My trip to Weiss Lake today
Picked up Brad about 4:45 this morning. Drove out to my new garage (will be posting picture of it soon) and hooked up the boat. Headed to Leesburg and Weiss lake. Stopped at the world famous Citgo. Was impressed with breakfast, but more impressed with all the crappie tackle. Especially the assortment of southern pro tackle. Spent a little money restocking some of my jigs.
Left there and headed to Bay Springs. I ended up getting turned around and driving out to the alabama free launch. Not a good launch right now and was kinda scared to leave my truck out there. There was a nice present laying on the boat ramp from the night before. Evedently a man had a good time. A very very good time. He left a present there for all of us to see. He must have been in love.
we drove around to the campground boat launch. Tried to launch there, but that was a bad idea. The boat trailer bottomed out in mud. ouch. The trouble was we drove right by the Bay Springs boat luanch twice before finally seeing a boat run out of the slough and figuring out the launch was right there at the cafe.
Well, we launched in 20 mph winds from the west. It was about 35 degrees. We drove out to the mouth of the slough and fished the left bank going out. No luck. We were tightlining tube jigs with minnows.
We drove across the lake to Anderson Cove area. Saw some sloughs on the map and a great point on the left I wanted to fish. Rode over the 38 foot chanell which quickly came up to 3 feet on the other side. I came off plane and preceeded to clean my pants, then decided to stay in the chanell before cutting across the lake.
Started on that point in 24 feet and still tightlining. The wind was awful before getting around that point. It shallowed up quickly and I told brad I wanted to long line in this 15 feet of water. We started to long line with tube jigs. Brad started with all tubes, but put on one blue and white southern pro curl tail with a blue headed jig. All were 16th ounce. We went about 400 yards and he caught a decent fish on the grub. I then caught a fish on a blue minnow tube. Both were keepers. He preceeded to catch 3 more before I could get another bite, so we ended up putting on curl tail grubs on all rigs. I used all blue colors. Some blue and white, while blue on blue was my favorite today. We caught 6 fish trolling well out in the cove. We decided to try in the mouths of the smaller sloughs in the coves. The first one we went to was stacked with fish, only most were small. The first pass into the slough we caught 10 or so fish. We trolled in and out of the slough several times before stopping in the back and letting the wind just blow us out while fishing a float and fly. We caught 5 fish on these rigs in about 30 minutes on homemade hair jigs.
we cranked up and went into church-house slough, or at least the main cove out in front of it. Most of the fish we caught all day were either 9-11 inches. We only kept the no doubt fish, throwing back all the others. As we got into the back of the cove, and out of the wind, we caught some really good quality fish, the biggest was a 2 pound black crappie. A real chunk of a speck. Brad also caught our first blacknose crappie, racing stripe and all!!!!
We trolled all the way out to the long point into the main lake and caught several more good fish. We cranked up and ran back to the boat launch slough. We trolled from the mouth of the slough to the boat launch picking up 4 or 5 more fish, none which were keepers.
All in all, we caught over 50 fish today and brought home 20 really good fish. In the morning, the key depth was 15 feet. The afternoon we caught great fish in 10 feet of water. We used 16th ounce jigs with curl tail grubs, trolling between .6 and 1.2 mph. The best color without a doubt was blue, and orange and green was a close second. Caught a couple of good fish on a blue and white WAZZHOPPER.
Thank you guys for all your help. Weiss lake is now one of my favorite lakes I have ever fished. Awesome.
Shoals Area Crappie Association