First day out since the last cold blast

Went to Logan Martin today, put in at town and country about 7:30am. First thing I noticed was seagull poop all over dock and launch area and seagull diving from the launch area to about 50 yards out. Not a good sign last time i saw this (a few years ago)when i launched there were dead shad minnows everywhere. I could not see any dead shad but every seagull that dived came up with a shad.

Anyway, decided to go where I was doing pretty good about a month ago (even though my brain was telling me to go to the first place i normally go when water temps were down). Back at end of december and first of january the water temp was 48/49 and I was catching a limit almost every time out. Today the temp was 43 so I should have known better. Well I try the first place for about 90 minutes and not a bite or sign of a living creature anywhere. There was a nice size ball of crappie at the entrance but I could not get anything out of it.

Decided to try one more place before going to my normal cold spot and BAM caught 6 (4 keepers and 2 Dinks) within 20 minutes. Thought I was on to something but never got another one out of there. This place had a ton of shad action all my poles were bouncing thru them and i even hooked one, but all the fish i caught were scattered no where near shad. All caught on 1/16 oz black and chartreuse body.

Before leaving here to go to my final spot i decided to venture into shallower water (everything I fished so far was around 12 to 15 feet). For some reason the area was packed with cat fish and I caught 5 really fast then got out of there after a big one tangled up all my lines.

Finally about 11:00am I get to the spot I should of went and caught 2 really fast on the only baby garland monkey milk I had on, so I put a couple more on and found 10 more crappie and 5 bass over the next few hours (6 of the 10 were keepers). Again I saw no shad where I was catching fish and they were scattered in anywhere from 4 to 15 feet deep.

All in all not a terrible day considering. ended up bringing 12 crappie and 5 bass home. Fish were scattered for sure could never get any routine figured out. Going to give it a shot tomorrow if the weather holds!:biggrin:biggrin

Looking to get on the water by 10:30 myself.

hopefully the rain will roll on thru tonite like they say it will,,,still waiting on my hi tech glass panfish rods from monk,,the ass-mounted fly rods don't do so well in the holders,,,,,new to this but convinced spider will catch fish...

Thanks for the report. Were they channel cats? Most places i'm fishing it seems like the catfish are moving shallow to feed up right now.

yea all channel cats. if you want them go into 2 to 5 feet of water in the backs of coves. I couldnt stay in there they were hitting my jigs so much. Nice ones to, 2 to 5lb range

Thanks for the info. I was down on Lay Lake on sunday fishing from the bank (Still don't have a boat or a yak :mad: ) and heard from the locals there that the crappie were starting to move a little more shallow, and that folks had been able to catch a few here and there, but not consistently. I got a couple bites that felt like crappie but no fish. Only caught a few catfish that were about 8 inches long and one decent bass, all on earthworms.