Old Hickory

[site admin]

As reported, the outing had some tough fishing, but there were several very nice stripers caught. Kudo's to John Bales for doing his interpretation BEFORE he got on the water. Stripers are channel oreintatted, so best structures would be those along the main channel. John saw this long (.75 miles) hump in the middle of the channel. Guess where ALL the stripers were caught at the outing? Yep! The hump. Just goes to show you how important it is to do your homework BEFORE you get on the water.

[Garry B]

Has the guideline changed ? Mr. Perry said that for a structure to be productive, it had to lead all the way from the deep to the shallows. My eyesight is not very good anymore, but I don't see any water 10 foot or less on this hump. What am I missing ?

Thank you,
Garry

[CHAMP]

No the guideline has not changed. But you should recall he also states a hump such as this may be used by fish that migrate. For fish such as these it is a break,they will use it during there migrations. Also if you find a hump such as this that is related to good structure you may even at times catch largemouth bass on it. I was there to catch largemouth bass so I mainly concentrated on the feeder cuts entering main river channel. had some success
but no big bass 2.5 lb was the biggest bass I caught doing this. Also caught small strippers ,drum, catfish, saugeye . I only made 1 pass on the hump and caught a 10lb. flathead. But by being their the entire week I learned things about my fishing . Most importantly that trolling truly is your teacher. I went there with preconceived notions that the feeder cuts would be the way to really catchem. But one morning where I launched up in a creek there was good grass beds so I used a buzzbait for maybe 45 mins. took 6 good bass biggest being 4 plus lbs. But told myself I was their to catchem on the feeder cuts didn't do this anymore,maybe big mistake. On the last morning I again launched up in a creek so decided to troll a 250 made one pass around this creek took 3 nice bass on bluff banks. Also this creek had 2 good summer type structures fished both hard no fish. So not only will trolling learn you the makeup of the lake it will locate the fish for you.

[John Bales]

Hi Champ. Buck is talking about the largemouth bass when talking about the humps that must come to at least ten feet for them to use them. David is also right about you may catch an occasional LM on this hump maybe after a severe front or in the winter months. The best thing about having a few good spoonpluggers around you is that they can help you eliminate the fishing waters. After a day and a half, in talking with the guys and including what we did, I committed to this area of the hump. All of the stripers including Brett's were at the south end of the hump on the sides very close to the deepest water and this is also where the best and depest breaklines existed. Deb and I caught 5 fish in 3 1/2 days but a couple were the right ones. I could get hooked on those stripers real easy. John