Triton_Mike

Man this post is still kicking!!! Can you say SPOT FORUM!! . I know for a fact nobody from Florida responded so no need for a recount

Ditto!!!

Kinda sorta. Depends on how you do a crankbait hookset?? Everyone has their own method. The video is how a dropshot reel set is done. Mike

Here is a video that I did last year on how to do the "Reel Set". I hope it helps

Water Temp 57-62 Water Clarity clear to stained Water Level 4.57ft low Fishing is pretty good especially on numbers, Water is mostly stained in the vicinity of the dam area. The rest of the lake is fairly clear. I have spent the last 3 days on the water pretty much sun up to almost sun down. Things are changing daily as we are transitioning from Post Winter to Pre Spring. There is always a lull for me between the two seaons which scatters the fish out a good bit before they concentrate again. Mon and Tuesday the hybirds were going NUTZ at first light. LIterally I believe we had a SOLID MILE of boiling hybrids on top for atleast an hour and a half to two hours. At the end of both of those topwater marathons I was POOPED but my guys had a blast on Monday! I started with a fresh Sammy 100 and by the end of day 2 I had to change out my hooks and I had a one eyed sammy. See video. The bass fishing part of Mon and Tuesday after the hybrid marathon was on the tough side since it was just prior to the full moon and I was trying for pigs. We did get quite a few jerkbait bites up above victoria in the short pockets. I also got three bull shad spots yesterday and all three were in the vicinity of 3 lbs (See hockeyruss's report). I did manage one big striper during the search for the big heads. Then today with the full moon I had a trip with Bill and we were planning on a three peat of the Hybrid fest which was a total dissapointment. After today I am totally convinced the full moon has an effect on the hybrids. I've seen it too many times especially in the summer where prior to a full moon they are balls to the walls then the day of the full moon POOF. Anyway, While we waited for the no show hybirds Bill caught this nice spot on a wounded spook. Shortly after we saw a trickle of hybrid activity and we got 2 hybrids on topwater then 3 more on jerkbaits. After leaving the no show hybrids we went searching for spots. I went back to an area that I fished on Monday which was FULL of bait. It almost looks like they were spawning in the back of the cove there were so many shad, but on Monday there was very little fish except for one lone 3lb spot caught on the bull shad. I figured surely after 2 days some fish have found all of the shad and I was right they were exploding on the shad back in the shallows. Bill got 10 fish on 10 consecutive casts on the jerkbait then caught another 10 more throwing at the boiling fish. Then right before we left I went to one of my ace in the hole spots and Bill had a 4lb head on his wounded spook and lost her. He casted about 10 more times and lost a 3lb spot in the same hole. After a few more casts he changed to another rod with a jerkbait and numerous casts with no luck. I threw the bull shad in there and got the 4lb Head on the first cast oops!!. Throughout the rest of the day after I dropped Bill off I threw the bull shad a good bit and got a few decent spots in the mix, but the highlight of the day was by far the jerkbait. Ricky K and I kept texting back and forth keeping in touch and Ricky found 2 good schools of fish busting shad and invited me to play (thanks Ricky). One of the schools Ricky found it kept everything we had to keep the boat from blowing us into the school of fish but we both got atleast 10 fish a piece out of our last school which was a mixture of whites and spots all on jerkbaits. I was using a pointer 100 in Table Rock Shad and Ricky was using a BIG Flashminnow 130 (unknown color??). BTW Ricky how many small fish did you get on that "big" jerkbait ;D. The jerkbait bite is doing very well. They key ingredients here is relatively short pockets with shad in them. If you see shad it's not a matter of IF but when it will hold fish so keep checking back often to those areas. Mike

