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Fishing with Dr Phillip Gawthrop 3/4/18
Dr Phil has been so busy lately that we haven't had time to fish as much as we both would like. What with him hunting every species that walks the land that is legal to hunt, his business, the weather, and family trips, it had been over a month since he had been in the boat with me. But I didn't have to retrain him much. Grin.
To be honest with you, I was surprised that we did as well as we did considering that in the last ten days, the water temps have fallen nearly 10 degrees, we have had well over 5 inches of rain, the lake has gone from winter level to one foot above summer level (7 foot rise and fall) and back down to one foot above winter level and the water was stained the color of brown sandy and the only water with any clarity was in Dallas Bay, but we didn't catch anything but short fish in that bay. It was a Sunday AM and there were a couple of tournaments going on including the Chattanooga Crappie Club's end of their season classic. So, we had a lot of competition for fishing spots. On top of all that there was a 9 mph wind from the NNE. Not my favorite wind to fish. We chose to fish in the main river with the 84,500 CFS current.
I was able to find a brush pile in 14-15 feet of water, adjacent to the swift current, that had some eddy water, so we spot locked our Terrova I-Pilot and began fishing. We fished that spot from 8:00 AM to 10:30 AM. We had 11 keepers and only one short fish in that spot. The smallest keeper was a chunky 12" Black crappie. We landed 5 fish 13 inches or better with the longest at 13.75, a white crappie that wasn't nearly as fat as the Black crappie that we were catching. When we ended at that spot, we decided to weigh our largest 10 fish in my dip net. I looked at the scales and it looked like 14.75 lbs. Dr Phil looked at it and said 15 lbs. My dip net probably doesn't weigh over 3/4 of a pound. So, we had the heaviest 10 fish that we have taken together in one day.
I'll give Phil credit. He came up with the hot lure this morning, a Bobby Garland Black Knight Baby Shad with a 3/32 oz orange painted Jig head. I fished with 1/16 oz jigs and we did catch fish on Full Moon, Pumpkinseed/chartreuse lures, some were baby shads, some were slab slayers. I can't brag on the I-Pilot too much. When you have current and wind in your face like we did and for it to hold us in position for those 2.5 hours of fishing is amazing to me. I'll never have another boat without one.
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Fishing with Dr Phillip Gawthrop 3/4/18
Great report. Thanks as always. I was battling the wind and current on Sunday too. I have gone out four days over the last two weeks. Tough to keep up with the rising and falling water levels and drastic changes in water temps. I have the 9 in crappie dialed in. I am catching 10 shorts to every keeper. I have tried brush at various depths. I've shot docks. I've vertical jigged laydowns. I've even tried long lining and most recently spider rigging. Still yet to nail down a pattern that is producing keepers consistently. I did pull a 14 in white crappie off a PVC structure my brother built. It was the first time I had caught a crappie off the PVC structure and it was a dandy. Caught a nice 13 in black crappie on Sunday off a dock that felt like giant compared to all shorts I was catching off the same dock. Attachment 293035Attachment 293036
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