Fishing Report Archives

In my last report I mentioned what to expect with cooling temperatures. Here is what happened as the water cooled.

In my last guide trip on November 2, 2019 the main lake water temperatures were about 62 degrees and the back ends of creeks were significantly cooler at 58 but warmed up to about 60 degrees in the afternoon.

I decided to start on a drop off inside a creek arm. We had a couple bites but did not catch one. Then we went to the far back of the creek fishing in about one foot of water. We caught nothing but did see feeding activity.

I moved out to a main lake long shallow bar/point that has good topwater fishing and also has some stumps out in the deeper water. We started on the deeper portion and caught a couple keepers and missed some. We left those fish so as not to beat them up. We then fished up through the shallow water using topwater baits, swim baits, and rattle traps.

We saw some decent fish feeding but left the area to fish another main lake shallow bar/point. On this bar we started out with topwater and caught a nice smallmouth right away then missed a couple good ones. We skipped the back end of this creek to fish the back end of another creek that had been holding lots of bass.

We caught a few 14 inch fish and saw a small school of bass chasing adult shad right at the boat in two feet of water. We continued the process of covering all the shallow flat water and as we got to the end of my route we missed a really nice largemouth.

While out hunting yesterday I saw shad that were still hanging around the shallow flat water back in creek arms. Those shad and bass will hang around into December. When the water drops below 55 it will be hard to get a topwater bite so finesse baits, crankbaits and shallow jerkbaits will work best. Never pass up any wood you see and fish it all the way out with a jig or finesse worm.

Winter is a great time to be fishing especially on shallow ledges where there is a great winter ledge bite. Many days warm into the 50s and the bass will feed hard certain times on some ledges. I had some great winter fishing last year and most of the bass are big! Everyone should learn how to catch these big winter fish.