March 11th. 2015 Shell Knob Table Rock Lake Fishing Report

Think they are calling for perhaps light showers on Saturday morning, but clearing and becoming a beautiful day. Good to hear it.

I did manage a trip with probably one of the best fishermen and gentlemen that I have the pleasure to take. Jack Swank from Iowa. Jack is pretty much a kindred spirit and just an excellent fisherman.

After reading and watching pretty close to the weekend addition of the CPA, and a quick chat with good buddy Tim Sainato, I thought I had it figured pretty close. Regardless of the lake area and I'm saying that starting at Campbell Point as that is where you really start getting into any type of a deep fish pattern, Jack and I sat out to try and duplicate what the top finishers in the CPA had done. That is if I could figure it out in that area, rather than where they had fished.

I did.

Boy it is really hard to force yourself to fish like this, and to be as methodical as you have to be to fish like this. You need to be extremely astute on reading your electronics and have the patients to be able to not go crazy with losing baits and hanging up.

Here is the deal, swimming a grub deep and fishing vertical to suspended fish in pole timber with a smattering of cedars. A jungle nightmare. Tree tops coming up to the 25 ft. range, so you had to avoid hanging up and it is impossible. It is just how much gear are you willing to lose for the huge rewards that are there.

Boat pretty much in 50' to 60' with fish suspended in the 50' to 30' range in that standing pole timber. Most often it is related to channel swings and huge creek or spawning cove mouths.

Tim told me exactly where he had caught 27 keepers on Saturday, during the derby, but I never got near it, we fished 40 lake miles up the White River.

We used for the swimming a Keitech Swing Impact 3.5 inch Black Shad on a 1/4 oz ball jig head with a 2/0 hook. We also used a Rapala Ice Jig in 1/2 oz for those up and downers

Some days you just pick and guess right. Yes you are gong to say I had a lot on current information going in and when you read this you will have also if you can figure it out, and are willing to pay the price.

We had a 14 on our first location and continued to catch fish all morning. I believe we finished with 38 fish with 25 very solid keeps. Some nice K's at 18 plus inches. We also had 3 LM and did have the best LM on a stickbait.

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Surface temp never moved on us from 41 degree's. As I mentioned at the start the bite is extremely hard to detect when fishing timber, cause it is absolutely no different that running the grub over a limb or hanging it up. It will for sure teach you not to set the hook. You do 6 out of 10 times and that bait is gone. The fish just ride the bait or you more often lose it, while your winding. Just continue to wind and when you feel the fish lift up, don't go crazy on the set.

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Closest to the bank for us today was a nice 150 yrd. rifle shot. Denny and I had kind of power fished up the White the day before and had not done well, I had to make a change and it worked. Not for giant LM, but for sure tournament fish, averaging 3 to 3.5 pounds. Just needed that 6 pound kicker on the stickier to have been a toad sack.

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Not the type someone will need on Saturday, but for sure some of the best fishing I have had this Winter.