Bishop

14 or 15 lbs won with several other large bags. Water temps around mid-lake area between Henderson and Tracy area were 59 main lake and up to 65 in the backs of the smaller cove's. We didnt do so hot once again we were stuck on two keepers. We fished the backs of these smaller pockets and could not catch a keeper even though the temps were 5 degrees warmer than main lake. The two keepers we grabbed late in the tourny on a main lake bank that we knew had a ledge on it that was shallow. We caught them by throwing wacky rigged trick worms at the drop off of the ledge. This was after the third pass by the ledge. We continued fishing it trying to pull a limit out of our wazoo's but it just didnt happen. The other people in the tourny we talked to said they went north from mid-lake which means going back in the river arms that feed the lake. Didn't manage to get a water temp out of em. But they did say the water was quite stained up there. And they managed to catch 10 lbs plus. Im guessing those big bags came from somewhere around that area of the lake. I should have listened to the two fella's that replied to my post about my outing and just headed north looking for the shallowest stained water that would be the warmest possible in the lake. :-[ :-[ No one that we talked to that fished anything short of a full blown multiple mile long creek arm with stained water even had a limit. Needless to say we were fighting high winds big rollers and gin clear water where we were at. Man i gotta learn to listen! lol Edit edit ! The limit on all species was 15 inches for this particular tournament. We easily had a limit if we were able to keep the 12 inch smallies and spot's as in most other tournaments in the area. But Big Largmouths were the ticket for this one!

Something that always works for me in ponds and city lakes is a wacky rigged trick worm. It doesnt seem to matter what time of year it is at all, if you can get it down to their depth they just seem to love that slow fall. If putting your lure in 10 feet of water or less it works a charm. When fishing those types of water I generally just throw it out to a piece of timber or a stump or even just in the middle of the lake and let it fall. If there isnt much to get hung up in on the bottom of the lake such as grass or brush I will often let it sink all the way to the bottom before checking for pressure and then reeling it in and re-casting. A lot of the people that fish those lakes will throw your basic spinnerbait, crankbait, topwater, type of lures at the fish. They have seen them countless times. I think this makes it hard to get much of a bite going on those lures most times, unless you are getting a reaction strike by casting way on past the cover your throwing at and pulling it past pretty fast. I have also had decent luck with a fluke. At one point in time I was taking a power worm and texas rigging it *edit* weightless *edit* and just throwing it out as far as i could and setting down on the bank and waiting, I would let it sink for a long long long time then check my bait for pressure and then rinse, lather, and repeat. They seem to love the slow fall and least disturbing presentation. I rarely ever take "common" or "popular" lures to those types of lakes. That being said sometimes a buzzbait will just slay em. As will any number of other lures. It is just my personal opinion that the more finesse/stealthy/natural your lure and presentation the better it is for heavily pressured public access ponds etc. And if the spot your fishing from is a nice clean easily accesibly stretch of bank that everyone and their brother walks up to and sets in their lawn chair throwing bobbers with crickets or live worms as bait with lil kids running around playing i would say its very possible that most of the bass are spooked off of that area most of the time. Try fishing there at night if that seems to be the case. Thats what I would try if a boat was not an option.

Thanks for the info stratos. I will definitely try this out this upcoming weekend. I had noticed the difference in water temp from my skimmer on the back of the boat and the trolling motor temp sensor but I always attributed it to differences in calibration or something. Learn something new every day!

Interesting!! So the surface temp alone does not dictate what the fish out on the main lake might be thinking about. You have to factor in the temp at depth to a degree. Since these fish live fairly deep to begin with. Thanks for the info! P.S. Sorry Glen didnt mean to make you have extra work moving my post Lesson learned

Same thing here in Arkansas. Their have been reports of these things in the drainage ditches in the southern parts of the state. Evidently they were imported into a stock pond for a fish farmer or farmers at some point. Little did they know these fish are able to breath air for short periods of time and can migrate over land to other bodies of water. The game and fish commission is going nuts over them and wants immediate reports if one is found so that they can exterminate them immediately.

