Pickwick

I was at Pickwick 2 weeks ago. The couple who's lake house we were at hired guide Roger Stegall for a day and caught a ton of largemouth and smallmouth, as well as a bunch of white bass. I think they said they had caught 52 by the end of the day just counting the largemouth and smallmouth. The wife only did half the day, she had him bring her back to the house around noon. They were fishing topwaters early while the bass were busting the surface, then they crawled jigs with plastic trailers along the bottom the rest of the day. There is a ton of duckweed in the lake this year and he told them it was the best thing to ever happen to the bass population, says he has caught several 10 pounders already this year.

awesome, they should be slammin it getting ready for winter when were up there

I caught a nice largemouth bass right off their boat dock right at dusk one night, was using a topwater buzz bait. We had been swimming right there in the same spot an hour earlier. They have a fixed dock and the water is so high right now it was up over my ankles while I was standing on the dock, the kids loved it.

and had an absolute blast. Ray put us on the crappie and we wore then out

We go every year either around the 4th or memorial day, its a family lakehouse their grandaddy built in the 60s and they rotate who has it each holiday. They had it memorial day this year but we couldnt make it down. His sister had it over the 4th but they had us down the week after. I didnt take the boat this year but I took it last year and did ok pulling cranks in Bear Creek.

Let me try to shed some light on smallmouth, I am no expert but have had some good sucess below the dam at Pickwick. I prefer generation from 40,000-120,000 to make the fish more active. I fish strictly live shiners , store bought at Roger Gants BP there in Counce, in the XL size. I fish them on #4 circle hooks or #2 gold aberdeen hooks , which ever youre more comfortable using. I use a 7 foot medium action spinning rod with 6 lb. test. and a carolina rig with a 24 inch leader and an 1/8 to 1/4 oz weight depending on current. The goal is to be tapping but not dragging the bottom. the smallmouth hide behind any kind of current break or eddy on the bottom. I drift with the current only using the trolling motor to keep me straight. I fish about 10-20 yds off the riprap bank. I have found the smallmouth fishing below the second set of powerlines, where the riprap ends to be not worth the time. Its a fun way to fish because you will constantly be catching different types of fish. Attachment 132095Attachment 132096Attachment 132097Attachment 132098

THANKS, those are awesome. KNow there's some monster Stripers down there as well

if you want monsters, there are better tailwaters in the system, but for there are great numbers of stripers under 20 lbs.

What little bass fishing I have done in the last 15 years was at Pickwick. It impressed me.

Don,

From my experience on Pickwick, you really only ned 2 baits for largemouth/smallmouth. One is a carolina rig, the other is a Rapala DT6 or DT10. I have had the best bass fishing day of my life out there one day. 3 of us in the boat, we found a sunken road bed and started fishing. The guy in the front had a dt 10 on and the first cast had about a 6 pound Smally. We started throwing the carolina rig and EVERY cast we caught a fish. We tripled more times than I could count. Now most of the fish were between 1.5 and 2 lbs, but every once in a while we would pick up one about 5 lbs. We caught over 100 bass that morning, but the only smallmouth was the first fish caught.
I was pumped when we got back and called my brother, so we could go the next day. We went back to the same spot at daylight and we got 1 bite. I guess that is fishing.