Where do you fish at Cumberland this time of year?

[fishingmarlin]

I went down to Cumberland this past weekend and put in at Burnside. I worked areas from Burnside all the way down to fishing creek. I went up into fishing creek and only saw a few fish on the sonar.

I am thinking about heading down to the dam side this weekend. After sitting down last night and reading a little more about the lake I think this is the side to work in early spring. Probably going to work the West Indian Fork area this coming weekend.

Any thoughts or suggestions??

[JC25]

I was there Billy... very tough day fo me and my boater in the BFL. I had 3 fish 2 smallmouth and 1 spot none could be weighed in due to minimum length requirement on smallies of 18". My boater didn't catch a fish.
We fished the main lake around the mouth of Beaver Creek mostly and made a run in Wolfe Creek that afternoon.
Water was very stained up there from all the rains but it was the only place we found bait fish. The bait fish were stacked up back in Wolfe Creek in about 5-15 ft of water. We charted several fish staged up in the last area that had water between 20-25 feet deep before getting up into the shallow water where the bait fish was holding. This is where I caught the spot. Its defintiely not a pattern but just an idea to keep in mind. The water on the main lake was around 47-50f but back in the creek it was more like 50-52f. I think they are staged up in these pockets in about 20-25ft waiting for the right time to go eat some shad.

We just had bad timing and started out on the main lake early, were obviously the fish were not.

Also as we where leaving this area a guy in a red skeeter started wooping and hollering and pumping his fist. When we got about 50 yards from him he holds up a LM that went about 6-7lbs.

Jeff

[fishingmarlin]

I was going to do the BFL but I did not have time to prefish for it. I did notice a lot of fish laying on the bottom. I am going to go and pickup some deep diving cranks and throw a carolina rig parallel with the bank in a couple of places this weekend. Looks like it will be a little cooler this weekend but hopefully some of the rain will warm things up a little.

I did see one boat out there pulling a skier!!! What a nut!!

[JR19]

OH those Cumberland blues...at least that's what I call them. Cumberland is one of the hardest lakes I have ever fished. I remember in fall of 04 the FLW Everstart Series had their championship on this lake and some of the pros that talked on stage said that they had fished for several days in a row and still had not put anything together as a real pattern. They were glad just to catch some 12"spots. One good thing about that lake is if you can locate some fish generally they will stack up in one spot. Cumberland is a large body of water so my best advice would be to pick out a major creek and treat it like it is a lake just too its self or you will be running around everywhere burning up gas. This time of year I would choose Indian Creek or Bearer /Otter creek or Greasy/Cliffty . If we get some rain and the creeks dirty up the Lm bite is what I would go looking for but if I could not find any dirty water I would look for some points or clay banks and try too crank up some SM. Cumberland has alot of places that has water to run in when we get enough rain. If those run ins get a run off of rain that is warmer that the lake temperature things can get good. I only fish this lake 5-10 times a year and that is usually in the winter. The most of my fish come off a crankbait. Good luck on your Cumberland trip dont be dissapointed if you zero but dont be suprised if you talk to someone that has cought 20lbs. That lake is hit or miss mostly miss for me

JR19