Pickwick Lake handed me my best bag of the 2014 FLW season


Fishing blog for

Thursday, June 5, 2014

Posted By: Chris

Location: Pickwick Lake

Species: Bass

Total fish caught: 7

 
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  • Pickwick smallie
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Posted on 4/21/2023 5:20:24 AM

Ahhh, Pickwick Lake. After fishing this lake while practicing for the 2014 FLW tournament, I quickly fell in love with it. There aren't many lakes in the world where you can catch world-class largemouth, smallmouth, and spotted bass in one place, and I caught the trifecta many of the times I fished there. The pic you see here is one of the smallies I caught while out practicing on my own. It's not a monster but it's pic worthy to me because I don't catch a lot of these bronzebacks usually.

Day 1 I'm paired with Alabama pro Clent Davis. We had never met before but I found Clent to be a super friendly guy. I had a modest day of fishing but did better the next day thanks to Clent's advice. I only managed 2 keepers and I think Clent could tell I was a little disappointed, so he mentioned using a shaky head more from the back of a boat. I'm a shaky head angler if I'm anything, so I took that to heart.

And then I remembered something... I'm on the Tennessee river. There's another lake on that river that I have more experience on and it's Lake Guntersville, and one thing I knew about the G is that I've done pretty well with a "power shaky head" before. What I mean by that is a big worm on a big jighead. So I threw on my Guntersville special in preparation for day 2.

Day 2 I get paired up with one of the current members of the Major League Fishing broadcast crew, J.T. Kenney. When JT and I launched we ran pretty far down river and stopped on one of those typical summer ledge spots. We had another competitor show up to fish the same area, but that's nothing unusual for ledge fishing. We start fishing and I find out that the power shaky head was a good call. I started loading the livewell, and by the time we left that spot I had 4, if not 5 in the box. I think JT may have had one fish at that point but by the end of the day he almost caught up. He had us on good spots and I was lucky enough to catch my biggest bag of the year, around 13 lbs that day, but still didn't cash a check because of a poor day 1.

One thing I didn't mention was that Clent and I ran into one of those crazy summer pop-up storms and we had to get off of the water for a minute on the way back to weigh-in. No harm, no foul. The next day, while JT and I are fishing, there's another batch of storms brewing. He turns around and says to me "Dude, your rod's buzzing!". I couldn't hear it myself, but I knew what it was, and so did JT. You're too close to a storm when that's happening, and it's looking for a place to throw some lightning. So again, we had to get off of the water for a few minutes because we had a wicked storm open up right on top of us.

If you're ever out fishing and you can feel a rod vibrating, or if someone can hear it humming, there's a storm close and you might need to move. If you make a cast and your line just sorta floats in the air instead of laying down, it's probably time to move. No amount of fish or money is worth risking your life, and all those things are happening because a storm is looking for the next place to strike. I think I can speak for both myself and JT when I say: the only way I want to Ride The Lightning is by listening to some old Metallica. Rock on \m/

Catch Details
#1 - Smallmouth Bass - 2lbs 10ozs
Depth Caught: 14ft
Bait: 1/2 oz jig with paca craw
#2 - Largemouth Bass - 3lbs 0ozs
Depth Caught: 15ft
Bait: mag trick worm (grn pmp) on 3/4oz Strike King football jig
Notes: All largemouth caught on this on day 2.
Fishing Conditions

Sky Conditions:   Mostly CloudyMostly Cloudy

Air Temp:  72-90 ℉

Water Clarity:  Stained (3-8ft visibility)

Wind Speed:  3-8 mph


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