Started out on Saturday morning at zero dark thirty. Instead of fishing the Dam or Ledgedale end f the lake I decided to fish smack in the middle. Air temp was 60F, water temp 74F, Overcast, slight breeze out of the Southeast. I fished mainly the docks and weeds and any boulders/rocks/stumps/trees/etc. I could find. BTW, if you're NOT doing that..you're not going to catch fish. Sure, you can beat the bank and catch a rogue fish here and there but statistically you have a better chance of hooking up by fishing structure...any structure. After all, Bass are structure oriented fish.
I caught my first Smallie within a half hour..a nice 2 lb. chunk off the docks. I moved off the docks and started catching em real good in the weeds. I caught a 3 pounder within 30 minutes of the first. Five minutes later I caught probably the largest Smallie I've ever caught at the Pack..it went close to 4 lbs. I only got a photo of the 3 pounder (above). I wish I got a photo of the 4 pounder but he/she wiggled out of my hand while I was removing the hook from its mouth. The fish of the 3 pounder was much larger than what it looks like above. That's because there is no reference in the background. Normally, you hold a fish up for a photo in front of your body and you can tell proportionally how big it is. I kid you not, not more than 10 minutes later I hooked up with another 3 pounder. The place was on fire. Good thing I was throwing braid or I don't think I would have landed the fish from the weeds. I stopped at 0930 because the wakeboard morons were starting to wakeup. (get it wake-up?). I'd say I had close to 12 pounds with 4 fish..all catch n release by the way.
Sunday morning, bluebird skies, air temp a cool 50F, water temp 72F. Fishing was SLOW...real slow. What a difference a day makes. Maybe the fish were all stressed out from the boat traffic the day before. Or, the fact that it was a bluebird day and the Wakeboarders and Jetskiers were already out in force by 7am. I fished the same spots as Saturday to see if the BIG fish were still there. If they were, they weren't biting. So, I motored down to Ledgedale and fished there. I caught a nice Smallie running close to 2 pounds around the docks. My next fish was a monster..except it wasn't a Bass..it was a Pike/Pickerel or Musky. To be honest with you, I didn't look at the direction of the stripes to see whether it was a Pickerel or Musky. From the size, I'd say Musky. You should have seen the teeth on this bad boy. I didn't even pull it out of the water..I just grabbed the pliers with the fish next to the boat (still in the water) and removed the hook...trying to save my bait which he ripped the sh$t out of. I decided to call it a day at 0930. There were twice as many wakeboard boats and jet skis on the water as Saturday.
All-in-all a good weekend of fishing for sure. Can't wait to get back. Fish ON! Rob
