Tom Kelly with some good ones caught yesterday.
The lake level is 563.84 and has dropped 2-inches in the last 24-hours with continuous generation. The White River at Newport is at 24-feet and dropping steadily. I found some 49 degree water yesterday in the warm sunshine but it dropped quickly as the sun set. It started out at 46 degrees. Bink invited me to go fishing with him in his new boat. I had not seen it before. It is a Ranger and very nice with a new Motorguide trolling motor with anchor and remote and new Lowrance state of the art Locators. It can fish five people comfortably. It makes my equipment look prehistoric. You get your money's worth when you go on a guided trip with him. We left out of Quarry marina about 10:AM and started to look for walleye. We could not catch any keepers to we started grubbing for bass. No good ones there either so we were forced to go to open water for white bass and hybrids. The thing that was noticiable was the low numbers of shad schools. We did find quite a few in Diamond Bay but only a few active fish so we tried Frog Pond with no bait fish there at all. It was more of an exploration trip as he was locating fish for some customers this weekend. It looks like it is Big Creek for him. Yes he did outfish me. We were using the 1/2 ounce spoon and stingray grub. The grub was not working at all. I went out in Blackburns creek area after we came in and fished for Bass and crappie and caught a few at sunset. There are just not a lot of fish on the bank or on brush. The ones that I am finding are in 45-feet of water just outside brush in this area. The open water fish Bink found were in 80-feet of water 40 or 60 feet down and that was fairly consistent. He caught one bass on the bottom in 80-feet of water. It is not easy to catch fish now. Open water fishermen (I am not one) are either feast or famine. Some are going out two ore three days and catching nothing and then find a school of feeding fish and load the boat. You will not see a report when they fail. Tom Kelly was fishing the Float Creek area and caught some nice crappie and some short walleye. At least some walleye are showing up. He is a good fisherman. His fish were also outside brush piles in 35-40-ft. of water. He uses the 1/2 ounce spoon and finesse worms now.