That was a great thing you did for your dad, the lake house, boat and taking him fishing. It shows just what an impression he made on you. He must have been one hell of a man and someone i would have loved to meet. People like that are few and far between my friend. For one of them to have been your father should make you proud. And for a man like that to have a son that would do something like that for his dad. Well, i would be the proudest man on earth if my son ended up doing something like that for me one day. I would feel i had done good in the world by helping to raise someone like that. His passing is sad but from what you told us here i imagine he was very proud of the children he raised and it sounds like he lived his life to the fullest. Taking little ones fishing is one of the greatest things a man can do i firmly believe that. My prayers and condolences to you and your family.

I know it will probably be hard to give me much of an answer (or maybe not) from the limited amount of information i can provide in a post but here goes anyway! I fished norfork lake arkansas last weekend and we did not do so hot. We were pre-fishing the lake for a tournament we are going to try and fish this upcoming weekend. Work wont allow us to pre-fish any during the week. I wish i could fish more during the week but i just cant. We caught about 50 *read as 30 lol* fish all day long, most were below the 15 inch limit across all species of bass *spots, blacks, and smallies that will be implemented for this tournament. We had 2 keepers for the day that totaled 5.9 lbs on my scales. We generally fished our lures in 10 feet of water or less. Reason being the water temperature is approaching 60 degrees and I figured they should be starting to move shallower. Obviously that didnt work out to well for us. We fished main lake point's that were very long and shallow, we fished deeper main lake points that dropped off fairly quickly. We also fished points in a few larger creek arms. We also fished some pocket's and cove's as well. All the while catching loads and loads of short fish. Granted some of the fish we caught were 14.5 inches and weighed 2 to 2.5+ lbs, the fish are extremely healthy this year *for my area and lake* due to last years ultra high water levels and flooding. We did not catch the 2 keepers till towards the end of the day. One came from what i can best describe as a small creek arm in a bay. Very small as creek arms go no more than 300 yards or less to the main bay and it only had 1 or 2 channel bends. This creek arm is not a running creek, more of just small cleft in the mountainous area this lake is built on. The keeper came from within sight of the back of the creek. Depth in the middle of the channel was probably 15 to 20 feet. Depth of the caught fish was probably 5 feet, he was under a rock. The water is ultra clear and this fish came from no-where, musta been under a rock. The second keeper came from a small "cut" at the end of a bluff wall that dropped off into 100 feet of water within a boatlength of shore. This cut was around the "point" that the bluff came to on the northern end and the water immediatly shallowed up to a small pocket about 15 feet deep in the middle and a very small 1-3 foot deep shelf in the back. On one end of the pocket it continued up into relatively shallow water of 15 to 20 feet with an island just off the next point. So basically it was a transition from a bluff to a *kinda* flat. This second keeper was caught in the extreme back of this pocket. Then we had to leave This lake is (my figures may be off by a little here hopefully not much as the info came from a website about the lake) 30,000 acres of surface area with 300 miles of shoreline. The maximum lake depth is around 200 feet. Depths out in the "middle" are routinely 60 to 100 feet. Even in the larger creek arms which can run for miles it can be 60 feet or even deeper in the channels. Water temperatures the week before the weekend i fished were around the high 40's low 50's at sun up, warming to between 55 and 60 at the end of the day according to the local marina. We had alot of storms and a cold front blow through during the weekend. This week we are seeing bluebird skies and air temperatures of 70 to 80 degree's for the high, lake wind advisories are posted as well. Water temps from what the tackle store is telling me are holding much closer to 60 degree's during the night now and warming up above 60 during the day and changing fast. We are expecting 80 degree temps for the next 4 days here. SO!!!! after reading that wall of text *sorry heh* my question is should i focus more on the extreme back's of pockets in my upcoming fishing trip this weekend, and hit alot of small shallow pockets? Or should I try for some main lake fish? Hoping the water temperatures coming up will get some of the actual "keepers" coming up shallow on the main lake areas getting ready to spawn? OR do you guys feel I would be more productive trying to fish somewhere deep and catch fish in "transition" areas? Also why did the 2 biggest fish of the day come from the backs of pockets? Is there a reason biologically for that? *clarification* *I would have thought there would be keeper fish even on the main lake in shallow water with the surface temps the way they were* The surface temp's were fairly uniform in all the places we fished that day after the sun actually got high. 57 to 59.7 degrees. So it wasnt like those pockets were 8 degrees warmer. Does 2 or 3 degrees make that big of a difference? Sorry for making such a big post but i see every time anybody makes a post asking for advice it seems they never give enough information and get asked for more and i wanted to try and get it right the first time. If i need to look for these transition areas i will have to enlist some more aid! As i can understand alot of the stuff i read on the forum's in relation to other *relatively* shallower bodies of water. But i find it hard to relate to the types of water i fish. ie I can see how a 2 foot ditch running through a flat could be good on a flat that is 7 to 10 feet deep but how do i relate that when we dont have any actuall "flats" on this lake? Just long shallow main lake points? By shallow i mean that when your 50 or 60 yards out from the bank its *ONLY* 20 feet deep. And the drop is usually a fairly quick steady descent into the oblivion of the main lake. There are drop off's but they tend to be dramatic like 40 feet plus underwater bluff's. I'm sorry i probably ended up asking alot more questions than i originally intended. Any and all replies will be appreciated. Even ones asking for more info even though your eyes probably hurt after reading this ...if you managed to make it that far lol. Thanks in advance. EDIT- I hope I wasnt supposed to put this in the "tournament" subforum. Oops if so.

