Dale Hollow Today

Well things certainly wasn't amazing, but they were much better than Sunday when I mustered up only a couple short fish on the back side of a limit Saturday. Man I love fishing. On to the report.

Water temps are on the rise as they were 53-55 when I arrived Saturday and nearly everywhere was 58-61 when I left today. The good news is I finally found some HUGE balls of shad on the sonar today. Bad news, they aren't all the way back just yet. Farthest back I found them was about 2/3 but every ball of shad I found was still in the creek beds leading toward the back. If i got away from the creek bed, I lost the shad...and the bites in the coves.

The bucks are starting to show up in the coves but the big girls are still holding out. I got all 3 of my keepers today on the main lake around chunk rock/bluffs/wood combo. None of my keepers this weekend had any form of red on its tail and none of the bucks were squirting when I pulled them out of the water. If the warming continues, this coming weekend could be pretty much hang on, although, I still think its about 10-14 days away from getting really on.

I went as far back as I could in several bays, finding no shad or fish. Grass + creek beds will probably get you bit.

As far as the smallies, I have no idea. I found 2 nice browns exactly where I expected them to be but couldn't duplicate it anywhere. I through everything but dynamite at them and simply couldn't find the browns.

For what its worth, the big girls are still on the main heading toward the lead in banks. Cranks were the ticket. Took a nice smallie on an ARig and had a couple other smashes on it but failed to hook up.

Hope this helps anyone headed down. Feel free to contact me with any questions and Ill be glad to help out.

Skeeter

Thank you for the great info.

Excellent report. Thanks

Sm

Thanks for sharing,
Last 2 days I passed. The wind was boss.

There is a period calling what u want,
the bank runners start, an the good fish disappear or shutdown.

My mentor tells me it's called grubbing I don't like the grubbing period.
Lol.