Lessons learned from CFF3

[polo-dog]

Northrivergeek and I fished today in the tournament and I spoke with some of the guys/gals before, during, and after the tournament, and this is what I gleaned from my experience. First, a thanks to NRG, even though we had motor trouble and wind trouble, I had a great time fishing with you and plan to do it again sometime. I also learned some about how you think and fish and succeed and plan to incorporate some of your strategy into my thinking on bass in the future. We started out the day in one of the creeks not too far from the put in area. Most of the boats looked like they went to Crow creek, we did not. When we got into the creek, our plan was to fish the flats adjacent to the channel where stump fields showed on the maps. We saw many really big bass blow up on bait there and was really encouraged that we were to have a great day. We didn't catch fish along the drop but the fish seemed to be scattered and over the channel rather than on the flat. We ventured onto the flat where there we could see some grass but didn't get a bite. It seemed to me that most of the activity was close to thick grass that you could see on top but not in it. We decided to continue to near the back of the creek and saw lots of bait over very shallow flats but no bait being hit. We decided to go to the main lake and had engine trouble over the 7-8 ft flat near the back of the creek and while NRG sprayed the carberator I fished a crank bait that just bounced off the bottom. I caught a good hybrid and then a few casts later I caught our only keeper of the day. I threw out a bouy and we cast through the area but got no more bites. We then hit some other banks in the creek, fished on the main lake and caught a big drum on a "nothing" river bank.
We spoke with the winners of the tournament not long before the end of the tournament and they said that they had 2 keepers and that things were slow. We went to eat with Jmax and CCSM after the tournament and they thought that if they had fished the area that they finished in earlier that they would have had a very good chance of winning as they were on lots of aggressive fish near thick shallow grass that had a lot of litter on top.
I think that we should have either stayed with the aggressive fish near the matted grass or spent a little more time finding a sweet spot on the 7-8 foot flat that we caught our fish on. Or found some shallow areas that had thick grass and fished that. We didn't have the chance to check things out because of our motor troubles otherwise I think that we would have gone to the area that Jmax/CCSM had fished and we could have been victorious on thier fish. We saw the winners head up river and when they weighed in the three spots it made me wonder whether or not there was current at the outflow of the steam plant which kept the spotted bass there active as I figured that becuase TVA had shut off the flow until 5pm, 2hrs after the tournament ended, a spotted bass, main lake current strategy would fail. I was wrong at least about the spots but am curious about where those spotted bass came from unless there was current.
I learned :1.Stay with active bass as long as possible and figure out what they want.
2. Mid depth flats can hold prespawn bass but they may just be following bait balls with Hybrids so you may not be able to stay on them.
3. Shallow grass, matted on top, in the spring could be the key to finding prespawn bass at the big G.
4. A spotted bass strategy is a great backup strategy if you know where to find them even if the water isn't moving.

Sorry so long. Please, if anyone else learned something from the day, share it and if you disagree with what I thought, please to so but tell me why. I'm still trying to figure out this bass fishing game.

 

[jon the fisherman]

PD, I think you summed it up well. I believe that I should of concentrated on the breaks in the back of the creeks. I stayed at the deeper sections of the creeks. The weeds threw me off as well. I fished the weed lines in 12' of water,and I should have concentrated on the shallower ones. It is good to discuss this, so we can all do better next time

 

[Skeeter]

Lessons learned from CFF3...Hmmm... Well i would have to say the lesson i learned was if i spend all my gas running on Guntersville then i wont have none to prefish Chickamauga for next weeks torunament. Although we had a good day with alot of fish we just couludnt get the size we needed. I think we fished every knook and cranny between Goose Pond and Widows Creek. But its all good, aint nothing like running 73mi. wide open just to find out that you can emoCool . And to all of you emoToast

 

[NRG]

Skeeter175 - 3/12/2006 8:12 AM Lessons learned from CFF3...Hmmm... Well i would have to say the lesson i learned was if i spend all my gas running on Guntersville then i wont have none to prefish Chickamauga for next weeks torunament. Although we had a good day with alot of fish we just couludnt get the size we needed. I think we fished every knook and cranny between Goose Pond and Widows Creek. But its all good, aint nothing like running 73mi. wide open just to find out that you can emoCool . And to all of you emoToast

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Just be happy you could go over 5 mph

 The other lesson I learned .. stick to what I know .. like fishing main river first .. get a limit of keepers , then move on to the lookin for the kicker. I the grass beds of got me discombobulated and hated all the mudddy water.. should have just fished the river.  Next time ..  Im gonna prefish a lake I dont know .. hard not knowing anything but waht the map tells ya.</p>

 

[Bprice]

I learned that power fishing isn't the only way to fish ALL the time, like I tend to do. We caught a good bit of smaller fish on rat-l-traps, and larger ones where probably located with the smaller ones, but were not as highly aggressive to hit a rat-l-trap. Maybe I should of turned over to a senko, or a finesse worm... I thought about doing that in mid-morning...but with the wind I always have a hard time with plastics.