Thanks all for the greets!

Personally I like to use a 4 inch Yum Forked Dinger on a spot remover most of the time. It seems that in my area most of the strikes come on the bottom instead of the fall quite often, when this is the case I prefer the forked dinger. It is short enough that as long as you dont "crawl" it over the bottom, instead making semi sharp "popping" motions it will stand veritcal on the bottom if you land on a semi-level spot when it falls. I feel like one of the plus's to this bait is that when you hit bottom on that first drop you can take your slack up with your rod tip just untill you actually feel the bait and then immediately slacklining it. This creates a very subtle flick of the tail without actually moving the bait on the bottom any meaningfull distance. This approach usually works the best for me. I find myself very often getting bit on the first wiggle or hop after hitting bottom. This could indicate that if I changed my bait style or weight up a bit I might get bit much sooner on the fall instead but it probably just seems more effective to me because I like fishing like this. I may be missing strikes on the fall with this setup for one reason or the other. Either the yum bait falling too fast or too slow. I have not actually sat down and tested between Dinger and a Zoom finesse worm the actual fall rate. However, if my partner or other fishermen have reported that they have been getting bit on the fall around docks and pole timber over anything other than shallow water, my go to shakey head bait is something smaller than the Yum dinger/senko type baits such as a zoom finesse worm or anything comparable. For some reason I just seem to do better with this bait when everyone else is catching fish on the fall. A little info on the type of waters I normally fish this way. Greer's Ferry & Norfork lakes 1. Alot of the standing timber we fish with this is setting in between 20 and 40 feet of water. 2. Most of the Dock's are in the 10/12 foot range all the way up to 50 or 60 feet deep on bluff walls. 3. Most often the water is EXTREMELY clear. 4. I believe the maximum depth of these lakes is between 250 and 300 feet. 5. No vegetation to speak of in the above. Mostly boulder,pea gravel, clay, chunk rock bottoms. P.S. I tried to keep my post coherent but I'm dealing with 2 hungry kids and trying to fry some sausage for them at the moment so I might have failed miserably. Hope this helps some.

Howdy guys, just registered a day or so ago. Really liked the video interviews (I hardly ever watch TV so its great to be able to find stuff on the web) and all of the posts from you guys i have read so far seem to be great. I'm looking forward to having a place to post without having to wear a fire suit in order to read any responses ;D. I fish mainly Arkansas waters of course- White river from Mtn. View down to Newport, Norfork lake, Greer's Ferry, Beaver lake and Bull Shoal's Sparingly. Been Bass fishing since i was old enough to sling a spinnerbait on my snoopy pole I've been hooked ever since i was about 6 years old and caught a Black at the local city pond and my Granny cooked it for me...only bass i have ever eaten actually. So here i am 20 years later still goin at it. Just wanted to say hello to the community o/