Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Lake Ingrams

Photobucket
Photobucket
Photobucket

Got to go fishing this afternoon for a little while and the fish were biting. I probably caught a total of twenty fish but couldn't really find any size, which is funny considering that the lake is known not for numbers, but size. I caught half of my fish on a Lucky Craft RC 2.5 in Threadfin Shad color from EliteBass.com and the rest of my fish on a white and chartreuse 1/2 oz chatterbait. I had fun on the water today and can't wait to get back out there. Hope everyone has a great and safe new years !

God Bless,

Matt

Matt. 4:18

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Pond Fishing

Joe and I headed to a local pond that we know has at least a couple of fish around 15lbs in it. The same people who helped to make a couple of Ray Scott's ponds, designed this one. Jordan has gone twice before and on one trip caught an 11lb 14oz slaunch and on the second caught an 8 and a 9. OF COURSE the one time we go together we only catch three fish. All of them were over 4 1/2 lbs, but no toads.. oh well, we'll have to wait until next time.
Joe and I are starting to notice that every time we get some warmer weather the fish don't bite as well. I guess because they are stunned just as much as we are that it is 75 degrees at Christmas. We caught our fish on an XR75 and a 10 1/2" Tequila Sunrise colored Zoom worm.



Photobucket
Photobucket


Photobucket
Peace


Matt

Matt. 4:18

Tuesday December, 23rd

Photobucket

Photobucket


Joe and I headed out to Guntersville today hoping to catch some bigger fish. I only got to fish for a couple of hours because I had an orthodontist appointment in Cullman around noon. The wind was brutal. The weather lately has been really unsteady and unpredictable. One day its clear skies and ten degrees and the next its 70 degrees outside but its so foggy you cant see the end of your rod. Anyway... Again I pulled the short end of the stick and Joe caught the toad. It weighed in at 5lbs 4oz. He caught it on a chatterbait in about 5 feet of water. We have one stretch of bank that we have caught over 75lbs of bass off of in about 6 trips in the last month. It's just sick. Joe's toad is pictured below...




Tight Lines,

Matt

Matt. 4:18

Saturday December 20th

Sorry I've put off updating the blog. Last Saturday Joe and I fished the Catoma tournament here locally. There was scattered rain in the forecast for the whole tournament and the high was around 55. We got to our first spot of the morning at around 7 and we found hybrids, spotted bass, and a few largemouth schooling back in a cove. We caught our limit in 15 minutes, but no fish over a couple of pounds. We couldn't believe we were catching schooling fish in the middle of December. It was unreal. We saw some bigger fish come up and boil but we couldn't get them to bite. We spent the next five hours searching for a bigger bite on the rest of the lake and caught nothing to help. The only fish that might have helped, Joe broke off on in a treetop. We spent the last two hours of the tournament fishing the cove we started off in thoroughly. I had probably a three or four pound bass on in the back of a run in but he shook the treble hooks on my crainkbait. Joe decided to head back into the very back of that cove where the current really picked up. He had a five pound bass miss his chatterbait, then lost a fish that he hooked over a laydown. It was just not our day... We ended up with about ten pounds of fish and the winner(Bryan and Adam) had 19.90. We weren't even close...
Tough Day

Tight Lines,

Matt

Matt. 4:18

Friday, December 19, 2008

Rough

Got out to Lake Catoma at around 7. Fished til noon. Only one bite. It was awful. Something happened to that lake since the hard rain we had. Maybe the fish are just dispersed all over the place. The only activity I saw was just random blowups over 40 feet of water... What a draining day. Joe wants to fish the tournament out there tomorrow so I guess we'll see how that goes. I'll keep ya updated.




