There are many humps, trees and long points exposed lake wide. Be very careful running the lake.
Largemouth bass fishing is almost at a stand still.
The water is still cold and the cold weather this week keeps water temperatures way down. The water temperature was up early in the week, but another 24 hours of cold weather dropped the water back to 48 degrees.
At these water temperatures, the bass all but shut down their activity.
There is very little action but if you have to try it, use small jigs and small Senko’s.
The up river areas are very stained so concentrate on the mid to lower lake from Gainesville Marina, south.
There is a lot of dirty water in the creeks down lake and this can be a big help once the weather breaks. The stained waters will begin to warm up soon and the crystals in the water will hold this heat.
But for now, it’s really slow.
Spotted bass are on the deep docks mid lake. These fish are very fat as they have been gorging on tiny shad.
The fish we can see under the docks and in the brush piles with the Aqua Vu are not moving around.
The fish seem to be waiting for a warm up to try and move shallow.
We have used small spoons, small jigs and small worms all with little success. We have scaled our baits way down to the two-inch Bass Pro Shop Squirt jigs in multiple colors.
Use a small ¬-ounce Bass Pro Shops jig head in a lead color and add some Jacks Juice to the bag of baits.
Fishing these baits is a real chore in any wind so pick some creeks down lake with larger docks to try this.
Large marina docks are also holding some really big fish. We have been on three marinas on the main lake and the fish are anywhere from 20 to as deep as 45 feet.
Without an Aqua Vu, we would never see these fish because they are up under the docks away from any depth finder beam.
We have fished with live bait and live night crawlers only attracted the catfish and some surprisingly large bream.
Use small six-pound test Sufix line on a medium action spinning reel and drop baits straight down.
This week we looked at road beds, humps and deep ledges looking for spotted bass and all we found were fish on and inside larger docks in clear water. There were no fish in the docks in the backs of the creeks if the water was dirty.
It’s still very cold down deep and it looks like it may be another ten days before any warm up.
Take some small spoons in sizes no larger that half an ounce or smaller and use 6-or 8-pound line on a medium heavy spinning reel.
Striper fishing can be fair to great so we call in "hot one day and not" the other.
Fish toward the backs of the major creeks. Latham Creek, Thompson Creek and Flat Creek and have been good areas.
Look for fishing early in the morning and then in the evening to hit a free-lined trout.
Flat line and planer board and use a few blue back herring or a large minnow over a 12-to 15- foot bottom up shallow. These fish will be off the long points and shallow gradually sloping banks in the backs of the creek.
As the sun hits the water move out deeper and down line the same baits. The fish are ranging from 20-to 28-feet deep. Concentrate on the fish you mark in the 18-to 24-foot range as they have been more active.
Most of these fish will be over a 30-to 35-foot bottom. Keep one on a free line or balloon just in case.
If there is sufficient cloud cover fish shallow first, even in the middle of the day.
We do have another ramp up north at Clarks Bridge open and some anglers are pulling very large trout and taking a few really big fish on flat lines.