Weather: Incredible - mid-50's to start, rising to mid/upper 70's, mostly sunny to sunny, no wind most of the day except noon - 3 when it was 5-10 from SW
Water: 52-55, visibility ranged from a few feet to maybe a foot
Techniques: Gizzard Buffet - three freeline gizzards on the bank-side - one big boy, 12-14", one large 10-12" and a moneymaker and then 2 boards on the deep side - one being a light-line; 6-8" gizzards on freelines (2), 6-7" gizzards on downlines (2), and 8-10" gizzard on a float out back
Time Fished: 7ish-5ish
Bait catching started off a bit easy on Friday afternoon when Chad stopped by and dropped off about 25 money-makers as he had more than he needed thanks to Travis passing along his left-over bait to Chad, and then Chad nailing 35 money-makers in the net when stopped for gas.
I headed out late afternoon and headed to a creek looking for some big bait to go with the money makers.... found the bait..... deep - 20'-30'. Managed to get another 30 baits with a few well placed throws but most of them were also money-maker size. I passed a dozen or so over to some guys that were up from NC for the weekend and had been back in there throwing for quite a while as well.
Got a text from Chad that the birds were working not far away in the main channel so I headed out to see if I could get in on the action - found the birds, saw some rolls, marked some fish but could to hook-up even though I watched several fish caught around me. As I started to head down to another bait hole I stopped to watch Chad land dinner.
Headed down lake to another creek that had been holding some bigger bait last weekend - stopped by our buddy Gary's on the way to return a previous favor and drop off a few baits and I was treated to a beautiful sunset over the lake....
Pulled into the creek as it was getting dark.... the bait was further out in the creek from where it had been, but there was plenty of it.
And yep - it was the big baits I was looking for. I loaded a dozen or so of these in the tank and then headed to Tyler's tank to offload some for use later
Had invited Khris, KB on here, team Night Krawler in the tourneys, to jump on for the day and I picked him up at 7. Decided to head the opposite direction of where the fish were holding on Friday evening - and we had lines in the water before 7:30.
It wasn't too long into the morning before we had our 1st fish to the boat..... nothing big, and one that would be familiar for the day, but it was a fish to send the skunk packing.... Khris wouldn't take the rod so I bought it in...
But that was ok - we moved over to another part of the creek and after a dry spell we finally got Khris on a fish. Another in the 6-7 lb range - I think this one was 27" or so
We moved on to another creek , pulling the back 1/2 of of it fairly quickly. Came over a point that has had a fish on it this time each year - at first I thought he was not home, but as I went to turn the boat to pull back out the board shot back, but it must have short-striked as we didn't hook-up.
Moved on to our next creek..... again with on missed connection..... this time on a downline. I happened to see the sonar just as the fish was coming up and told Khris we were about to get bit.... sure enough the down-rod started bobbing and bent over a couple of times but the 1/0 circle hook was probably a little too small for the 6" gizzard, or the fish just never got a full mouthful. Oh well - at least we found fish and got them to try to eat.....
After a loop around the creek with no more action we moved on up the lake around mid-day towards where those fish had been on Friday evening. Guess they had been there this morning as there were 6 or so boats in the area. We stopped to talk a bit with my buddy Gary and found those gizzards I'd dropped off the evening before had caught a fish or two.... they had gotten 5 to the boat working that area in the morning, but said the bite had died off. We were marking a good number of fish around as we talked with him, but I wasn't feeling it so I moved further on up the lake and started pulling some points and flats on the main channel. Pulled quite a way without any action - I think we did miss one somewhere in that stretch. It was getting hot - I mean it's December and 77 degrees..... I don't guess I'll complain but would have preferred not to be sweating.
Turned the corner and started to pull another main channel bank - finally picking up another even though the water had more color than I would have liked...
We kept on keeping on pulling as the color improved and when we turned the next corner we found some..... made 4 or 5 passes through that stretch and either missed one or more or picked up a fish on each pass.... along with our biggest of the day at 31"
We'd fished ourselves out of big bait, and were down to a handful of money-makers, so around 3pm I decided to run to one of the creeks I'd caught bait in the night before to try and get another half-dozen or so big baits real quick and finish up the day.
Mission accomplished!
Reloaded with big baits, and with about an hour of daylight left, I decided to just stay close and pull out of the creek towards the channel. We picked up another three fish I think - along with some more misses...... By that point we had caught fish on free-line planers, light-line planers, and a light-line - the only thing that hadn't produced was the downline (though we'd missed one earlier) and the float. We were puling over a lot of fish at 20-30', so I was surprised the downlines hadn't picked up a fish yet.... we were talking about it and just about then we saw a fish coming up on the graph.... downline started bobbing - I fed it a bit more line, felt the fish smacking the bait, fed it a bit more and then loaded up the rod - fish on!
We pulled on out almost to the channel mouth - picking up one more fish to end the day at an even 10 to the boat...... 2 that came unbuttoned on the way to the boat and probably 7 or 8 that short-striked and missed the hook-ups. No big fish but those 7-8 lbers fight like little bull-dogs especially in the cooler water - making it for a very fun day.
Dropped off Khris as dark set in..... Great to have you on today! Dawn to Dusk fishing in December in 70+ degrees - heck ya!