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
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