I also learned not to depend on two year old trolling motor batteriesemoBang ... I lost my complete charge after 5 hours, and was limited too fishing what I was able too, not what I wanted.

I am glad that Flip caught his winners up at the Steam Plant... my partner and I had discussed fishing the area, maybe long island creek, but the lack of battery power denied us that option. Just glad there was fish up there biting!

I feel like all was not lost for me...
1. I caught bass (just not keepers, but i guess thats the point) in an area that I have never fished. For a young buck like myself, I am pleased with that... might not be much to everyone, but to me it is.
2. I established a pattern early that caught fish (of course just not big ones emoLaugh )
3. Found that several of my patterns where close to what others where using and catching fish with.
4. Met an excellent group of men and women, who know how to treat their fellow brothers and sisters!

 

[flip1up]

Although it worked out o.k. for us we know that we got very lucky on a off day at that lake. Really we should have stayed in the area of Crow that we caught the the 2 largemouth in. Jmax was in sight and sounds like he was around fish, ashtray and his dad Allen were also in sight and had caught 15 pounds ( I talked to him today at the river park), so there were good fish in our areas, but slow to hit. I think that we could have beat the middle of Crow all day and got 5 pretty good ones. But I wanted to get to a place where I had caught some good uns the week before, but we found that area almost high and dry with only small fish biting. That took alot of valuable time to get in there and it was wasted. We couldnt get bit in Crow after coming back down creek. Come to find out, some good fish were caught on chrome traps, with the overcast I never even considered trying one. Like I said the spots were out of desperation, but we would not have won without them.

 

[CouchTater]

HOOKSET< HOOKSET<HOOKSET!!!!! I will come back to that one...emoBang

Anyway, I had a pretty good idea of where me and Rob would fish today, but they just didn't cooperate with us. Got to the first spot and saw shad going nuts everywere. I told Rob..."I'm going top-water" First cast with a Spit'n Image got me a short fish, but not another taker after that with top-water. My next fish came off a spinnerbait.

I really need a bigger boat, the lack thereof kept me from going to several spots that I wanted to...emoBang

Now, back to the hookset thing...I lost a really good fish about 10ft from the boat. I dont want to guess at the size, but the boil it left told me it was BIG.

 

[NRG]

what the heck happened there

 did a quote and it posted that jumbled mess

 

[DHaun]

Must be a glitch in the software NRG....Careful with that, might bring down the whole forum with all that alphabet soup...

 

[NRG]

DHaun - 3/12/2006 9:57 PM Must be a glitch in the software NRG....Careful with that, might bring down the whole forum with all that alphabet soup...

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I tried to do it over .. I replied to serval b4 and after that post DHaun,.. most have been something in taters post. The rest where fine.</p>

 

[flip1up]

NRG, looks like Turret's Syndrome on your part, at least you didnt do alot of cussing.

 

[fisherpal2k]

Sounds like everyone had a good time and even learned some from each other as well as themselves. Sorry to hear about the guys motor and battery troubles, been there and done that myself. It's just not a good feeling when all else is going on especially the wind

 

[ChooChooSnakeMan]

Lesson learned from CFF3,

I thought about trying to find a quick limit of spots, but didn't know enough about the G to know where to look. In hindsight, I think that if Jmax and I had got to our last spot earlier, we would have caught some quality fish shallow on buzz baits, sluggos, and such. I was somewhat amazed that there was fish that shallow in that cove after the water went down overnight. I also think that we could have done better by concentrating on the creek channel and first dropoffs in Crow early before the wind got up, instead of spending so much time shallow. Like I said in another post, I believe that the fish were up on the flats in Crow, but the water drop pulled them back to the creek channel. If we would have stayed right on the drop and fished the channel around with traps and finsesse worms I think we would have had a good chance of getting a limit, but of course this is all couldave, mightave, shouldave been and I might be dead wrong. We also noticed that we caught several fish very tight on wood cover. I wonder if laydowns on the main river might have yielded some good fish. Anyway, any time spent fishing is time well spent as far as I'm concerned and I feel blessed to have the health and wealth to be able to enjoy God's wonderful creation.

Be Safe on the Water!