I was piddling around with my Side Imaging today and got some interesting shots that I thought I were cool and that I would share. This first picture is a school of crappie within a brushpile/tree top. Here is another angle of the same pile/crappie I thought I knew were all of the under water bulk heads were located. Well I found another one. To my knowledge there are 7 bulkheads on Allatoona. Here is the 7th one I have found. Actually there are 8 bulkheads but there is one bulkhead that is silted in pretty bad so technically there are 8 bulkheads that I have found thus far. You can see the creek channel going in between the 2 bulk heads. YOu can also see feeder creeks ajoining the creek channel at the bottom of the picture. Here is a picture showing the blow out at the end of a boat ramp. YOu can clearly see the end of the ramp and there is a hole at the end of the ramp that looks like a hot tub. Fish LOVE these blow outs at the end of the ramps. Good place for released fish from tournaments to hang out Some of these blow outs can be as much as 5 feet high/deep. They are nothing but a pile of rock pebbles piled in a mound This last picture is just a feature that I found while playing with my SIde imaging. If you put your cursor over one of the camera images it displays a smaller version of the picture taken at that location. The picture HAS to be on your memory card for it to display. Remember when viewing Side Images that a shadow typically means HEIGHT or areas that show no return so you can get an idea how big the structure is based on a Side Image. If you need to know 100% for sure how tall a piece of structure is you can always run over it with your sonar to get a better idea. Here is one last image to show you how you can use shadows to interpret what you are seeing. Below is a picture of 2 schools of fish. By looking at the shadows that these schools emit you can tell if they are near the bottom or totally suspended. It's kinda like the flashlight theory. If you hold your hand close to a wall and turn on your flashlight. The closer the shadow is to the wall the closer your hand is to the wall and vice versa. Same thing with Side Imaging you can get a pretty good idea on the depth level of the fish by looking at the shadows that these schools of fish emit. Mike

AHA!! There's another vote!! . 2000 more to go

No I knew there was a smallie forum and I griped 2 years ago when I saw it. Just thought it would be time to gripe again . Can't hurt to ask. Besides you guys only have a palsy 803 posts LOL. You'd think with all the sneaux and ice you'd have more posts. Think of it this way Moderators . Bass Resource would be the ONLY forum that has a Spotted Bass forum. Well besides my personal forum that is . How's that for exclusiveness BTW I know we have members from all over. Do we have enough South Eastern folks on board? Mike

They do take over a fishery no question about it. Spots range South East all the way to Missouri. YOu also have a concentration of them in California. States that I have caught spots in are Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana (few but some). Texas has a very small population, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Kentucky and I am sure you will see them scattered slightly in surrounding states. Most of the Spots here in GA are North of Central GA. However some of those lakes south of Atlanta are picking up spots now.. In 10 years or less they will be 80+ percent spots. Once you get spots in your lake they will literally take it over. West Point used to be a Largemouth factory. Now yOur looking at 50/50 heads and spots. Lanier used to be heavy on Largemouth. It's now 90% spots. LIke I said they will kill your smallmouth and largemouth population as the smaller spots can be extremely aggressive. Some people hate them but I love catching them SCHOOL BUS sized ones . To me they are the ultimate challenge and require a huge array of tactics and techniques to catch them ie deep, shallow, suspended etc etc. Don't get me wrong I love fishing for Largemouth but I like fishing for SPOTS more . To me a 6lb spot is about the equialent of a Teener Largemouth in our parts atleast. Mike

Oops! If Whitten is targeting them, there must others, too. It seems that we found them schooling at the mouth of a tributary creek in June last year or the year before. There were three of us in the boat so we kept 15, but probably caught 25-30 apiece. Amazingly, every fish came from the same cookie cutter, the size of each fish did not vary more than a few ounces. So, I'm busted...I have fished for them, too. I suspect Mike Whitten's interest is for tournament fishing, especially on a slow day. Kentucky bass count and although you're chances of a big fish are slim, they seem to be found in schools. Quick limit? Makes sense to me. 8-) Actually he was telling me about 7lbers being caught in Bay Springs?? I think a few of those will put a dent in the scales Kent I forgot you live on the wrong side of Tennessee .

+1

Dinks and spots belong on the same board anyway they are both the same size. Just call it the spot/dink board. ;D I will admit to fishing for spots sometimes but thats just because GA is about to break the WR for spotted bass and I wouldn't mind having a WR. A 10 pound spot is the only one worth catching. If Georgia broke the record, California would have it back in a year. I would put money on it. Yeah AFTER you steal some more of our genetically bred throrughbred spots and feed them trout..

Dinks and spots belong on the same board anyway they are both the same size. Just call it the spot/dink board. ;D I will admit to fishing for spots sometimes but thats just because GA is about to break the WR for spotted bass and I wouldn't mind having a WR. A 10 pound spot is the only one worth catching. Who asked yoU!!! LOL ;D Go back to the Johnboat and dink sized swimbait forum where you belong. LOL. Thats another forum we need. SWIMBAITS!!!! Dink Swimbaits for Randall and massive sized for everyone else

AHA!!! Somebody does agree with me. Gene listen to step dad and make us a spotty forum so we can teach nofizzle how to fish the Float N Fly for SPOTS on 4lb line!!!! How ya doing Clipper .

sniff sniff . You have to admit they aren't as lazy as them couch tater fish you catch and lord knows they give up too easily too

and It takes a BOMB to offend me. But we got a Smallmouth forum and no SPOTTED BASS FORUM?????? What in hades is wrong with that picture LOL. You can't have one without the other it's just plain wrong in so many ways . Can we vote?? Thumb rassle? hand game (rock, paper, scissors??) Gene and Kent you guys live in Spot Country say something to the fearless leader .

