deep since the lake is still warm and no real cold weather forecasted. Swim baits and football jigs.
Thank you sir.
Several good fish are caught in the winter floating a fly when it gets cold, late December January. Hit or miss in the fall.
So I take it if FLW there then this weekend probably out as well with all boats pre fishing?
A renegade tournament started today and going through Saturday. I think there is 150 boats in it. So probably a busy weekend with this tournament and folks prefishing for the FLW next weekend.
With the temperature's we have had this fall. I would still fish at night for smallmouth
It’s been brutal- I fished thur and fri. Dale hollow Dave doing well but he’s trolling in open water and using downriggers - so I think most smallies are still out in channel. I’d fish deep channel swings with lots of bait - topwater if they jump, jigging spoon or drop shot till water cools and brings them shallower
Went out this weekend and not bad but not a ton of numbers. I caught a few on deeper jerkbaits around initial fall transition areas but the solid pattern we got on was finding structure coinciding with the deep grass edges (14-17 ft depending on area of lake). I started it up putting a tube 5-10 feet inside the vegetation then cracking it from there out. (Spotlocked 15-20 yards outside vegetation line). Seemed the deep grass was only 1-3 feet tall and workable. Bites early in the cast (deeper into grass) were invariably largemouth while those on edge were invariably smallmouth. My dad did same thing with a ned rig and had luck. Sadly very little bites on moving baits (cranks, traps, swim baits, spinnerbaits, etc), but that technique worked from Mitchell creek up to Boy Scout island. Key seemed to be coinciding grass line with a harder bottom and structure (point/hump/swing/ etc).
Tons of largemouth are pushed way back in creeks and easily catchable on very quiet finesse presentations (small swim baits and wacky worms) but my dad was wanting to focus on smallmouth so we did. Only major bait balls located were about 3/4 way back willow creek. Water temp was 66-68 at surface but 70-75 about 2-3 feet down for most of lower and mid lake.
Sounds like you should have entered the recent tournaments. They've been struggling for 2 weeks now.
Yeah we fished backs of 8-9 creeks and didn’t find largemouths easy- 3 pros caught 5 fish limits all 3 tourney days and some big name guys were that tourney
Thank you all for your input. Really enjoyed the lake. Fishing was about what I expected. Very slow only 4 fish for the day nothing big except a very nice walleye on a swim bait. No smallmouth. That only means I will have to go back in the spring and try again.