That’s what it all boiled down to this week. I can honestly say that about 95% of my fish came from an areas not much larger than a football field this week. It was just a matter of locating the school and figuring out what they wanted to eat. The menu this week consisted of a succulent little shiny silver spoon, a fat stubby looking worm crawling across the bottom and slathered in stink juice, or a delicious little Keitech Damiki rig, hopped across the bottom to mimic an unsuspecting little shad. That little triple threat buffet provided me with some well needed excitement for the week and I finally got a working sonar this week after going without sonar for a couple months. My week started on Tuesday, and I basically worked over a mega school all week.

If you’ve known me very long and had the pleasure of fishing with me for any length of time, you would probably know that I name different areas that I frequent in the creek. For example, there is a ditch called “Kenny Bunkport”, a name we gave to an upper-class area where the owners made sure we knew that the area was catch and release only. They were a bit snooty with their Polo shirts and sweaters draped over their shoulders like something out of the Hamptons and Lisa and I got a big kick out of that. There is also a magical place in the creek I call “The Horseshoe” because someone placed brush on a deep flat in a horseshoe shape and it is the perfect trap for bait drifting into the horseshoe when the wind is out of the east. There is another area of the creek I call “The Spa”. It’s always been a place where fish congregate in the winter, spending days unmolested by anglers and all it takes is a little wind out of the north or west to get the bait moving. The place is very unsuspecting and to this day I can’t figure out what the attraction is, but they congregate in this area every year in big numbers. It’s like they go there to chill, and you’d never know they were there unless you woke them up or you hit it when they were feeding. Sometimes it’s like raising the dead on a calm day, but once you start pulling schools off the bottom it’s on and fish start moving everywhere.

This week I hit the Spa for the first time this year and the fish were stacked in the area. I had the perfect west wind on Tuesday and as soon as I idled into the spa, I started marking bait and fish. The area is 30-40 foot deep flat close to a creek swing and not a lot of structure in the area, just a deep flat that holds fish. As soon as I marked a good group of fish under the boat, I laid my first waypoint down on my new Humminbird Helix and sat down on the waypoint with Spot Lock. I pulled out the 1/2-ounce silver War Eagle spoon and started fan casting. The first few casts were uneventful, and I started wondering if the fish were going hit the spoon. Not long after that I got my first fish and as I got the fish to the boat, I noticed on my graph that several other fish came with the caught fish. After dropping the first fish in the livewell I just dropped the spoon straight down under the boat to the bottom where a few of the fish from the group were still lingering. I immediately caught another from under the boat while jigging the spoon up and down on the bottom. I took care of that fish and made a long bomb cast with the spoon, letting it sink all the way to the bottom before starting long hops on the bottom with the spoon. Once again, I felt another fish pop the spoon on a controlled fall and I boated another. This went on for a good 2 hours and in that time period I caught and released well over 20 fish, most coming from the spoon and a couple from the Damiki. Here’s a few pictures from the Spa on Tuesday. These were all what I call the “Keto” bass because they are on a strict diet of little shad and smaller bluebacks drifting around over the deeper water.

On Wednesday a cold front had pushed through overnight, and it was very cold and windy in the morning. I made a quick circle through the creek but with post front conditions it was slow, and it didn’t take long till I was back at the house. I only took a couple pics on Wednesday after catching a handful of fish in a 2-hour trip. We also recorded the second episode of the Friday Fish Fry podcast and I put a link to the podcast below the pictures.

On Thursday I was back at it, mid-morning with spoon in hand and ready to do battle again at The Spa. The wind was back out of the west but not a lot of wind, just enough to keep the bait moving out on the flat. If the bait was there, the fish would be there. As it turned out the bait had moved and The Spa was just about empty. I did manage one bright spot when a beefy 3.5lber sucked in my little Damiki rig on a long cast, hoping it on the bottom. There are about 3 different ways I like to use the Damiki this time of year, first is vertical, straight down under the boat till it hits the bottom and then long, slow controlled pulls, up and down. Second is casting it in the center of a ditch and letting it sink to the bottom, followed by long slow pulls across the bottom with the rod tip down and no slack in the line, stopping it very frequently. The third is casting it, letting it sink to the bottom and then making small hops across the bottom with the rod tip up so the Damiki will jump up a foot or so. On Thursday the fish reacted better to the hopping method than the dragging method. The biggest problem was the lack of fish at the Spa, so I went with plan B and pulled out the trusty ole worm on the rocks. I shifted my focus and was on the hunt for the “Meat Eaters” that frequent the warm sunny rocks that are generally south facing and near deep water. That’s been the whole key this week, the fish I found were either “near deep water” or “in deep water”. On Thursday the meat eaters I found were cruising the steep rocky bluffs, in or near deep water, in the middle of the day. Here are a few pics from Thursday. The good part was that there were some beefy fish jerking on my rod on Thursday.

Before I get into yesterday, I gotta say that it was an awesome day and I knew it was going to be before I even got started. The clouds were going to be moving in and we were going to have a west wind to work with. One thing that was kinda problematic was that I was running low on my War Eagle spoon supply. It had dwindled down to a total of 3 half-ounce succulent chrome beauties and that was going to be a problem. We were expecting some cloud cover, and the spoon was probably going to be the ticket if the wind blew at the Spa. I got out about 8am and when I pulled into the Spa it was loaded with fish and bait. As I pulled up, I saw a large boil just to my left and within casting distance. I thought it may have been a striper, but I let the little spoon fly right into the center of the circle from the boil. I felt the spoon fall for about 2 seconds and then go slack. When it goes slack that quick over deep water it only means one thing, and it took this 63-year-old caffeine jacked up brain about a nano to set the hook on my first big fish of the morning. That was the kind of fun I was looking for, so I started making casts in the area for more fish. It didn’t take long, and I had another on the spoon, just making some fan casts in the general area of the fish that surfaced. The area I was in had some fallen timber on the bottom and I finally found the wood with the spoon, and I couldn’t get it out of the timber, so I had to break it off. Now I was down to only 2 spoons left and that’s when it hit me that I need to conserve the spoon, or I might be out by noon since it wasn’t even 9am. A lot of the fish that I was marking were in the 40+ foot range and typically I wouldn’t be using a shaky head this time of year for such a deep application, choosing to use a spoon or Damiki, but I had a ton of shaky head supplies so out of necessity I started throwing the worm into the deeper areas of the Spa. The wind had kicked up and I was able to Spot Lock and make very long casts downwind with the shaky head into 40+ feet of water. The wait for the worm to get to the bottom was pretty painful in the wind, but once I felt the worm hit the bottom it was a very slow crawl, and then about a 10-15 second stop, dead sticking it with slight pressure. I’d say that most of the time the fish would pick up the bait on the dead stick rather than moving it. The best part was that the fish were all over that worm down in that deep water like a rat on a Cheeto.

It was funny because I caught a lot of fish yesterday and at one point, I caught a fish that was so small it could barely get the worm in its mouth and then I followed it up on the very next cast in the very same place and snatched out a stud 4+ pounder. It was unpredictable but as the afternoon progressed the clouds moved in, and the west wind was picking up. I moved around the same area, the size of a football field and had a field day yesterday. Big fish, medium fish and small fish, off and on all day and with the worm in 40+ water. It was a blast and a great way to end the week. Water temps were in the upper 50’s and the water level is down a little over 8 and a half feet. Finding the bait is key right now because a lot of times the fish won’t be far away. This week the deep bite prevailed because the bait was prevalent and deep in the location I was targeting. Here’s some of the pictures from yesterday.