Post by sharkslayer on Oct 1, 2012 11:22:26 GMT -5
I have been trying to get down to SML for several weekends now but it just hasn't worked out. We did get to fish Claytor pretty hard though. Started out about 6 a.m. on Saturday. If you can pancake a net you can catch as many nice shad as you need at Claytor right now. Water temp where we dock the boat is 65 and the shad were everywhere. Started out looking for the stripers on the main body. About all fish were in water over 60'. Made a few passes over a school of them but no hookups. Didn't really want to do that anyway in case the fish was not a keeper. Dont want to kill them. So we went into Peak Creek and marked some in about 25'. Put out the down riggers and made a about a half mile pass through some fish but nothing. Turned around and tried it again. About half way back through we slowed down to about a drift. Almost immediately we hook up. Pole is doubled over, so I am thinking nice fish. Son is fighting it and tells me it feels like a cat. I think well it could be a flathead. Get it to the surface and it is a channel. A big channel, 28 pounds. Just a few pounds off state record. We get some nice pics and release him. We had a blast catching em all day after that and for several hours in between church services on Sunday. We didn't catch a fish under 15 pounds and all were channels. All fish were caught on live shad. All fish were released.
Attachments:
