The lake is still ten feet above summer
pool and the surface temperature is in the mid-eighties. The lake
is falling about four inches per day and at that rate we will be
back to summer pool by about September 15th. Which means we have
had high water to deal with for three months. I have canceled a ton
of guide trips as it was just too hard to find fish with all the
new flooded cover.
With the lake just about back to the old ramps, the fish are finally
pulling out of the willows as falling water and rising water temps
have put the bait back out on the ledges. This is where I want them
and we are now experiencing good white bass action on the drop-shot
rig and the Slab spoon.
The key is to find the bait on your electronics before you even
wet a line. I have been finding them in
different spots than on a normal pool level pattern. They are still
on drops and river channels in and around twenty feet of water.
These
next few weeks are my best white bass trips. We can get a hundred
from just one school in a matter of a couple hours. Once we find
them on my Lowrance the drop-shot rig tipped with a minnow will
just hammer them. We get a fish every cast until the cooler is full.
Then we get out the spoons and target the huge buffalo that roam
just under the schools of bait fish. Considered by most as a trash
fish I am here to say they are the hardest fighting fish you will
tie into all year long. We usually release them after pictures but
I have had trips that we caught over three hundred pounds of them.
We routinely get fish in the twenty-five to thirty pound range.
My biggest thus far is forty-two pounds but that will fall this summer.
The crappie are being caught around standing timber in your biggest
coves. The fish are suspended about fifteen feet down. Minnows are
the best bait but jigs will work. I use pearl white a lot this time
of year.
Fishing
Guide, Steve Welch - owner/operator