Dale Hollow guys

Hey Shake, glad to find everybody still around. Got back from DH Sunday and went to the old site, and couldn't figure out what was up. Anyway, the weather Thursday and Friday was rough. Being a DH rookie, I threw everything I had at 'em and came up empty for the smallies, so we resorted to chasing the crappie. Glad we did. BIG crappie down there, especially for a lake that gets no recognition for it's slab fishing. We slayed the slabs . Caught some biggins too. Biggest was 17 inches. My scale broke, so I'm not sure on weights of anything we caught, but I have pics. I'll post them if I can figure out how to get the Picture Cd to work on my computer. I haven't bought a digital camera yet, but it may happen soon. We finally got into some smallies on day two, but sad to say we had to go to live shiners and minnows to find them. Maybe it's just my technique, but I didn't get a strike on any lures, other than the crappie I caught on jigs. Caught some nice smallies, no monsters. Largest one in our boat was 20", again, scale is shot There were four boats that went with us, and the big smallie of the trip was 23 inches, and the guy tried to tell us it was 7 lbs. Not sure since I didn't see it in person. Looked good in the picture though. All in all, not a bad trip. I defintiely look forward to making several more in the future. I recommend anyone who goes down spend at least a little time fishing for some crappie. You won't regret it. If for nothing else than dinner.

 

Ok I joined, now gimme the low down on what I need to do to catch some smallies and crappies.
Sounds like you had a good time down therer SS. Way to go.
Fletch

 

Hey guys -

Two days and we are down there!!!! ShakeDown, you were down there so early I bet they weren't fatten up yet. Last year I caught one that was 21.25 inches and it was 6.4 pounds, shaped like a football. I wouldn't be surprised if a 23 incher went 7lbs.

Slabslayer, great job adjusting to the conditions. Really cool to hear about the crappie, we would love to find some!!! But now you know why we moved our trip back to mid April. You gotta have water near 60 to get them to hit lures, at least that has been our experience. I read a post on fishin.com that said this has been one of the toughest years down there. I wonder if that is due to the cold temps again?

 

Fletch, glad to see you made it here. I tried the other site to see if I could find you there, but with no luck. Shake, I agree with your view of the so called 7 pounder my buddy caught. I would like to use his formula, whatever it may be, to guestimate fish I catch Anyway, I fished out of Starpoint, in the far eastern part of the lake. We caught all of the crappie in one cove. Jolly Creek. It's southwest of starpoint, on up the Obey River. If you're in that part of the lake, Fletch, I can put you on the exact spot. It's about 2/3rds of the way back in Jolly Creek. Second little cove to the right you'll see a huge tree laying at about 45 degrees into the water right on the inside of the point where the cove starts. While we were there, the crappie were out on the end of that tree, about 25 to 40 yards off the bank anywhere from 7 to 15 feet deep, depending on the sun. When the sun was high and hot, we caught them deeper. Overcast, shallower, but not much closer to the bank. With the warmer weather since then, they may or may not be there now, but that cove goes back to another tree on the right that is a little shallower, and the back is full of shallower water with willow trees. If they are on the nest, they should be in there. The back of the creek is also full of willows. Water was 58 degrees when we were back there, so they weren't in tight yet. We did catch the three biggest crappie of the trip shallow though. Directly across the main cove from the big tree is a smaller tree laying in the water on the left. We caught them 4 to 6 feet deep in there, but you had to go in after them. It was windy and we couldn't stay close enough without spooking them or we may have caught more. 90 percent of the crappie came on minnows below a slip float, with a few on jigs, 2" smoke/chart. or white. I do have pics, if I can get this picture CD to work on my computer. Anybody have any experience with these stupid things. Kodak Picture CD. It won't let me see my pics on my computer. I knew I should've bought a digital camera.

 

Yeah, we "adjusted" to the coditions alright. We found a cove out of the 25 mile an hour winds and searched for a promising spot. I tried to fish the big island by Starpoint when we first put in, and it was impossible to fish it right with the winds. 50s and cloudy with bad strong winds on days one and two made it an easy decision to focus on the slabs for a while. Glad we did, as all the smallies we caught came on live bait while crappie fishing. My largest was 19.5 inches, and I have no clue on weight since my scale is junk. Fat fish though. Easily my largest smallmouth, for now. Hope to make it back in the fall for a weekend. What a beautiful lake DH is. Fishing was slow with the bad weather, and when the sun popped out, it seemed to get even harder. I hope you guys get better weather. I will tell you one thing I noticed. I must have seen 100 different boats with two fishermen each, ALL throwing white spinner baits. I think these fish have seen their share of them. Might be worth starting out with something else.