I'm not so sure I'd call the technique boring and low production?? Most tournaments this time of year on my home lake are won with the Float N Fly or atleast in part. Don't let that little fly fool you it will slap kill the BIG spots when nobody else is catching them. I kinda start waking up when it takes you 7-8minutes to land a 4 to 5lb fish. Lots of fun!! Mike

Fishing is really heating up on Allatoona as of late. Earlier in the week the numbers of small fish were really good on crankbaits inside the creeks. I was using a Flat Mini DR in peacock color working rocks and breaklines on the flats. I still feel that the bigger fish are still main lake oriented. Yesterday I got out with my friend Brian Leiva to do some float N Fly fishing as he has never done it. We caught fish right at the start and it got a little slow but ended up very strong for us. There was no real pattern other than covering as much water as thorough as possible with the Float N Fly. Our leader lenghts varied between 8 and 12 feet and I was using 8lb Triple Fish Fluorocarbon line on my setup. With the post frontal conditions we had we got quite a few lift bites from the fish so be sure to pay good attention to how your bobber is acting on the surface. I found today that the cadence or lack thereof was extremely important. I did a lot of dead sticking today and very subtle twitches to get the fish to react. All of my fish were caught on custom flies (Lester Flies) tied by David Lester of Natures Tackle Box in Hiram, Ga. All in all we had about 10 fish for the day and our best 5 went roughly 13lbs. Pic enclosed is the 2 best fish of the day.

Glenn, If you would have worn your hat a litttttttllleee bit lower you would have seen bassresource.com . I saw it before seeing this post and I said gee thats Glenn? Whats he doing on there LOL. Mike

BTW, If you want a better video quality of the 25.1 fish I saved this link that was made about her shortly after Dottie died. http://mfile.akamai.com/12922/wmv/vod.ibsys.com/2008/0511/16227749.200k.asx

The book sowbelly is a joke. I know Mike Long threw Burke out of the boat when they fished together as all he was interested in was dirt. If you want a good book get Bill Murphy's book. Mike

Water Temp 44 Water Clarity Clear I got out with a group of guys on Carters from Habersham, GA today wanting to learn the Float N Fly. We started off a little slow but about mid day things started looking pretty good. After a few basic pointers and tips I stuck Aubrey with my favorite go to color fly and he stuck 10 of the 13 fish that we caught all on David Lesters "Spot Candy" colored custom fly (courtesy of Natures Tackle Box in Hiram, GA). I went through my box trying to find something else that they would hit. I tried Punisher, tiny flukes, Gulp, and other different colored flies but nothing I could find could out produce the "Spot Candy" fly. I finally just gave Aubrey the trolling motor and watched him whack 15lbs + of spots all by his loneseome self. All I did today was play net and camera man. We varied our leaders a good bit but 10ft seemed to be the ticket for us and the fish seemed somewhat scattered but when you caught one you usually got another 2 or 3 in the same area. It was pretty much a cover water deal today. Here are a few pics of the day. Group Photo Aubrey with his nice Carters Mag SPOT! About halfway through fighting his big spot.. Almost ready LOL.

Landsurveyor and Allatooner. Glad to see some local guy son here. We got a few of us . I hope your West Point T went well Mike

Just to be honest I work for Triple Fish International as the prostaff and marketing director so I don't want to have a hidden agenda here. The one thing I have learned over the years from my position at Triple Fish as well as talking to a good bit of other line companies in the industry is there is a huge love/hate relationship with fluorocarbon lines. You either love some brands and hate others and it literally goes through all of the line companies. As one of the guy that gets most of the customer service emails I see all ends of it and I do know that from my contacts with other line companies they also get more complaints on fluoro than any other type of line. There are alot of companies that are reformulating their fluoro to have a little more stretch which actually increases it's strength but it comes with the cost of decreases it's sensitivity which is one of the primary advantages of using fluoro to begin with. So there's a catch 22 with fluoro. Thats why you see companies coming out with several put ups of 100% fluoro. To be honest we have reformulated once on those smaller diameters lines mentioned above. As for the camo lines. They are as bomb proof as steel door. Some of the biggest names in the swimbait industry trust our Camo lines to throw their high dollar ($200.00 +) swimbaits with many of them on that World Record hunt. Here is a nice spot I got on 2lb Triple Fish fluoro on the last day of 2008