I finally made it to Guntersville at 11am this morning for my first day of a month long stay. I launched at Comer bridge at noon and noticed immediately that the water was way low compared to what I'm used to. I'm still breaking my new Merc in so I decided to just ease down lake and check a few places as I went. The first place I came to was a spot I found in the Arig coming out tournament that Paul Elias won. I never caught a fish there in that tournament but I lost 2 big ones. I started out with a jig and caught a 2lber on my 2nd cast. A few minutes later I bowed up on one and thought for a second it was what I'd come for. After about a three minute fight, a 15lb drum rolled out from under my boat. I hit a little sweet spot in the area and caught a 3lb largemouth and then missed bites on two consecutive casts. My next cast it felt like a lightning bolt hit my rod and I pulled back on something big! I realized pretty quickly it wasn't a bass and five minutes later I pulled a 25lb flat head over the side of my Triton! I got several more bites that I missed and eventually caught a couple more 2.5lb largemouth. I'm hoping that since there's grown ups of every other species hangin out there that I'll luck up and pop a grown largemouth there in the BFL.
I hit my next little offshore spot that was slammed full of 4lbers in 2011 and after 30 minutes of hauling water I finally side imaged it only to find it void of any life whatsoever. That was a big let down because last year I could catch 16-20lbs off of it in no time.
I decided to try some old grass lines that have been good to me in the past with a redeye shad and that proved to be a waste of time as well. The hydrilla was thick but clumped up and I tend to do better on these places when there's a well defined grass line.
Next I broke down and hit a bank with the Arig and quickly caught a short and a 2.5lber but then went 500 yards without a bite.
Finally, I ran to the back of a creek and caught two 4lbers on a Redeye shad in Chili Craw but they were scattered and I picked up another small keeper on a jig under the only bridge that wasn't under siege by Arig chunkers!
I ended up with 7 keepers and around 15lbs in a half day of fishing with my motorguide wide open. I may be able to slow down in some of those areas and get a few more bites but for now, I'm lookin for the mother lode and I didn't find it today. I've had worse days on Guntersville, but I hit some really good stuff today that I had high hopes for and it wasn't happenin. The water is 51-58 degrees and I seem to do better in the 43-48 degree range on the deeper stuff I like to fish. I was amazed at how few boats, yes I said few, were fishing the "old" type stuff we usually fish down here. Everyone was on a bank or a bridge chunkin the Arig and I basically had the entire main lake to myself, unfortunately there didn't seem to be any biggun's hangin around out there with me, at least where I fished today. As I idled under the North Sauty bridge I saw a guy dropping a chunky 3lber in his cooler that had just fallen victim to his Arig. I really hope those bridge fish wise up to that thing before the meat hunters get too many of 'em. As usual, I will go down with a zero before I battle for position around one of the bridges, causeways or riprap banks that I know the BFL will be won off of this weekend. That's probably not very smart but I just can't make myself get in there and bump boats with everybody on the community holes. I'm not sayin I'm not gonna throw the Arig but if I catch 'em on it its not gonna be in a crowd. I have four more days to find something so we'll see what happens.
No comments:
Post a Comment