Late August Pool 10 Pad Fishing

Just got back from five great days of fishing pool 10. Despite the water level, being at one of it’s lowest points, the fishing was good. On Friday, my brother and I hit main channel spots that had rock and current on them. The fish came on shad colored crankbaits, I am finally seeing a good quanitiy of shad. The fish in the picture are good 2 lb. fish.

Saturday and Sunday proved to be difficult fishing. We caught a lot of smaller fish, but the bigger fish were hard to come by. Sunday night however proved to be successful. We found several areas of lily pads that had the adequte depth, clarity, and forage base that the bass were looking for. These areas over the next few days gave my brother and I some great fishing, not only for numbers of fish, quality fish as well. Here is my brother with a good 3 lb. that hit an RC Tackle buzzbait on the pad edge.

Monday morning we hit a few spots on the channel looking for some smallmouth and along with the small ones, was this nice 3 lb. fish that nailed a Chug Bug. The 2.5 lb. largemouth in the picture hit a white Scum Frog, in the pads areas.

Hitting these pads again for one final day, before heading back to school, proved to be a great aftenoon and evening of fishing. The average fish we caught out of this area was in the 14 to 15 inch range. The best fish of the day and of the week was a bass that was just uner 4 lb., along with it is a nice 3 lb. Looking back over these days on the water, it took some thinking and searching but the reward was great. The three keys to these areas were vegetation (pads), depth (3-5 ft.), forage (shad). With in these pad fields, certain areas were holding more fish than other areas, such as points, indentations, etc. The frogs we were using were primarily white or brown Scum Frog’s and Mann’s Swimmin Frogs.