Tight Lines,

Matt

Matt. 4:18

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Dad's Day To Shine






My dad took off of work today and decided to go fish at Guntersville with me. This is really special for me because he works all the time and I go to school in Birmingham so we hardly ever have time to spend together between just the two of us. It was raining fairly hard this morning at around six and I wanted dad to get a little rest on his day off so we ended up leaving around 7:15. We got to Waterfront at around 8:00. The fog was UNREAL! The visibility on the road was probably 1/8 mile and half of that on the water. We made our way up to our first spot traveling at a blistering speed of 15mph. Not that the fog wasn't bad enough, but we had to constantly dodge floating timber in the middle of the lake. When I say timber I don't mean a stick, but rather a full sized pine tree. With the water being at or a little above full pool, all of the wood and trash from bank moves into the lake. After these hard rains the TVA will open up all of the flood gates which will give Guntersville as much of a current as it will ever have. This is what pulls all of this floating trash to the main channel and down the lake. We finally got to our first spot and began chunking our lipless crankbaits. I caught a small 13" bass to start the morning off as we moved down the bank. A few minutes later dad hooked into his first fish of the morning(2lbs 8oz). Only about ten casts later he caught a 4lb 10oz fish. He was fired up saying that this was probably the biggest fish he's hooked in a while. We fished on down the rest of the bank and I caught one more under. We went through a lull without a bite for about an hour. A duck boat had driven right over the spot where dad caught his fish but I still told dad that I wouldn't be surprised if we caught more fish off of that same spot because the bass out there are so stacked right now. Of course, as soon as we got back to that area dad hooked into a 5lb 12oz hog. I was so pumped that dad had so much fun out there today. I almost felt like I caught all of those fish. Can't wait to hit the water again tomorrow!




Tight Lines,

Matt

Matt. 4:18

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Lake Catoma

Got to go out to a small local lake this morning. I got on the water at around 6:30am and fished until 10:30am. This lake is the drinking source for Cullman. A week ago the lake levels were almost 10-15ft below full pool. This morning the lake was almost a foot over full pool. I thought that the lake levels rising this drastically had to pull some fish up shallow. I had also heard of other people catching bass shallow, so what did I do... Pound the banks. This really paid off.. NOT I ended up catching one fish and missing one. The fish I caught I caught on a Zappu Jighead Inch Wacky from EliteBass.com. The fish I missed was suspended in a treetop sitting in about 10 feet of water. Maybe the bass are still deep.. who knows. We have a tournament out there Saturday so I guess we'll see how that turns out.

I'm making a prediction that soon we will see jigheads like the Zappu Jighead Inch Wacky will almost replace the much used shaky head. To me I believe this wacky rigged worm just entices the bass into striking a little more than the typical weedless rig of the shaky head.

Check out these tungsten jigheads at EliteBass.com. At first glance you might think that the price of these are rather high but all of the purchases contain multiple packs and you will not find these tungsten jigheads for a better price.

Heading out to Guntersville tomorrow with my dad. Not expecting to catch many, but maybe I'll get a bear-man-pig.

Tight Lines,

Matt

Matt. 4:18

Sunday, December 14, 2008

B.I.T.E. Tournament 2

8th Place - $260





A dense fog set in the morning of the tournament which postponed the launch until about 8:30. With a sweet spot in mind that we caught a 7 1/2 off of yesterday, we went into the day knowing we were gonna fish this spot as hard as we could. We got to the spot and Jordan hooked into a 4 1/2 lb bass. We fished pass the spot then immediately came right back to it-another big bass ( 5.90 lbs ). We kept fishing down the 100 yard stretch of bank then turned around to head back toward our 10 yard long honey hole. I hooked into 3 1/2 pounder right when our arrow on the GPS hit the marked spot. We ended up letting the spot rest for about an hour. Without any luck anywhere else we came back to the spot. Jordan caught two 2 1/2 pounders back-to-back to give us somewhere around 18lbs. As the day pushed farther along, the fish size began to decrease. We caught a few more but no big ones. Weigh-in was pushed back to 4:00pm and it was now about 2:30. We decided to go fish fairly close to the place we had launched out of at Goose Pond. Because of the hard rains the days before and the amount of current that the TVA was pulling out the water was really muddy. Visibility was probably under a foot. This didn't help matters. We ended up not catching any more keepers and headed into the weigh-in with a decent bag of fish. When we checked in 20lbs was leading at 17 1/2 was in second. We were in the last flight to weigh-in but the first in our flight. We weighed in with 18.27, holding down second place. After the rest of the flight finished up weighing in we depressingly got pushed down to eighth-last spot in the money. We won $260 so overall we called it a successful day.