 

Man I'm glad you had a good time SS. Next year it'll be a 20+ incher!
Thanks for the info on the crappies. By theway no one else is allowed to read that post right?
I tell you what, I'm so pumped I can't eat, and I love to eat!
Thanks again for the info.
Fletch

 

I finally found this site. I was guppy on the old site. We were down the 2nd 3rd and some of the 4th. Man it was tough. The first day it was like 38 degrees in the morning. My second point I hit gave me a 3lb 12 oz smallie on a bandit 300 crank in craw pattern. We turned around and fished that area again and my buddy mr. allen tagged a 3.5 lb smallie. All this by 9:00am the first day. We ran around and threw cranks at every windy point the rest of the day with no other bites. The next day we crankes windy points and the one that gave us the two bass with no luck other than a giant 20 lb sheep head caught by no other than mr. allen of course. We ended up struggling trying everything we had with us with no luck. We fished shallow and deep And could not get on them. These fish really shut off. My dad caught a 4lber thursday evening cranking and my brother caught a 3.5 lb largemouth. Another guy in our group squeaked out a 14incher saturday. That was all she wrote guys. What a tough weekend. I'm glad I took a spare trolling motor battery. The wind was whipping. We fished mostly the dam area up to mitchells creek. The two smallies my buddy and I caught were in about 6 feet of water. Will post pics when I use up the rest of the roll.

 

I can't figure out how to post pictures with my posts. If anyone is interested, I have some of the smallies and crappie posted in the Member Galleries. Gotta excuse my cluelessness when it comes to attachments and such. Can anyone tell me how to attach a pic to a post?

 

Thanks for the reports guys. We will definitely let everyone know how we did. Water temp is 60 at the dam now. The weather forecast has air temps in the 70's most of next week, which should get the water to 63 or 64 by the end of next. We are very optimistic about this trip with the current water temp and predicted warm weather, from our past experience this sets up perfect temps for smallies to chase spinners and cranks. But there haven't been any real good reports since ShakeDown did well with FnF. We won't hesitate to switch to live bait

 

Glad to see you made it. I was there myself 4/1 to 4/4. Had to earn every fish in that wind, huh? We were forced to resort to live bait for the fish we caught, but we did tear up the crappie. Glad to see you made it back alright. Speaking of trolling motor batteries, I didn't take an extra one. The first night, we plugged in to charge, and overnight the outlets stopped working. By mid morning day 2, my battery was dead. We actually had to tie to a tree to fish in one spot that day. We tried to anchor, but the wind blew us around anyway. It wasn't really Starpoint's fault. They are building more boat slips, and the contractors did something to cause the power to go out. Still no fun for us though.

 

SS - when you go to post, below the box where you type in your post is a box that says additional options. One of the options is Attach Files, click on manage attachments and the you can browse to the location on your pc where you have the picture. Click on the pic you want to upload and it will put that pic name in the box then upload. Let us know if you have any problems.

 

Oh man SS - those are some nice fish Did I read correctly, did you say you caught the smallies while crappy fishing? That 19.5 incher is a hog, I couldn't imagine fighting that fish with a crappie rig.... Very Nice!!!!

 

Here is a PERTY one.

 

Goin to the hollow in the morning. Hope to boat a keeper.
Thanks to all you guys for the info.
Maybe I can catch one worth making an avatar like Freeze (I'm gonna see if I can outrun him to his honey hole!).
Later.
fletch

 

Thinking of going to the hollow the first weekend of may.How do you the smallie fishing will be around that time?

 

Hey I have been out of town for the past 3 weeks and come back and everything is changed!!! Glad Shake sent me this site address, looks sweet guys. Just rolled into town from Illinois and am fishing Alum tomorrow. I'll post about my DH trip tomorrow night. Glad to be back on here with ya guys.

 

Sorry this is so late of a report on DH but here is how we did. As Slab said, (I was there right before him) conditions were pretty tuff. 1st day we caught four fish. 1 - 18 1/2" smallie in 15 FOW on red craw cranker. 1 - Kentucky and 1- LM. Father in law caught a 32", just over 6 lb muskie on a 5 inch fluke!! He crapped when he finally got it to the surface, not to mention the wife. Great times....Sunday we caught 3 fish. 1 - Kentucky, 1 - LM and 1 nice crappie. Monday and Tuesday we caught 4 fish a day, only kentucky's and largemouths. Weds we fished until 9:30 am. I caught a 21 1/2" smallie that was just over 5lbs on a bluff wall. If I can get the wife to help me I'll post the pics on here. They were also having a two day tourney out of Starpoint, I think slab had mentioned seeing alot of boats. The winning weight for the tourney was 18lbs. on day one 49 boats out of 101 got blanked, day two 79 boats got blanked. It is certainly a beautiful place and am looking forward to going back!!

 

Yeah BIGDAWG, the conditions were pretty much junk till that Friday evening about 4:30 or 5:00. Saturday was nice weather, but the fishing was still off. Crappie were on pretty much the whole time though, once we patterned them. They weren't as shallow as we would've thought, but we got 'em. Bet you guys did freak when he caught the muskie. Probably thinking it was the new world record smallie for a minute or two . Anyway, I'm gonna try to post some pics now. It's been too nice to not get on the water most the week, so this is the first chance I've had. Here is the 19.5" smallie I caught on, believe it or not, a crappie minnow on a Zebco 33 I brought along for an extra crappie pole. Well, I'll get back to that. It's telling me the file is too large to attach. Anyone know how to fix that?