Dale Hollow report 4-17 thru 4-26

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON Apr-28-06 AT 11:38AM (EST)[/font][p]OK, this year was simply outstanding. I won't be able to describe it much better than that. Three of us were fishing our of Star Point. We had a creel clerk ask us a few questions on 4/26 and I just told him to make sure nobody screws with the 16-21" slot. Being from VA, in my part of the state, you just don't get this kind of quality - ever.

I have no idea how many smallies we caught in that slot. We had two over 21 and a bunch under, I'd say more than 20 in the slot and we lost that many more on the light tackle we were using. We also caught a boat load of kentuckys, several nice LM (best was 22"), and a mixed bag of everything else including crappie (15), lake trout (1), walleye (1), catfish (7), shellcracker, and bluegills (lots). This was simply our best year in the 15 we've fished it.

All of our best smallies were caught on 1/8th oz. 4" grubs in one of two flavors, watermelon/purple flake which was just slightly better than the bluegill color I was throwing. The vast majority of our best fish came from Ashburn although we caught a lot of nice fish in Pulsey and Sulfur area and a few on the main lake channel our of Star Point toward Jolly.

I also heard that several groups did even better than us on the main lake flats dragging similar grubs over weed beds. I didn't have time to try that :) As a bonus, we also caught a number of nice cats on our grubs, the best was a 31" 16# channel, suprisingly on a 2" metalflake grub on 6lb. line (fishing for crappie at the time). That was fun.

From what I can tell, the best fishing for the biggest spawning fish is up lake on the flats and big creek secondary points. For a great mixed bag and a lot of slot fish, Ashburn and Irons is excellent right now. Most of the fish we marked were holding in 12-15'. We were positioning our boat in 19'-25' with the wind, on a very slow retrieve, almost drifting the grubs. Fish were following and the biggest were hitting about half way back in the retrieve.

One last note, a local at Star Point told me that there's talk of possibly raising the upper end of the smallie slot on Dale to 23". Don't know if that's right or wrong, but I'm all for it. That lake is simply awesome for smallies right now, and it's obvious the slot is working.

...BillH

Excellent report. Thanks!

Thanks for the great report. I'm headed to Dale 5/15 out of Horse Creek. Hope the streak holds out 'till then!!