Thread: Lake Shelbyville: November/December. Picture Heavy

November and December this year on Lake Shelbyville was the best in 5-6 years IMO, especially for big fish. Late november through currently, it really hasn't been uncommon to have your 2-3 man limit of overs with all of them being over 11.5 inches if you didnt keep anything under it from the days start. It also really hasn't been uncommon to pull a limit of overs from one brush pile. That being said I really do believe the lake fished tougher this fall if you were outside of some key areas. Outside of our best areas I could catch a few fish, but most piles resulted in 5-10 dinks and maybe a keeper or two, and sometimes nothing at all. A couple things that I 100% believe has allowed us to have a great fall is the fact that we could back off and cork them. The water was so clear on the lake this fall and we found that the fish were suspended very high in the water column that if you sat over them and jigged them you would only catch a couple active fish before spooking the school, whereas if you stayed back and casted corks to them it was very likely to catch 20-50 fish from that one spot, literally on every cast for a while; XXL can confirm this! It was often we found fish suspended only 2-5ft deep over 9-13ft of water, and when the lake visibility was a foot you can see why its easy to spook them. Our best colors easily this fall were white heads in 8th or 1/4oz with a white and chartreuse midsouth tube or a pearl blue body and clear tail with sparkles on it from hookitbait; this was a stinger style body. The other good one was an orange head in 8th or 1/4oz and a red and chartreuse tube from midsouth. These are the colors we had much much higher success with even when fished side by side others all fall. Anyways, here is some pictures from mostly December... The last ones are from December 29th, it was 21 degrees outside and the fish acted like all the shad in the lake were going to be gone the next day. Awesome fishing. Hope everyone has a great 2015 full of big ol slabs. Birdy






When you go over a spot and it looks like this on DownScan where you cant even see the brush because of all the fish in the pile and around it, you get realllllly excited because a bashin is about to start!






Christmas Afternoon Slabs!


December 29th:



Last fish of 2014...

Thanks for the lesson Santa Birdman. A little tough for corkin this week