April 14, Beaver Lake, AR
Dan writes:
I spent all morning fishing trash pockets and never had a bite. Finally around one o’clock I made two subtle changes. First, since the water is now dropping as each day goes by, I concentrated on the outside edges of the pockets. I don’t think the fish are staying up in the backs anymore, but rather are moving out to the deeper end. Second, I realized that on my first day here, when it was partly cloudy, I caught fish on a black & blue jig. The next day, under bright sun, black & blue wasn’t working so I switched to rootbeer-pepper and had four or five bites. Yesterday, under partly cloudy skies, rootbeer-pepper wasn’t working so I switched back to black & blue, and then got six or seven bites. So today, under bright sunshine, I cut off the black & blue and tied on the rootbeer-pepper TERMINATOR Jig again. In the very first pocket I flipped I got a bite. It was that simple. I let this fish play with it a little before I took it away, then flipped it back in there and made him bite it a second time. Five minutes later, in the next trash pocket I fished, I got my second bite of the day. All right, at least I think I know how to make that work.
The rest of the day I spent looking for clear water and fish moving up to the bank. I finally found some. The temperature hit eighty degrees, and I found three of four little pockets where the fish were up and fanning out beds. One problem though is that there’s not a lot of clear water. One pocket will be clear but just a hundred yards away it will be too dingy for sight fishing. I’ll certainly be looking for more bedding fish tomorrow though. I’ve been dreaming of sight-fishing on Beaver Lake for a whole year now!