I fished Saturday April 28th in a small club tournament for F-3 Bassmasters out of Nashville. We had 6 boats for a total of 12 people. I drew Derrick, a new member to the club this year. We took out of Hurricane Creek Ramp and I headed up lake toward Fate Sanders to one of my favorite Summer time spots. Yes I said summer time. I know a lot of people think ledges and bluffs are only for summer time action, however that is not true. Bass will stage on ledges and ends of bluffs before they spawn. Bass are still in all 3 stages and can be caught in each stage. I caught 4 keepers Saturday for 10.02lbs, big fish was 4.85 lbs and I won the tournament and big fish. My big fish was pre-spawn I caught in 18ft of water on a bluff with a
Snootie jig 1/4 oz black. This fish was fat as could be, I am sure full of eggs. Our weigh-ins are a paper tournaments. We measure the fish and correspond the length to weight. This way we immediately return the fish to the water and not risk dead fish in a live well. Actual weight of the fish was 5.4lbs I took on my digital scale. We then came back up to the 4-corners area and fished some points and covers. My next fish was a bed fish. I was back in a cove and found a brush pile. I lost my polarized glasses the night before during a boat ride with a friend. I noticed a dark spot beside the brush pile and it was a bed with 2 fish locked on. I caught the buck 1st with a watermelon Bitsy bug jig, it was 15" for 1.82lbs. I flipped the female which was considerably bigger with the same jig, 5 casts later she bit. I got her up and over the stump and a few tail walks later she came un-buttoned. We guessed she was 4-5 pounds. We left and I hoped to come back to her later. I found another brush pile in 6ft of water and commenced to whacking them. I took 2 more 15" keepers off the pile and 16 other bass from 10" to 14". At that time I probably caught around 30 bass and my partner 1. He is new to fishing and was struggling fishing the jig. I changed him over to a Shaky head made by
www.surethinglures.com with a small finesse worm. He finally started catching fish. Although he never caught a keeper he did manage 6 or 7 fish in about 15 minutes. The tournament was over at noon. Conditions were ever changing during the day.
Start: Heavy Clouds and Calm
Water Clarity was from 2ft at Fate Sanders to 7 foot in Hamilton Creek.
After 10:00 am. the skies cleared and after that the clouds rolled in and out but mostly sunny. the wind picked up to around 10-15mph.
After the tournament Rob Kennedy, Carl his partner, Denny Krogh, my partner and I had a little mini 1hr tournament, $5 per person, most weight per boat. I managed the lone keeper on a Watermelon Snootie Jig off a rock pile. 16.5" long and a couple pounds.
Denny and I decided to stay out until around 4:30 to go looking for some Smallies in Hamilton Creek. We pulled up to the 1st bank and I caught the pictured fish, It was 21" and 5.11lbs and this was a post-spawn bass, in the picture her tail is beat up and still healing. I caught her off a point in 15 ft of water. The jig of choice, yes you guessed it a 3/16 oz
Watermelon Snootie jig. We fished all over Hamilton Creek and I kid you not between the 2 of us we caught over 30 or more bass. Granted all but 3 were 10-14" fish but it was still a blast. We caught 7 dink smallies and 1 keeper smallie, nearly all on the jig of choice and shaky heads with a watermelon finesse worm. Once we got into fish I tried all sorts of lures, swim baits, spinner baits, cranks, worms and other plastics but not hardly a one produced bites, we would switch back to the jig and BAMM they would bite. Pretty weird to be locked onto 1 lure.
All in all it was a pretty good day, tons of fish caught and if I took my top 5 bass I would have had right at 16lbs.
