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Bill Babler
Bill Babler

White River Area Report 6-18-18

Some days its not easy and you have to put on your thinking cap and today was one of those days.  It would have been pretty easy to say there are to many people on my locations and they are just not biting, but I bowed my neck and then got lucky.

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Hit the water with Charolette and Mike this morning at 5:30 and had to wait at the launch for 20 minutes at Baxter.  Lots of fishermen does not even cover what was out there today, not even close.  From Baxter to Shell Knob there was a boat setting on every gravel runnout and then some fishing up close.

Surface temps at the start were 87 and when we finished at 11:30 they were up to 88.8 on the Lowrance.

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Started slow for us with a bit of a top water deal, but most were small whites and we gave up on them after catching several.  Looked like young males and the mess they were trying to make verified it.

I'm going to tell you all, I  could not get on anything I had been fishing.  Not a single location that I had fished in the last two weeks.  It was all covered up.  I'm going to say between Baxter and Play Port there were easy 50  bass boats and aluminum fishing boats out this morning.  Some of this stuff I have been on is hard to find, not just your regular point runnouts but some ridges and humps.  All covered.  I don't know everything and lots of people can read electronics and today for sure proved both deals.

At about 7:30 I decided my blood pressure was high enough and went to the deep trees.  Just took a breath and told the clients "Were not catching them anyway, lets go look in some knarley places and see what we will see."

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First set of deep lumber solved our problem.  As soon as I pulled in I could see them setting just above the trees at 35' suspended.  trees were in 70' to 90' way, way out off the bluffs, almost to the middle of the coves but on the edge of the White River channel.

First drop the clients got a double on the Purple Yamamoto cut tail and it was on like Donkey Kong.  Drop shot, jigging spoon or deep swimming a 3.3" Keitech in Rainbow Shad on a 1/4 oz head it did not matter, they simply snarffed it.  When you caught one a dozen would chase it to the top.  Had one fish spit up a big shad, 2 small crayfish and a purple Yamamoto worm we had lost a few minutes previous.  It was like a frenzy, as some traveling up with him gulped his stomach contents as fast as he spit them out, including the purple worm again.

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The swimbait will catch these fish, but you are risking it and the high dollar tungsten head in these trees, and its not worth it when they are on that spoon and drop shot, so I put it up and we just up and downed them.

Fished till 10 on that one set of trees and I believe at least a dozen doubles, really to much to count.

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  I told them lets look on another deep set of trees headed in and "Boom, There it is."  Again this set of trees in the same depth off a similar end was loaded.  They are easy to see and I should have taken a screen shot and didn't.  I will on Wednesday if I remember.

Kind of learned a lesson this morning, as I was becoming frustrated big time with the fishing traffic and pressure.  I don't own the lake and it is Summer play time, but work time for me and work time is thinking time.  I know they smelled my brain bubbling trying to figure it out.

I got really lucky and did.

 

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Fish farther down the White definitely moved around yesterday. Same today. And traffic was a bear either direction of Mill Creek.

If the bait moves, they move. Becomes pretty obvious, pretty quickly.

Our best deal was still the swing head, but we did catch some vertical fish. Much shallower though.

Wind didn't help us line things up.

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8 hours ago, dtrs5kprs said:

Fish farther down the White definitely moved around yesterday. Same today. And traffic was a bear either direction of Mill Creek.

If the bait moves, they move. Becomes pretty obvious, pretty quickly.

Our best deal was still the swing head, but we did catch some vertical fish. Much shallower though.

Wind didn't help us line things up.

You don't have one of those electronic fish noise maker things that brings the bait to you?  

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Great report Mr. Babler. I have a question. I have never used a drop shot as a suspending bait. I have always let the weight settle to the bottom. You are using it in 60 fow and measuring out 25 ft of line i assume. And fishing it vertically? I have a cheap graph and no line counter or anything like that. So find em in the deep trees, pull out a ft of line to get to the right depth? Thanks for the info you are willing to give us Bill. 

