Dam 5/20-23

[Alex Heitman]

Fishing has been tough for me the last few days. Wednesday and Thursday were better on ned. Seemed to switch and could not get bit in bottom much but did manage a few LM over 5 and some nice 3+ tank SM. Floating worm was fun up by bank and in the junk. Had lots of chasers and hooked up with some. Lots of big ones up there that came out and missed more than I could count. Yesterday and today bottom bite was done. Tried deep and shallow with Ned shakey and also swimbait. Got lucky and found them boiling off a point with whites on top water but that was all the fun for today. Couldn’t get them figured out. Nephews caught some fish which was nice and dad took big fish of the trip. 

[Alex Heitman]

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[m&m]

Alex, nice set of pictures. 
 

Mike

[Quillback]

Great fish, congrats!

[Terrierman]

Way to go Dad!

[dtrs5kprs]

Chunks.

[vernon]

I guess "tough" is all in the eye of the beholder........

Sounds like a dream day to losers like me!

[Alex Heitman]

14 minutes ago, vernon said:

I guess "tough" is all in the eye of the beholder........

Sounds like a dream day to losers like me!

Well Vernon I should say tough when compared to how fishing has been for us for the last month. Yesterday and Friday we only caught a handful of fish a piece. When the Ned bite was crazy we were getting 50+ a day. We were spoiled for sure. Like Dave likes to say the smallmouth have had stupid syndrome for a while haha

[vernon]

6 minutes ago, Alex Heitman said:

Well Vernon I should say tough when compared to how fishing has been for us for the last month. Yesterday and Friday we only caught a handful of fish a piece. When the Ned bite was crazy we were getting 50+ a day. We were spoiled for sure. Like Dave likes to say the smallmouth have had stupid syndrome for a while haha

I think somebody must have soaked our stuff overnight in gasoline when we were there last week.  

We only caught more than 15 total a couple of days and despite Dave's generous efforts to try and help us out we had one of our worst week's ever!

And we never saw a single fish swirl or bust the surface either which is just about unbelievable.

Heck, I bet it's been at least five years since we've found any whites surfacing and we used to get into them two or three times a day too.

An ol' buddy of mine used to always tell me that if I looked up born loser in the dictionary that there'd be a picture of me right there!

Of course I WAS pretty preoccupied what with my weather work and all..........

[Bill Babler]

There are several thoughts on catching chasing or busting fish.  There are locations on the Rock that year after year hold them.  There are also locations that you see them once and then never again.  And, even some of the old standby's don't produce.

Best if your just fishing an area and see them blow and hop right over there.  Some of the guides, myself included will start at day break and just run until we find them.  I'm sure I'm running past locations that they will break sometime during the morning, but I'm also looking for fish that are active and currently feeding.

Example the other day I launched at Mill Creek, at Kinberling City and found them breaking off the swim beach at Campbell point.  Phil Stone launched and caught them breaking off a flat past the Baxter area after launching at Mill Creek, also KC.  Another day I found them just going nuts off the runnout at Point 16 after launching at Cow Creek, so at times we play for pay guys are keeping the hammer down till we see them.

I'm pretty confident now till mid-June i can find them most any morning surfacing if I will just put in the time looking.  That might mean running 25 miles in a single direction.  That's 30 minutes of no catching, but once you find them chasing this time of the year you can have 2 hours of solid action both on top and then on a swim bait or a bottom bait.

Oh, you can also pull a No Seeum and think OOP's I goofed.  Naw that never happens.  "RIGHT"

Good Luck