My first week of guiding was the week following the Rayovac and Triton Owner's Tournament in which 600 boats had brought in an astounding amount of fish in both numbers and weight. I was a little concerned that the 600 boat beat down would have the ledge bass in a funk and they might be a little tougher to catch than normal. I was way off with my thinking as we absolutely smoked 'em everyday that week as we averaged about 100 bass a trip with our best 5 weighing in the mid 20's.
It looked like I was going to breeze through June with 100 fish days and 20+ lb stringers on every trip but when I hit the water the following week the water had risen a couple feet, muddied up and the current was rolling. Just out of coincidence I started that week in the Big Sandy River. The water was high but clear as the influx of muddy water was from rain further up the system as opposed to local precipitation and the schools were sitting right where they were supposed to be in the Sandy. After our first six stops that morning we had 25 fish and about 19lbs. It was shaping up to be another awesome day but when I hit the main lake I noticed something odd. Not only was I not seeing any schools of bass, I wasn't seeing any form of life on my Lowrance. Fortunately this wasn't my first rodeo with high water in the summer repositioning the fish so I knew I could still find schools in the tributaries where the water remained clear and the current wasn't as strong. The bad part about this was that I had five trips that week and didn't know if those few creek schools could sustain a weeks worth of pressure. Amazingly, my first four trips that week were ridiculous and we averaged about 75 fish a day and low to mid 20's on our best 5 out of only 8 schools of fish. I only had one more trip before the weekend and I was hoping my poor 8 schools would produce one more day and the water would stabilize over the weekend and give me a few more herds of bass to work with the following week.
I met Brett and Taylor Luther at Paris Landing that morning and Taylor had bought the 50 fish guarantee trip for Brett for their wedding anniversary. We started off strong and put 6 fish in the boat on as many casts but then Brett and I both lost a fish in the school and they shut down. That particular school had been producing 40-60 bass a day for me so that kind of put the pressure on to make sure we reached our 50 bass quota. When we finished the milk run in the Big Sandy we'd only boated 9 bass with nothing over 3.5lbs. I ran through the other half my schools and we were having trouble getting them to fire and once they did we always had a couple pull off and shut them down before we could really beat 'em down. Brett and Taylor were a blast to fish with and just to get at me a little bit when Brett would hook a smaller caliber fish he would leave it in the water as long as possible and give it every opportunity to get off and several of them did! Well played Brett! The last hour of the day we had boated 32 bass and I was determined to get our quota and on my last stop we got on a roll and put 12 bass in a row in the boat but then we exhausted the school and had to call it a day with 44 bass and only 19lbs on our best 5. I was a little disappointed that my well over 50 fish and 20lbs a day streak had ended but the Luther's assured me they had a good time and that's my main concern on each and every trip. Brett told me we could've easily reached our limit if he hadn't intentionally lost several by the boat and I didn't owe them another trip but I told him a deal was a deal and I will be spending another fun day with them here pretty soon.
I watched water conditions closely over the weekend and things were slowly getting back to normal but I still wasn't sure what was going to happen with the main river ledge schools once it did. The last time the high water repositioned the fish it was a lot later in the summer and the vast majority never returned to their early summer haunts. When I hit the lake with Brian Chandler the following week, just to be safe I started in the Sandy. Just like clockwork, every school was sitting right where they were supposed to be and eager to eat our Shadalicious swim baits. Once we reached the main river I scanned a dozen places and was a little discouraged when they were all still void of life. I knew there was no possible way I could beat on those same 8 schools for another week and show my clients the kind of fishing I wanted to show them. At about 1pm that day I scanned another main lake school "just for the heck of it" and it had a few bass on it. We caught several of them and that made me think they were trying to come back out. For the rest of the day fish were literally showing up by the hour and we absolutely hammered them over the next six hours! I don't think we quite reached 100 fish but our best 5 on my Boga Grip scale were over 27lbs and unfortunately Brian lost one that I estimated to be in the 8lb class, it was a giant!
I couldn't wait to get on the water the next morning and it didn't disappoint. There was a mega school of fish on every ledge that I've ever seen a school and they were eating like it was late May again! After experiencing some of the best fishing I've ever seen on KY Lake during and after the Rayovac, I couldn't believe it was possible that the lake was fishing even better the second week of June than then but that was definitely the case. We ended that day with well over 100 bass, close to 28lbs on our best 5 and again we lost a true giant of a bass right by the boat that would of put us in the low 30's for weight!
My last trips that week were 3 hour electronics trips. I scheduled 3 different trips that day and these trips usually consist of very little fishing, just enough to give the customer confidence in "catching them when they see them." On my first trip we fished 3 different schools and at the end of the session our best 5 weighed 22lbs. My next trip got cut short by a storm but our best 5 in that session off of 3 totally different schools weighed 24lbs! On my last trip of the day I was determined to get us on another 20lb bag for the third time that day. I spent a little more time fishing than scanning but we were only able to muster up about 18lbs on that trip.
I was more amazed each day with how good the lake was fishing and I had a Renegade team tournament with my good buddy David Gnewikow that weekend. I'd told him it would take at least 28lbs to win it but I really felt like we could catch that even though I knew it would be tougher with more boat traffic on the lake and less current flowing. The schools typically don't get set up good until the sun has been up for a while so Dave and I chose to spend the first few hours fishing shallow bars for isolated fish. Three hours into the day we had a 5.5lber and four fish right at 4lbs each. At 9am we headed to the depths to try and cull up. As expected there were boats on just about every school but when we found something open I'd look at 'em on the Lowrance and if they looked right, we'd go to work on them. With the lack of current the fish were moving around a lot and we never really got a school ignited but we did manage to cull all of our original 4lbers and weighed in 25.27lbs which was good enough for third place. It took 27 for 2nd and 30 and some change to win it which didn't surprise me at all because I knew the lake was fishing about as good as I'd ever seen it.
Kentucky Lake was absolutely off the charts in June this year. I took the last week of the month off to stay out of the FLW Tour guys way but I predicted before they got to town, several of them would break the century mark during the 4 day event. Talking with some of my buddies that were fishing it during their practice, it sounded like it may be toughening up a little bit. I went out with my dad to set his new Lowrance up the day before they started which is their off day and I noticed the fish were starting to suspend and were getting a lot tougher to catch. That kind of changed my outlook on the Tour guys breaking 100lbs but they still smoked 'em pretty good and several of them averaged well over 20lbs a day.
As soon as all of the 2015 tournament schedules are released I'll start booking trips for next June. If the lake fishes even half as good as it did this year, I can assure you, you won't be disappointed!
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