The unusual Spring of 2009 has brought high water to Middle TN, and the fishing has been excellent through the middle of May. Percy Priest has been anywhere from 3-7 ft high for the last three weeks, and the fish have been in the flooded trees, vines, bushes, and other stuff that usually lives well above the water line.
Two weeks ago, I caught a solid limit of around 16 lbs. on PP anchored by two four pounders. The fish were on the edges of the trees anywhere I could find green leafy trees submerged in 2-5 ft of water. It didn't seem to matter what you threw at them, as long as it was either a jig or soft plastic. The best baits were a Lake Fork tackle Tube Craw, GYBC Creature Bait, and a Tight Line 1/2 oz jig and plastic trailer. the creature fish came flipping and pitching directly in the brush, while the jig fish liked a swimming presentation. I'd swim the jig up to the target, kill it beside the bush, and then swim it back to the boat.
I was very confident that we could do well in the Inner City Ministries Big Fish / Black bag event held on Saturday, May 16th out of Fate Sanders. my only concern was that the lake level had been brought down two feet from the prior weekend, but it was still 3 1/2 ft above summer pool, which is plenty to keep the fish in the trees.
We started on a couple of spots that my partner wanted to hit with no bites, and then, about 7 am we went to my flipping spots from the weekend before. We pulled into the first cove, and whack! we caught around 8 fish in the same places I had caught them the week before. Out of the 8, four were solid keepers, but none of them were over 3 lbs, so no need to weigh them in. At this point, we felt good about the pattern, and the fish appeared to be in the same places as last weekend.
We moved on to my second cove and flipped up three or four more, but again, no bigguns. we kept flippin for another couple of hours, but the bite seemed to die as the day went on, so we decided to go looking for some fish out off the banks. We hit a flat mid-lake where I had been catching them good before the water came up, and we had 5 or six here on a c-rig, but they were all small. Then we went way down lake to a flat where the fish have been stacked, but again, we only caught dinks. I had one more cove to flip down lake, but the water had muddied up since the prior week, and we did not get a bite.
As time was running down, we went back to the first cove of the day, but the fish were nowhere to be found. We noticed that the water had dropped at least half a foot since the morning, and I'm sure that had a lot to do with the bite dying off during the day.
For the day we ended up with around 20 fish and 6 or seven keepers, for around 12 lbs. Fun day of fishing, but no pay back for all the hard work.
The lake is back to near summer pool now, so it's back to conventional post spawn tactics. Our club is fishing our second event of the year Saturday on Priest, and I'm fairly confident that I will do well. This is my favorite time of the year to fish, as the fish are off bed, hungry, and extremely willing to eat a c-rigged lizard, jig, and hopefully a top water plug or two. I'll report back after Saturday.
Tight lines,
RBK
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