Wade and I fished a bass tournament on FC over the weekend. We didn’t take many photos so I’m not doing a full fishing report on it, but I did want to say what is going on up there.
The fishing has been quite good all season so far. The smallmouth weren’t real active this weekend. It took right around 10 pounds to win each day. The water has been slowly dropping, but is still flooding much of the timber and brush around the lake.
Friday we hit the water around 12:30 or so. We launched from Prairie Dog Bay and headed up to Spring Creek to fish some points and flooded brush. Right off the bat I flipped a jig onto the shady side of a bush and hooked into a couple nice smallmouth and I thought it was going to be real easy. Well it was a couple hours later before catching another on a crankbait. We found the bite to be really slow. I don’t thing we got into any walleye on Friday either.
On Saturday we launch from Prairie Dog by 6am. We fished up by the dam and boated two keepers from an area that had a bunch of current from all the water they were pulling from the lake. After the sun got higher we made a run up near Platte Creek. The smallmouth weren’t biting up there very well either. Wade was able to add our third keeper to the livewell though on a senko. We fished a couple of my favorite rock piles and points up there and boated 4 walleye. Some caught on a Venom Hot Rod on a standup jig head and the others came on a scrounger with a white grub. Two of the walleye were in the 20″ range and the other two were probably over 16″. With time running down in the tournament we headed back to Spring Creek where I hooked a couple the days prior. I flipped my jig in there and caught our 4th fish. We kept hoping to find some smallmouth on deep rocky points, but no luck with that. I did manage to catch our 5th keeper on a crank bait to finish out our day. I think we finished 4th with 7.65 lbs.
Sunday we started at 6am and hit the same area with current early in the morning. We pulled in a few small fish on top water poppers. I don’t recall if we caught keeper there or not. With the slow bite we headed back up Pease Creek. We fished way in back on a flat created by the high water. Caught a few more small fish and stuck a 19″ walleye. After that we headed out and fished some main lake points. I caught 2 more walleye fishing scattered rock piles along the shore on the main lake. Both of them were small in around 15″-16″. We hit Spring Creek again with no luck and headed about half way back and fish a couple coves I really like. With time winding down we pulled in on a point and almost right away I caught a 15″ smallie on a Hot Rod. It seems like we may have pulled in a couple more shorts. We moved to another similar cove and started on a point a caught another keeper on the same thing. After a few more shorts we moved to another point where I caught another keeper on the Hot Rod. By this time we hand one 12.25″ and 3 other smallmouth in the 15″ range and were doing pretty well. With time winding down I hooked into something nice on my scrounger, but it was an 18″ walleye. We just couldn’t get that last keeper in the boat and headed back with 4 fish. We finished in 4th place again with about 6.5 lbs.
We finally got into the smallmouth on the deeper rocky points. Most of the fish came from about 15′ of water. The ones I caught bit on the initial fall. The walleye we caught came from 10-15 feet of water on Sunday and on Saturday I caught them probably in the 15-20 foot zone on deep rock. Even though the smallmouth weren’t cooperating the walleye bite was still really good. It was my 4th trip of the year up to FC and I hope to make it back up a couple more times this year.
