June 4th, 2010 Fishing with David and Jonathan

Hit the lake today for a last minute trip with David Shutte and Jonathan. Didn't expect to catch much but you never know. David had his summer vacation cut short and called me Thursday evening to see if there was anything we could do Friday. After 1/100,000.000 of a second I answered: Lets go Fishing!

So after netting some 25 spot tailed minnows Friday morning, we ran up the lake to see what we could find. Turns out our first stop was Wahoo creek. After talking to Doug, I heard there were some fish present though they appeared to be dormant. Hoping they'd kick on at some point, I made the trip up the lake. 2 hours later we had nothing to show for the drive. The fish were small looking and after trolling, jigging and trying several presentations, we weren't able to get any of them to bite so we headed back down toward Browns Bridge. It was right after mid day when we finally started to catch the fish we came for: spotted bass.

So for the rest of the day from Gainesville Marina to Browns Bridge we fished main point markers with both spot tailed minnows and lures. We ended up hooking up at pretty much every stop with most points yielding 1-3 fish. It took the boys awhile to learn how to get the bite and keep the fish on but in the end they did okay. The final tally was about 12 spotted bass, 4 catfish and a Striper.

The Striper came off the Rivers Fork marker where I was marking a school of them for the first time this year. I knew they were small and sure enough, the one I caught was right 5 lbs. But still it was good to see some fish this far south. The catfish were huge with two over 5 lbs. I'm convinced there are a lot of guys mistaking these for Stripers as they sure looked like them on the screen. Apparently they're moving in schools because we got over what appeared to be Stripers but then we end up catching nothing but cats. Today we boated 4 from what I was seeing on the screen and they were definitely in a school so I'm convinced they can easily be mistaken for Stripers. Plus, they don't like to hit the bluebacks like the spot tails which would explain so many guys complaining about "window shoppers". I think a lot more times then anyone realizes the "shoppers" might be another species of fish.

To finish up the day we noted some fish chasing bait on the surface and Jonathan wanted to throw surface plugs at them. I wasn't expecting much but I set us up with Redfins to see. After some 15-20 casts he was discouraged but I hung in there and sure enough, "BAM", I got a beautiful spotted bass which turned out to be fish of the day. Right at 4 lbs, it took three attempts to finally get hooked and both David and Jonathan got to see him attack the lure on top as they heard the first splash and watched the event. They were blown away by how cool it is to see them exploding on top and now Jonathan want's to come out around dinner time just for the top water action!

On a side note, I was marking 82 degrees around most of the lake. No doubt the water continues to warm faster than normal and I'm pretty sure we'll be seeing Stripes southside any day now. I know some guys are catching them on the south end but they're still being free lined. For me the real action won't start till these fish are being caught via down line which should be later this month. I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure we're about to have a hot, hot summer and all indicators are showing me it will be summer season that lasts a lot longer than it did these past two years. I actually have been hearing cicada's already (actually, since June 1st) which is way early for them. Usually you don't hear them till the last week of June and to me, this is just another indicator this summer is most likely going to be long and hot. Since this will do nothing but extend our much coveted summer Striper pattern, I say 'bring it on"!