The weather this week was somewhat strange. Lot's of wind and some showers Sunday. Monday was cool with wind and rain. Tuesday was just downright cold and nasty. Winter seemed to spit out one more day before finally laying down for warmer weather. Today's forecast looked cool but favorable. I knew the water would be up from the rains, but wondered if it got cold enough to shut the fish down for the day. Only on one way to find out right?
Took the day off and picked Dan up after dropping the kids off at school. I love pulling through the school parking lot with my boat hooked up and all those other Dads peering through their car windows, dressed for work, looking at me as if to say, "Can I go too!?!" But then again, there are a lot of days when I'm that guy.
We decided to head south to Linton today. This was my first time putting in here. We arrived to the last of the haze burning off the water and slick calm conditions. Temps were in the mid 50's but the water temp was 65. Good, only about a 5 degree drop from last week. I got a small fish on the first cast of the day on a gold red eye shad. And that was it for that spot. We moved and started flippin' and pitchin' bushes. I got to break in my new Fenwick Flippin' Stick and Quantum Code Red today. Now, this is about the third time I've been flippin' and pitchin' so my technique left much to be desired. I just didn't do that a lot on the Flats in Appalachee Bay. I'm determined to get it down though. I'm not scared to be bad at something as long as I know I have the opportunity to improve. Dan started picking up a few fish and put his first keeper of the year in the boat. Even though I fumbled around like a 14 year old trying to learn to drive a stick shift and parallel park at the same time, I did manage to put one fish in the boat before we moved on to another area.
Most of the water we fished today was 2 ft or shallower. The sun came out and really warmed things up fast. The water temp jumped up 4 degrees to 69 and we were seeing shad start to work on the surface. We started making our way into pockets pitchin' bushes, crankin' points and throwing spinner baits through the flowers. Dan started talking about somethin' he was calling a "do-nothin." Didn't sound like much to me so I just kept working my spinner bait and pitchin' my tube. Dan started catching fish in places I had just thrown. I would get a bump or hit and he would put the same fish in the boat every time. We pulled up to what would prove to be the pattern for the day and I knew there were fish on it. I'd seen em hittin' shad and fry jumping the whole time we were fishing up to it. Isolated bushes in the corner of a pocket with a creek channel or wash out. That was the ticket. After Dan put the third fish in the boat at that spot I couldn't take it anymore. I tied a weighted stick bait hook on and Dan was kind enough to let me have a "do-nothin." It was game on then. We worked past that same spot twice. On both passes we put 5 fish in the boat each. The first pass Dan caught a 3 pounder. On the second pass Dan wrapped his worm around a branch on a bush. While he tried to get it off I threw in the same bush and pulled two small buck bass off of it. He was wrapped up pretty good so I eased the boat up to it with the trolling motor. Now this was in a foot and a half of water right in the middle of our hot spot. We figured that would be the end of the streak. I eased up as quietly as I could and Dan freed his bait. I backed the boat off the spot and Dan said that we better go hit another pocket now. I decided to throw one more time in the same spot where we just had the boat. Hello mama!
4 pounder in the boat and big fish for the day.
Neither one of us could believe that I caught that fish in the very same spot that we had just run over with the trolling motor. But I'm glad I did. This was getting fun now.
We continued to fish our newly found pattern and it worked with what time we had left on the lake today. After I tied on my do-nothin I didn't throw anything else all day. I'll be picking some up from the "sto" real soon. We were off the lake at 2:30 and probably had at least 30 fish in the boat today with 4 keepers. That's an improvement and just enough motivation to make me want to hit it again as soon as I can!
