2-7-24 Dale Hollow report

Well cabin fever was getting the best of me. After several days of nice weather and a forecast of sunny 64 degrees and 5-8 mph wind forecasted for the day, I decided to make the 2 hour drive to Dale Hollow. Launched the boat at Wolf River Marina around 0800. By the way, the Wolf River ramp is still easily usable with water 10 ft below summer pool.

Perfect morning and weather all day! Water surface temp was 43 and warmed to 49 before leaving. After watching and listening to several hundred hours of crappie videos and podcasts,I was convinced I’m finally starting to figure these crappie out! Equipped with all my new electronics (4 graphs, dedicated map unit at console, 9 inch side imaging unit at console linked to 10 inch graph at bow with livescope and dedicated mapping graph at bow). How can these fish hide from me now?? 😂🤷*♂️ Also equipped with almost every jig color:profile known to man😂 My hope was that after all the nice weather for the past week there may be a possibility that some prespawn crappie would have possibly moved into the pre spawn staging grounds up in wolf river. My thought was no big deal, if they havnt moved up yet, I’ll just fall back to the deep water channel ledges prior to getting up into the prespawn staging areas. I was humbled very quickly. 🤣

I shut the motor down to idle near the channel and ledges prior to reaching the prespawn grounds. Running some side imaging I found NOTHING! No bait, no fish! Scanned the flats near the channel, NOTHING on the screen, no bait, no fish. Motored on down to the prespawn staging areas and same thing, Screen was black with no shad and no fish! Now I’m starting to question my electronics and lose confidence! So I drop the trolling motor, throw out some longlining rods and start scanning with livescope (it doesn’t lie and easy to read)! Black screen and showing nothing! Picked up 2 keeper largemouth after fishing about an hour. Couple of other boats around but they’re not catching anything either. Finally asked myself why I keep fishing when I’m seeing nothing on the graph! Can’t catch fish when there’s no fish there ( which is why I spent so much on electronics). Then I had a thought about Richard Gene catching fish in shallow water during cold water temps. So I decided to run around in shallow water and still couldn’t graph any fish or bait??
Fired up the big motor and run all the way back out to the the deep water and river channel. Finally graphed a little something, couple of fish but very scattered and very few but at least it was something! Threw out the rods and started trolling and within 2 minutes, Bam a keeper crappie! Suddenly the screen went black again, marking no bait or fish and fished another 2 hours without another fish caught. Decided to run to another creek with deep water on a different part of the lake I’d never fished before. Scanned water for about 2 hours and couldn’t find any fish or structure?🤷*♂️

Humbled, to say the least? I couldn’t find fish or bait? Looked everywhere. I still have much to learn!! Part of why I love crappie fishing! Any ideas on what I was missing? Couldn’t find them in the channel, ledges, creeks, shallow water? Pretty confident in my electronic reading ability at this point! They had to be somewhere?? Either way, blessed to be able to spend a beautiful day on the water and get quality time with a good buddy! Ended with 2 largemouth and 1 crappie. Enjoyed the 2 hour drive home after being humbled and realizing I still got a lot to figure out! Tight lines and GOD bless!

You’d like to think with all the new electronics that the fish couldn’t hide but they sure can! They go to the bottom sometimes and are hard to see. They can get tight to structure and hard to see. Sometimes they are just out roaming around. And sometimes who knows where in the lake…..lol. Good report, thanks for sharing.