Sunday, March 20, 2011

March 20th, 2011 TBT Trail - Priest

Wow was it tough today. We ended up with 2 keepers for 3.86 lbs, which put us right in the middle of the pack, in 10th.

It only took 10 lbs to win.

The best fish came on a shad rap in 2-3 ft of water near Smith Springs, and DD cauht a keeper spot on the rig in Hamilton Cr.

On the day we caught around 15 fish, with little quality.

Conditions: Water level was at Winter Pool; 54-59 degrees. Weather was mostly sunny and warm, with highs in the low 70's, and SW winds at 5-15 MPH.

Until next time.

RBK

Saturday, March 12, 2011

Saturday, March 12, 2011- F3 Club tourney....

Met Duke at the ramp at 5:30, and we headed up-lake a couple of miles to try some shallow cranking in the pockets across from a bluff. It didn't take long to find a wad of little uns. The fish were chewing a SSR Shad Rap in 1-3 ft on the flat points at the mouth of the pockets. Duke limited out pretty quickly, catching 5 "club keepers" from 12-13 1/2", and I caught two.

Around 7:15 the fish shut off, so we decided to run down lake to find some bigger ones. We eased under the big bridge to my favorite early Spring area near Smith Springs, and we only had one bite, but it was a big ole good un of a brown fish. The fish measured 18" and fell for my old standby #5 Shad Rap. The odd thing was she was inside the pocket, and the deeper 45 degree bank didn't pay off at all (no wind on it).

We moved down to Hamilton Creek, and I added two club keepers on the shallow banks on the Shad Rap. I needed one more, so we eased over to Suggs Creek and went back to chunkin and windin the little plug on the secondary points near the creek mouth. I caught two keepers here, and one of them was a nice 17 1/2" smallie.

We bounced around trying to run the shallow secondary point pattern, but we ran out of time.

All in all, it was a good day for the first trip out on PP. I ended up with 10.3 lbs; first place and big fish for the 18" brownie.

Conditions: mostly clear; low 36 and high around 60 when we left at noon; winds 10-15 out of the SSW; water temps 49-53 degrees.

Tight lines.

RBK

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Guntersville TBT Sunday, 2-27-11....

Dwayne and I met in the Boro at 3:30 am to hit the road to Big G. We registered, and since we had sent in our entry early, we were boat #5, which was a good thing, since our first stop was a well known community hole.

We made the short run to our first stop, and we pounded that spot for about an hour and a half with only two fish coming over the rail, but one of them was a solid 4 lbr that I caught on a swimbait. From there, we eased into the back of a creek to check some staging areas adjacent to a series of large spawning flats. We started in the creek channel, and we hit a couple of brush piles that paid off. We landed our second and third keepers here, with one of them being a 5 3/4 lb fish. We stayed in the back of the creek for another hour or so, but we could not add to the creel.

We eased back to our first spot of the day, and Dwayne caught a nice 3 lb fish on the swimbait. We kept pounding the area, but nothing else bit. We now had 4 fish for around 16 lbs, but we needed number 5.

Since the back of the creek had warmed up we figured we'd ease up on the shallow flats and try the old pad stems. We ended up catching around 5 fish in the stems on a Chatterbait, and two of them were keepers. We culled one time and figured we needed another kicker to break the 20 lb mark.

We decided to go back to the deep spot and finish the day throwing the swimbait. Unfortunately, we didn't catch any more.

We weighed in 18.99 lbs and finished in 5th place (of course they paid 4!).

All in all it was a good day on the water.

Until next time.

RBK