Saturday, 4-11-14

[96 CHAMP]

I was in fishing the shell knob area this weekend and was in back of some pockets and didn;t notice the people as much, caught i dandy on a jig saturday evening and some nice fish on a shakey head,caught some realy nice fish in mill creek sunday using a swing jig for the first time, found them off a point near a spawning flat, found them in there spawning last year and decided to take a look and it paid off. Right place right time no matter what you use is a blast, I was impressed how effective that bait can be, was using a biffle bug, Went back Sunday morning at daylight and had 3 keeps and the front came in and the wind and that was it, found another bunch up toward big creek later but the wind was causing me much problems, took the 4 hour drive home and probably come back next weekend and no I have yet to throw that darn ned rig.

[Longball22]

I'm sure that FLW college tournament didn't help the traffic. I was in Kimberling City, and went to watch part of the weigh in. 70-80 boats, and 16-2 won it. Lots of 2-3 fish bags, and no big fish to speak of(of the 30ish teams I watched weigh). Most guys talked about throwing wiggle warts or jigs, and it sounds like most of them went up the river arms.

I got out for a few hours on Saturday, caught 8 fish on a 3.3 Keitech and a Rock Crawler. Best part of the day was with my dad, and I had the boat in 12-14 foot of water, and he caught two with the rock crawler on the bank while i pulled two out of the deeper timber throwing the Keitech out of the other side. Good way to cover water if both are working.

[sholder02]

Speaking of a rough day...

My brother and I fished Joe Bass on Saturday out of Ahoy's. Friday, we prefished between Baxter and Big Creek. We found fish throwing crankbaits, spinnerbaits, jigs, and swingjigs. We got on a good dock bite late morning/early afternoon towards the back of creeks on pea gravel. Based on the fish we were catching, I figured we'd have between 10-12 pounds on Saturday. I knew that we weren't on a winning pattern so scrapped it tournament day.

I wanted to find prespawn fish. I was hoping to find them deep over trees. Pulled up to our first spot Saturday morning and within the first 30 minutes, hooked a female full of eggs with the A-Rig. That pretty much ruined me. I glued that to my hand and we fished deep for nearly the entirety of the tournament without another keeper. Plenty of shorts...but no more keepers.

For what it's worth, there's a good dock bite skipping jigs around the front of docks towards the backs of creeks with pea gravel banks.

[Champ188]

Good to know about that dock bite, sholder. Those silly fish just do what they want regardless of what we might want them to do or think they should do. Just frustrating that others seem to figure them out with regularity on derby day. Oh well. Our day comes around every now and then. Hang in there.