We caught our fish on a XCalibur XR50 Sexy Shad Lipless Crankbait. We never set this lure down all day making thousands of casts. It will take a toll on you throwing this in the grass at Guntersville, but with the fish you catch it is very rewarding.




Tight Lines,

Matt

Matt. 4:18


Check out my Home Page

Friday, December 12, 2008

Pre-Fishing for B.I.T.E. Tournament

"COLD!!"
Today was unbelievably cold on the water. With the high being around 40 and 10 mph winds, the wind chill ended up at around 30. If you live up North maybe that is not too harsh, but I'm from Alabama!

Ok .. enough with the weather. After we got to our first spot my brother starting chunking his XCalibur Lipless Crankbait. About twenty minutes into our day he hooked into a toad of a largemouth which is pictured at the bottom of the page. It ended up weighing 7lbs 5oz. What a fish! We left that area soon after because we wanted to save it for the tournament tomorrow. About two more hours into our day we moved out to a creek channel. We started throwing 1oz football jigs at a ledge which went from 5 to 25 feet. All of the sudden we had a double hook up. Joe almost broke his rod reeling in this 10 lb drum. HA. Turns out my fish was a drum too, just not as big. We ended up catching three more fish, including two keepers before noon.



We caught our fish on a XCalibur Crankbait and a small wacky rigged tungsten worm - complements of EliteBass.com

Cross your fingers for the Tournament tomorrow!!!

Tight Lines,

Matt

Matt. 4:18

Friday, November 28, 2008

Catoma Tournament

Jordan and I fished together this morning in a Tournament at our local Lake Catoma. Launch was at 7:00am and weigh-in at 1:30. The morning started off slow, but its was almost 50* which made it really nice out on the water. The fog was awful until about 9:30. Joe caught probably 4 fish in ten minutes sometime around nine on a fat free shad fingerling. I caught a 4lber on a baby bass colored Bomber Fingerling at around 11. The bite today was fairly slow and we ended up weighing in with 11.40. I'm trying to make a trip to Lake Kent tomorrow. This private lake probably averages 6 or 7 lbers. It's gonna be insane.

Tight Lines,

Matt

Matthew 4:18

Thursday, November 27, 2008

Happy Thanksgiving!

My family and I had thanksgiving dinner for lunch today since my brother has a basketball game later tonight. We went out to Lake Catoma-a local lake and the source of Cullman's drinking water- for a little while before sunset. We got in the water at around 1:30. As soon as I picked Jordan up from the bank I made an identical cast to one I had made just a couple of days before. Soon enough I hooked into a 3 pounder out horsed her into the boat. Joe and I continued to fish for a couple of hours but only caught one more. She was a spot at about 1#. It was about 70* out today and it felt awesome. I think joe and I are gonna fish the Catoma tournament in the morning . I'll write an updated post tomorrow night.

Tight Lines,

Matt

Matthew 4:18

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

November 26, 2008

My brother and I got to go to Guntersville today during my first day of Thanksgiving break. We loaded in at around 9:45 at Seabold. We fished a few humps in and around that slough before heading to some bluffs. At the bluffs we caught almost 50 bass in about 10 to 15 feet. The baitfish were holding at that depth and the bass were roaming all around them. We caught most of our fish on a Jackall Flick Shake before moving to some flats to look for bigger fish. We ended up catching just a couple more that were around 4#s before the sun began to set. All in all we had a great day and enjoyed catching so many fish.

Tight Lines,

Matt


--Matthew 4:18

Monday, November 10, 2008

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

College Bass!!

Hank Weldon - Alabama Bass Fishing



MotorGuide Commercial



Bassmaster Bling