Wired2Fish on Location at Guntersville Lake

3/22/2010 3:16:13 PM

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We're (Terry and Jason) down on Lake Guntersville working on product reviews, on-the-water videos, photography for the photo library. The long-range forecast looks great with temperatures in the 70s. This morning, however we were greeted with brutal below freezing wind chills, sleet, ice and snow on the lake. On top of that we faced 15-20 mph winds.

It rained all day yesterday, and water temps have peaked today at 53 degrees. It's cold and nasty and this is the blowing cold day in a frontal system. Tomorrow will be much warmer and sunnier. But today we had the idea that the fish would pull back off to deeper water with the brutal conditions. The water is churned and muddy up shallow, the rain is freezing and the fish we thought would be in a foul mood.

We decided to start on a road bed in about 10 feet of water offshore targeting it with lipless crankbaits. We fished the road bed and point from 10 feet to 4 feet of water for about 30 to 45 minutes. The wind and waves were brutal and holding the boat in position was hard. We felt like it would take a lot of time and effort to find groups of fish along that roadbed. So we made a change.

We moved to a series of points where the creek channel swung close. This gave the fish deep water access close by and some points to move up and feed on when the mood struck. They proved us right. We caught a bunch of smaller bass on Spro McStick and Lucky Craft Pointer DD jerkbaits. We missed a few fish early but we caught them fairly steady given the amazingly cold conditions.

About mid-day, I picked up the jig and started fishing it down the points. I hooked up with a 3 1/2-pounder pretty quick. About 15 minutes later I hooked into a big one. Terry netted the bass and we put her in the livewell to recuperate before a couple quick photos. The beautiful bass went 5 pounds, 8 ounces. About 5 minutes later, Terry was asking for the net. He had picked up an Omega Football jig with a Strike King Ragetail chunk. He pulled the bass boatside, and I netted her. This fish pulled the scale down to 7.1 pounds. So now we had about 16 pounds in 3 fish. We hit another three pounder and a four pounder in short order and lost another big fish.

So on a day when we probably should have just stayed in and worked on the website, we hit a five bass limit that weighed 23 1/2 pounds. This is just day one of our trek to Guntersville. We'll update more this evening and each day as well as share a few photos and tips we learn along the way.

Today's lesson for us was looking for where we thought the bass would move to when it warms up. We backed out from there and just fished slow with a jerkbait and jig. Pretty simple idea but it's great when a plan comes together.