Aug 28, 2008

Air Temp: Low 68° /High 88°

Water Temp: Low 80°/High 82°

Water Elevation: 357 (and falling) (359 is Summer Pool)

Water Clarity: 4ft visibility and falling

The weather has been great this past month. The fishing has been ”spotty”. By spotty I mean it’s been real good on some spots and not ”worth a darn” on others. Luckily, I know several of these ”good spots” and we’ve had mostly good luck these past few weeks catching fish. We’ve had good success catching Largemouth Bass, a few Smallmouths, Crappie, Bluegill, White and Yellow Bass, and Catfish.


BASS:
We’ve been catching the bigger fish 15’ to 23’ deep on ½ oz football jigs, 10” worms, ¾ oz spinner baits, and big spoons. Also finding good action shallower 3’ to 5’ with top water baits, shallow cranks, rattle traps, spinner baits, small worms, and swim baits, mostly smaller fish with an occasional big fish.

SMALLMOUTH BASS:
We’ve caught some good Smallmouth on jigs and Carolina rigged soft plastics on shallow gravel bars on the main lake and at the mouths of bays.

CRAPPIE:
We Crappie fished for 3 hours the other morning and had 14 nice sized keepers. The bite is not up to November standards but good for a few hours. Jigs and minnows fished 12’ to 15’ deep around brush is how we caught them.

BLUEGILL:
I’ve seen a couple of good messes brought to the cleaning station. The boys said they caught them on a small jig and wax worm. I’d fish the outer edges of main lake grass, and stumps in 5’ to 15’ of water. Last fall we caught the largest Bluegill I’ve ever seen come out of this lake. The fish were gorging on small mussels. If you know where there are a lot of Zebra Mussels, you’ll find a bonanza of big gills.

WHITE BASS:
There have been some schools chasing shad fry back in the bays in the evening. I’ve had some good luck fishing gravel bars on the main lake 8’ to 14’ deep. Cast inline spinners and small spoons for good results.


CATFISH:
The Blues are schooled up 30’ to 50’ deep on the main river channel. Channel Cats are being taken 20’ to 30’ deep in creek channels and much shallower in bays. Minnows, night crawlers, shrimp or leeches will catch ´em! September is the best month of the year to catch Blue Cats!

B.S. SECTION:
On 8-19-08 and 8-22-08 I had the pleasure of fishing with a couple of unique clients; Vito Matarrese and Andrea Ferrari from Italy. Vito has lived in the States for 2 years and Andrea was visiting. Neither spoke much English, but could say ”Big Bass” very well. Andrea fishes B.A.S.S. Elite Series in Spain and Portugal and was an exceptionally good ”Bass Master”. We had two good days catching many bass over 3 Lbs. The first day I’d left my camera in the truck so we brought 4 fish we’d caught in the last hour in for a photo opp.
The second day we didn’t catch as many ”Big Ones” but did catch a good number of 3 pounders. As we were fishing, we spotted an American Bald Eagle perched in a tree along shore. Andrea let out an Italian heavy sigh and stated ”America Beautiful”! A chill of pride ran up my spine when he said this and I felt hugely privileged to be the one who showed him this piece of America. Andrea taught me that bass fishermen speak the same language all over the world.
Thanks Andrea and Vito and hope to see you again.

Check out these and other photos of resent catches on the 2008 August "Pictures" page on my web site.

See Ya on the Water!

Capt Kirk, out!