Guntersville, 29 Aug

Got out for a few hours yesterday with a buddy and did some crank bait trolling before it got too hot. We started out from Honeycomb and headed down to the dam. Started to look for some crappie in 25-30 FOW just above the dam. Did not find any fish by the dam, but up stream in 22.5 FOW we found some fish. We caught one nice big White but only stripe after that. We then went up stream to an area I have been fishing all summer out along the river channel and tried the crank baits and fished until 1230. This is where we found the fish. 9 more real nice solid whites and they where inhaling the baits when they hit! All patterns with a dark back and light belly produced with nothing really standing out. Was trolling at 1.6 - 2.0 mph and caught fish all thru that range. Depth fished was 17-22 FOW and fish were just spread out thru all of that depth. The grass was not as bad as usual. Water temp was 84. Seemed like each pass was good for one or two fish. The craw pattern with an orange belly was catching all kind of catfish. Caught 4 good sized cats 3-5 lbs. Can't wait for the water temps to start dropping! I noticed cleaning these fish that their feeding pattern has changed. They were not stuffed full on bait fish, but had mud in their digestive tracks. For the first time since I started trolling, we actually caught 3 short fish as well. It must be getting closer to another change in patterns. What do you all think?