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4 hours ago, Smithvillesteve said:

Great report Mr. Babler. I have a question. I have never used a drop shot as a suspending bait. I have always let the weight settle to the bottom. You are using it in 60 fow and measuring out 25 ft of line i assume. And fishing it vertically? I have a cheap graph and no line counter or anything like that. So find em in the deep trees, pull out a ft of line to get to the right depth? Thanks for the info you are willing to give us Bill. 

Use a black magic marker and mark your line at the reel when the bait is at the tip. Let line out until the mark is at the tip and mark again at the reel. And so on and so on until you have 10 marks. Then as you let the bait down to the fish, count the marks. Assuming you know the length of your rod and can multiply small numbers in your head (which I am sure you can) you have a system to know how deep your rig is even when your sonar won't tell you.

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I pretty much watch my line, bait and weight go down on the Lowrance, to the fish I am looking at before dropping. You really need good electronics to fish deep trees.  You can get away with bottom fishing at depth on gravel without underwater eyes, but you need to see what your doing when you put trees and suspended fish into the equation.

First off you need to be able to tell if there are fish where your fishing.  Bobby had a great post the other day from the dam area saying how may places he looked before he saw them and could drop.  On deep suspended fish if you can't see them, they are not there.  On gravel or on the bottom even with Chirp a lot of times if they are tucked down tight they are really hard to see but you can drop without worrying about losing your rig and having to retie constantly.  Trees love to gobble a drop shot.

A really good way to measure line is usually after placing your DS in the water is to open your bail and do 2 quick rod lifts pointing your tip to 12 o'clock  With a 6'6" or 7' rod, that will be 20' to 25' of depth.

There are thousands of trees and hundreds of bluff ends on the Rock.  I will tell you, they don't all hold fish, not by a long shot.  You could literally fish a hundred locations without a bite.  Good electronics prevent this type of time wasting.  You can also catch them on a certain end or out of a certain set of trees and they may never be there again.

They are transient.  That is why Elite Anglers will tell you Table Rock is a Nightmare to try and pattern of a derby.  Here today. Gone Tomorrow.

Most times they either suspend over or between the trees regardless of bottom depth, and at times they will be in the limbs.  This is not as often,  they are usually sitting on top, it really does not matter the depth, if they are going to eat they will start rising to the drop shot as soon as it starts sinking.  They may be 35' deep but you can see them start shooting up

It can and does very often work the other way.  You can drop it and as soon as it starts down they will flee into the middle of the tree and that is that.  They will run from it.  Jigs up, deals over, time to move on.

The last couple of days we had some suspended at 25' to 35' and some also shooting off the bottom at 60' so they are pretty much all over the water column when you find them.  We were also watching them as we released them and most of the time they would swim right to the bottom in  anywhere from 45' to 70' after being released.  They very, very seldom go back into the school or go into the tree, they head for the bottom.

There are still shallow fish but not as many. 22' to 26' range seems really popular weather it be  suspended or on the bottom.  If your going to fish the Rock or any of the White River Impoundments where fish use depth for cover and climate control and try and be consistent you need to have someway to peek at them.

Good Luck

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6 hours ago, Smithvillesteve said:

Great report Mr. Babler. I have a question. I have never used a drop shot as a suspending bait. I have always let the weight settle to the bottom. You are using it in 60 fow and measuring out 25 ft of line i assume. And fishing it vertically? I have a cheap graph and no line counter or anything like that. So find em in the deep trees, pull out a ft of line to get to the right depth? Thanks for the info you are willing to give us Bill. 

a 5500 gracia is a built in line counter.  with a normal spool of 14 lb. test, when the level wind goes from one side to the other, it is 7 ft. of line, right on the money.  with smaller line, it it makes one trip more line, but you can let out one trip and measure it.  you always know just exactly how deep you are for vertical fishing.

bo

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Couple of things here. If your DSing a level wind Bo has a great methods.  Most of us however DS a spinning reel. On marking the line, can work but the first couple of times you catch in the trees. “and you will.” Your marks are impossibly out of line. At times for clients I will do only one mark at the correct depth and I determine it by dropping it and watching it till I see I’m in the correct location. Then Mark

Good Luck without subsurface lookie-loos 

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