Old Hickory

[spottedbass]

Any body having any luck on Old Hickory catching bass? I scanned water for 2 hours yesterday and didn't find any bass. I then fished shallow for 2 hours and had one bite and caught a 14 1/2" bass. That was it. Where have they gone???

[Halli]

They are there it is all up to flow IE 1 gen Great fish, 2 gen So so,
3 gens running and the fish pull off and hold on ledges.

[spottedbass]

I'm scanning 11 - 16 ft along the ledges and not finding them like I did a few weeks ago. Have they gone deeper?? Shallower?? off the river and in the creeks??

[tacklemake]

I have been catching bass in shallow and up to 8'. Since the bass are trying to catch shad bait fish I'm working the bottom real slow with a crazy flapper in orange/red, a space monkey in green pepper red flake and a 8" lizard black emerald and catching 8 to 15 bass each day at the nature park cove near lock 3. Lately the stripe bass and stripers have been showing up for some fast action on white rooster tail spinners with black spots work great. https://youtu.be/Ys8Z44eFsYQ

[agelesssone]

Nice fish there guys.
Woody, turning the boat in a different direction and taking another picture of the same fish is cheating!

[Texas_Rig]

Old Hickory is tough right now. For numbers you need to find the bait. Some of the creeks have tons of bait in them. I've been targeting that bait balls in 3-10 feet of water. It doesn't matter what you throw at them really. Those fish are very aggressive and will eat anything. There is a ton of bait at that depth in Spencer Creek and the small bass are easy pickings. You can easily catch a limit but it's gonna max out about 8 lbs. for the quality bite I've been having success targeting isolated wood. The best targets have been those that are in 4-10 fow with deeper water very close by but not very close to the bank. Thursday my best 5 were 4-2oz, 3-15oz,3-7oz,3-3oz, and 2-7oz. All on wood. There are a few bass to be had in the weed beds to but very inconsistent for me. Hope this helps

[TnCreekMaster]

Went out last night around shutes and marked some of the biggest fish ive ever seen on my side scan one was at least 5ft. Focus on the 8-12ft if the baits not there keep on moving

[spottedbass]

I did find some back in Station Camp Creek Saturday morning. This one weighed right at 4 lb. Had another one just over 3 lbs. Both of these came near deeper water. I did catch a bunch of small fish around the bait balls.

[MNfisher]

What are you guys throwing around the bait balls?


Mike

[spottedbass]

I have been throwing a shakey worm but I was catching small bass around the bait balls. I am thinking about giving a small A-rig a try.

[Texas_Rig]

When the bass first started schooling around these bait balls you could literally throw anything. Now, I think they are very keyed in on the size of bait. A very small spinnerbait has worked for me but my best bait has been a Texas rigged SK menace, either hopping it or swimming it. I haven't caught any big fish on these bait balls and have had a harder time catching any this week. On a hunch after not much action yesterday, we went out to the main lake flats and ledges. We came across some massive schools of gizzard shad on the edge of these flats right on top of the ledges. We also caught a cpl LM, and marked a few schools of bass. The water has started to warm back up, so this makes sense to me. We only had about 20 minutes to fish the ledges bc we were pressed for time. Bug from what is saw, there are plenty of bass back out on the tops of the ledges. And the bait there is much larger in size so I expect the fish to be as well