Week of October 6, 2014

Fished 3 evenings with Rhandy and 3 days with Dale this week.  There were near record high temperatures in the 90s but a decent breeze made it fairly comfortable.

I met Rhandy Monday evening and we headed out to find some bass.  I got one decent bite on a Carolina rig but all our fish came on Rattletraps.  We started out on a grassy bank and caught 2 or 3 there and ended up on a main lake point where we caught another 7 or 8 bass and a ton of small sandbass.  A good start but nothing of any size.  I think the biggest bass we landed was less than 2 pounds.

Tuesday we started out at 7 am with Dale.  My buddy Christian joined us for the day's festivities and the morning and afternoon were pretty slow.  We moved around to a bunch of good spots but the fish were not in a cooperative mood, especially after the clouds burned off about 11 am.  Christian caught about a 2 pound sandbass on a Carolina rig but all the bass came on Excalibers.  They just didn't want a Carolina rig, which is strange for Fork.  Again, every fish was a dink.  I think we ended up with 5 bass and 2 jumped off.

We met up with Rhandy at 3 pm and headed back out after about a 10 minute break.  Rhandy had told me the previous day he was on some pretty good crappie on some brush piles.  We left it up to Christian whether he wanted to stay after bass or go for some crappie.  He chose crappie and he chose well.  We motored over to Rhandy's brush pile and in less than 2 hours we had 2 limits of crappie.  I think we had about 40 crappie at the first pile and finished up at a couple of others.  After that we headed back over to the main lake point to see if the bass and sandbass would move back in again.  Sure enough about 6:30 we had schooling action that started off with some great big sandbass.  As I started to chunk back a big one Rhandy suggested we just throw them in the live well since he was going to clean a bunch of crappie anyway.  I think we added 8-10 great big sandbass to the mess of crappie.  More good eating!  I don't think we really counted how many bass we caught as we caught many more little sandbass.  I'm guessing it was 10 or so, once again nothing of any size.  It was a lot of fun action, though, that continued to dark.

Christian had to head back to town but I met up with Dale on Wednesday morning.  We started off on a main lake point but this day started with tail kickers in deeper water.  Again we found a bunch of small sandbass and an occasional green fish.  I think Dale had one that went about 3 pounds but that was the big one for the day.  We motored around checking more good spots but I think our total was 6 bass for the day.  I recalled things worked a lot like this around this time last year and I think most of the feeding is going on in the evening.  Dale worked his butt off to put us on fish but they just were not playing.

We got back in about 3 pm and I stepped off of Dale's boat and onto Rhandy's for the evening fishing.  We headed right back to his main crappie hole and I caught crappie on 38 straight casts.  25 were keepers.  It took us less than 30 minutes to get a limit and Rhandy didn't even fish!  He just pulled them off my hook and measured while I threw back out for another fish.  That was fun.  After closing up the cooler we headed off for some bass.  The first spot we stopped was a bust so we motored around a little ways to another spot.  Rhandy caught 3 small bass on his first 3 casts.  I caught a few, too, and we ended up with 13 bass in that spot in about 40 minutes.  We also jumped off 3 and 2 better fish broke Rhandy off.  It was a hopping spot.  Then as suddenly as it started they were gone.  When they quit, they quit hard.  No worries, it was now time for some schooling action on the main lake point.  Or so we thought.  We caught one more bass and a few small sandies but the action was nothing like the previous 2 nights.  As we motored out we found them stacked up further out on the point in about 20 feet of water.  They just never made it in to shore.  It was too dark by then to wiggle treble hooks out of little sandbass so we just headed on in.  There was a really nice "sailor's delight" sunset.

Thursday morning I met Dale again at a little before 7 am and we decided to "go big or go home".  Dale has long been intrigued by the great big bass that make their home under the bridges, feeding off crappie and bar fish.  Anyone who has fished for crappie under the 515 or 154 bridges has had crappie stolen by great big bass or seen them chasing up a crappie on a hook.  We spent most of the day throwing great big swim baits around the bridge pilings hoping to get one of the big girls to bite.  Dale hooked one decent fish at a depth of about 2 feet while we were talking about maybe switching over to big flutter spoons.  We were chatting and BOOM, his rod bent over and he started fighting the fish with only about 3 feet of line out.  It was pretty funny.  I think it went around 7 pounds though Dale thought it might have been a bit less.  We didn't weigh it.  We also didn't switch to flutter spoons.

We kept working the bridge pilings and Dale had another good hit, but it missed.  We saw a few birds hitting the water at a nearby point and headed over to see if there was any schooling action.  I caught one small bass and couple of sandbass then that was over.  We headed back to the bridges til about 2 pm then went to another good spot and tried some Carolina rigs.  I had one good bite and Dale caught one about 3 pounds.  That was it for the day.

I headed back to my truck where Rhandy had filled my cooler with beautiful crappie filets and a few sandbass filets.  I shall be eating well for quite awhile and I will be back at amazing Lake Fork soon!  I just need to make some freezer room.