Woods 3/19

[JandSCattleCo]

Woods
7:15am-4:30pm
55-60 F
H2O 55-59 F
Unsure of wind speed
Slight stain, but mostly clear.

Dad and I went down to pre-fish today because we thought about trying the tournament that is there Saturday. Got there about 7:15 and launched, headed under the bridge and my depth finder did what it did at Normandy (see Normandy 3/17 post). Dropped anchors and started fishing depths right under bait fish blobs. Nothing. Changed colors. Nothing. Sat there for quite awhile and never had the first bite. Pulled anchors and went under the bridge (towards the island) and went into a small cove with a fish attractor (~18' of water). Dad had 1 small hit but nothing else (I think he was hitting brush, but he was certain it was a hit). Moved up into the creek and trolled a bit, but to no avail. We went down along the AFB side and found another spot of bait fish. Again, fished right under it, but nothing. By this time the wind had picked up pretty good and the chop was rolling on the lake. We scooted back towards the bridge and as soon as we crossed under, no wind. Not a light breeze, gale gust, nothing (about like our fishing). We crept along the bank and started getting some hits. Landed 6 striped bass (see profile picture to left) and 1 6" crappie. We left at 4:30pm. A little over 8 hours on the water and 7 fish... I know I've been told that after a hard rain, as we had yesterday, that the fish will not be as active, but seeing other posts on here has me doubting that. It was great pulling those bigger fish in on my ultralight crappie pole, but I'm really wanting to catch, well, crappie.

We vertical jigged, used minnows, trolled (~.8 - 1.0 mph), 2x 1/16 oz jig heads on a line, 1x 1/8 oz jig head, and even went as far as a 1/4 oz to try and get it deep. Of course it looked like the deepest point on the lake was only 29'. Electric chicken (which the striped bass loved), pearl and chart, blue and chart, chart and black pepper, black and chart, minnows. I'm pretty sure we used every jig and color combination that we had between two people.

[nofish]

If you put in before the bridge and had to go out under the bridge to get into the lake try deep along the channel edges. You can usually pick up white bass and crappie there. On the way to the backside of the lake there is a cove to the right and I believe there is a earth dam at the back of this cove. Start on the corner when you first pull into that cove and cast to the bank slow retrieving back to the boat with a slow jigging motion. You should I think be in about 12ft of water. The few times I've been it has been stacked with crappie through there. Follow that shoreline until they quit biting.