Fort Loudon Fishing Report - 8/12/09

I took a good friend of mine, Bryan, out for the first time in over a year today from 2:00 pm to 4:45 pm. The sun was intense and it was HOT! My only goal was to get him on some good fish. We started on a hump in the Louisville Point Park area and I caught 1 largemouth, 13 inches, on a Carolina rigged Net Bait Paca Craw. We moved to an area where we noticed frequent surface activity. I let Bryan borrow a popper and a fluke and tied the same on for myself. From that moment we started landing one after another. A school of white bass came by and we had a blast catching them on poppers. We caught 8 of them and all were right at 2 lbs. We also caught 13 largemouth and 1 smallmouth for a total of 22 fish. Three of the largemouth were keepers. We missed many more than that. The smallmouth was caught on a shakey head worm. I tried a crankbait with no takers. I don't believe that I could catch a fish on a crankbait right now if it was starving! One thing I noticed surprised me. There was no wind when we started catching fish, but when the wind picked up, the bite died. Once the wind went away we started catching them again. Usually, it's just the opposite based on my experiences. We had a great time and I encourage anyone that wants to have some fun to go out and get after those schoolers. Now would be a great time to take a kid and get them excited about fishing! Take care and good luck!

Fort Loudon Fishing Report - 8/11/09

Went out from 6:00 pm to 8:30 pm and had to leave due to lightning. Started out near Carl Cowan park and found schooling fish EVERYWHERE! We caught 5 in one school with a popper and fluke and had several others come off. I am currently using the Zoom Fluke because I'm out of Strike King Caffeine Shads. All these were just short of being keepers, so I decided to move. I found a hump that went up to 8.7 ft from 25 ft and noticed bait covering my depthfinder with big arcs beneath the schools. So, I dropped a buoy and backed off to fish it. I missed several at first on a Carolina Rigged fluke, so I switched my plastic to a Net Bait Paca Craw. The second cast I hooked into a 4 lb plus smallmouth. He jumped near the boat and threw the hook. I'm glad I wasn't in a tournament or I would have been really mad! Got a couple more bites there, then several boats started coming by and fishing relatively close. At this point I moved to a bluff. We caught around 10 or 12 more on different plastics and a popper. Missed some smallmouth with the popper. All caught on plastics were largemouth except for one. It was a meanmouth so that was pretty exciting. If you don't know what a meanmouth is, it's a hybrid smallmouth/spotted bass. They fight extremely hard! All in all a great day! Going out in a few minutes to try again. I will keep you posted!