spuds704
Well-known member
I got out Saturday the 18th to play with my new Huminbird 998c. It was crowded on the Nick with the tx, so I put in at South Pittsburg and fished the mouth of Battle creek and the points of Long Island and Burns Is. I picked up a few small white bass but nothing else and decided to run up to the dam. I got there about 2 o'clock and just as I came into the slack water a guy on the bank across from the boat ramp pulled out about a 4 lb. bass and put it on a stringer with 4 or 5 other bass. There were around 8 people fishing there and most of them were fishing with soft plastics, so I started throwing a shaky head worm. A few minutes later the same guy hooks a big bass, at least 6lb. but he lost it near the bank. I got one strike and when I did a sweep to set the hook the rod just stopped and I broke off, it had to be a toad. Then they turned off and no one caught anything for a while and the people on the bank started to leave. Three of them had stringers of bass and the guy I saw miss the big one had a stringer with about 6 fish on it and none of them were less than 3 lb. I worked my way down to the end of the wall and thought I might pick up a spot or large mouth, but didn't. While I was there another guy came to the end of the gravel and we started talking. He asked me what the limit on small mouth was and I told him it was one, 18 inches or longer and he said he hoped those people leaving with the big stringers would get caught. He said they had been carrying sm out of there like that for almost two weeks. I asked him if all those fish were small mouth and he said yes, every one that he saw was a sm. He told me he fished there almost every evening and he started to catch sm there on April 7 when he caught two around 2 lb, but since then, some nights he would catch 8 or 10 and he had caught 4 over 6 lb. With the rain we had yesterday, I thought I would go over and do a little bank fishing and ran into the fellow I had talked to there Sat. We fished for about three hrs. and he lost the only fish that we could hook up on, it came up and did some acrobatics and got off, looked around 4 or so. I left about dark and went back this morning about seven. I caught 2 sm, 1 1/2 and a 2 and a nice 3 lb. spot. So I guess the pre spawn bite is about over, been nice to have gotten in on it earlier, I just hope those a holes left some of the brood stock there, makes me sick to see that happen. That's the same bunch that leaves their garbage all over the place and ruts up the access on unpaved roads with their big 4x4 trucks so a regular truck can't get into off road fishing. I have to leave a plug for Johnny at DJ's Marine and Electronics, he gave me a great deal on my new Humminbird, thanks Johnny.
