Lesson Learned

[top_dollar]

                 For the better part of a decade I talked about hiring Buster Loving to teach me how to catch walleye on upper bull.  Now that he is gone, I really regret talking about it for so long and never actually doing it.  Now, when I want to do something, I am just going to do it and not be all talk.  I really regret not going with him just once, and I don't know of any other guides who fish that way.  

                Anyway, I finally pulled the trigger and came down.  Its the first time I had ever been on bull shoals.  My brother and I stayed in Forsyth and fished out of K Dock Saturday and Sunday.  The water temp was 38-39 on Saturday, and 38 warming to 42 on Sunday.  I could see the bottom in probably 6 FOW.  We threw jerkbaits and swimbaits up on the mud flats.  Saturday between the 2 of us we caught 5 bass and 1 walleye all on a jerkbait.  My brother did better than me throwing his jerkbait on a spinning rod with 6# while I was using casting gear with 10# line.    Sunday we did the same thing and didn't get a bite all day long.   We never left sight of K dock ramp, but the flats we found dropped off into the channel at about 10-15 FOW, so I think the spinning rod was getting that bait a bit deeper.  Buster's seminar said to target 6FOW dropping into 35, but we never found it, so we just made due with what we could find. 

               Saturday there was only other boat out all day, but Sunday there were multiple rigs in the lot.  A few guys were out on the drop offs, but most seemed to be way out in the channel fishing for deep stuff.  I'm sure they all had way better electronics and know how to locate and catch those fish better.  I just found the creek channels with a 5 inch 2D sonar, a paper hot spot map and marker buoys.  I put 1 buoy in 10FOW, and the other in 25-35 FOW and casted from one to the other.  I'm sure there are way more efficient ways to catch them with better electronics, but unfortunately for us we fish like its 1980.  We graphed lots of stuff in the channel, and I tried to drop a spoon on them, but couldn't get any bites.  I cant tell the difference between species and such though on the graph, but nothing rose up to even look at my spoon, so maybe they weren't game fish.  It was tough fishing for 2 days, but I wasn't expecting much so I kind of feel like the trip was a success.  I'm already planning for next winter, and will get better each time I go.

               We also fished a bit on Taney for trout, @Big Keene posted about what we did there.