Pool 8, Big Mix

Everyone knows I have been struggling to catch quality fish on pool 8 this year. And nobody is letting me forget it

Well I decided to forget it today got myself and My buddie Carson on some pretty nice fish. We started out the morning in a little competition between each other, 1 on 1. it was a three fish limit and we were going to weigh in at 2 ‘o clock. Well my motor decided that wasn’t going to happen so we got done early and went out in his boat. Funny thing is, while I was trolling my way back to the boat landing, I stuck one of the biggest smallies of my life. The fish pulled like a horse and I was speechless when i swung her in the boat. the fish went 19-1/2″ and it was just a phenomenal feeling. It has been a little over a year since a smallie that big came knocking on my door. It turned out that that fish completed my “limit” of 3 fish and I went to weigh in with a pretty good sack. Carson only had 1 fish to weigh so we just called it good and went back out I am guessing I would have had 8-1/2 lbs for these 3 fish Anyway, Carson and I did pretty decent all over the pool throwing various items (sorry, got a tournament coming up) The only thing that was lacking was numbers. We would go for like an hour or even 2 without so much as a strike and then we would come to a new area and whack 1 or 2. It seems like the fish haven’t grouped up into there post spawn areas fully just yet. We are finding fish scattered EVERYWHERE and none of these fish were schooling postspawners. The spawn is actually still going on with a lot of fish, and I believe that this may be why we haven’t seen that big push to the postspawn “stackum up” spots. Overall Carson and I had a pretty good time. We caught several keepers each.

-Cade

Carson also managed a toad smallie later on, on my rod, with my swim jig Just wanted him to see what a 7′ rod is like and he goes and sticks a nice pig 18″ smallie!

NO WE WERE NOT IN THE PITS!

here was carsons fish that he brought in in the competition…

-Cade

Nice looking smallies guys
We have been finding the same issues with catching a fish or 2 here and then not finding another fish for quite aways. They are definitely scattered still and anywhere from super shallow to deep

Yeah we caught some FATTIES in shallow weeds..The smallies and everything else also came out of shallow water. The only hint I can give away at this point is that it involves current. My bite will need some more WARM weather for it to turn on better. hopefully it gets blazin’ hot this week!

nice job cade and carson, and nice smallie

Cade,

That smallie is a beast! Our fish were scattered today as well, but thankfully we found a couple at every stop.

I saw that your pit crew must have got the Starcraft running again.

Curt

yeah My dad took care of that after I took off and fished out of Carson’s boat I guess there was some bolt that rattled loose and fell out. My dad put it back in and tightened it down and it started right back up Too bad I didn’t have any clue what happened at the time, I could have kept fishing

He was pretty funny. He said something like, “Kid’s probably just out of gas!”

Carson and I did pretty good again today on pool 8. We went to all different areas today than what we did yesterday, and this just proved the fact that we have found a steady pattern that is working all around the pool. sorry I can’t elaborate, like I said before, got a tourney coming up
I ended the day with only 5 keepers, but they were all pretty good ones, over 2lbs each. The biggest was a toss up between 3 fish that all were around 17-1/2″ long. One was a nice smallie pictured here. Another was an absolute CHUNK largemouth that I did not get a picture of. The other was average girth pictured below. Carson had nearly as many bites as I did, but had a hard time putting the hook in the fish Just one of those days, happens to everyone Carson! he ended up with 2 keepers. one was a really fat fish, probably between 16-17″, didn’t get a good look at it, and the other was also around 16″ but extremely skinny.
Overall we had a pretty fun day. We put together a solid afternoon in only 4 hours of fishing and as always, had fun!

here is a decent largemouth; 17-1/2″

Carson’s largemouth.

Cade, in the opening post you mentioned weighing in. did u get a scale?

I have 2 scales. Both are cheap berkley’s and don’t seem to be extremely accurate. It doesn’t matter to me, The touranments I fish have good accurate scales. When I am fun fishing, I just guess and don’t worry about it. like I said in another post, I don’t have anything to prove…

But anyway, this post is over a month old now…We didn’t really total up our weights, because It was an obvious difference, but that smallie was 3#’s or so. 19-1/2″ but really really light after the spawn.The largie probably weighed more than it