Lake Talquin (Hall Landing) 7/20/13

[Poopong McPlop]

At the last minute we decided to head to Luther Hall and spend some time in the goat island area. It was cloudy and the wind was steady out of the south. Surface temps were in the low 80s from all the rain we've received recently. I've noticed on my top charts that this area was the start of the deeper waters in the reservoir. The main lake flats are 12ft+ in this area and towards the dam. We began the morning working shallow shoreline structure and got several bites, but only a couple small 5" BG, before crossing the main lake to work around Goat islands shoreline for more of the same. We figured the fish were in open water so we conducted several drifts towards the shoreline and parallel. We ended up landing a nice 8" or larger BG on every drift until the rains came for an hour. We took shelter until the storm passed and ate lunch. After the rain passed, we conducted more drifts and caught some more nice 8"+ BG and a 7lb Channel cat. at 5pm with windy weather coming we decided to pack up and head to Joe Budd for the rest of the afternoon.

[SS-342]

Not a bad day of fishing after all the rain.

When you drift, do you use an in-line spinner or what?

Thanks for the good report!

[Poopong McPlop]

We drift with poles away from the boat as far as possible. 12ft+ poles catch more fish than 7ft rods. We try to get at least 2-4 unmanned poles out the sides all but one with live bait. One rod always has a jig or lure of some kind tipped with a worm or minnow. With those poles out we cast or bream bust around the area while we drift through the hot spot. We generally only do this in reservoirs during the middle of the day because of the immense amount of water and suspended fish. Shellcrackers at Talquin seem to always be scattered, and the blue gill schools seem to slowly, but constantly move around midday.