Dale Hollow 12-17/12-18

We fished out of the State Park both days and stayed in KY waters both days fishing live bait

Saturday- had 20 fish between 2 of us....15 smallmouth, 4 largemouth, 1 KY....Had one over smallie and several of the good solid 19-20"ers...Had my personal biggest largemouth at right at 7lbs and a couple more in the 3-4lb range

Sunday-had 24 fish between 3 of us with...2 largemouth, 2 KY's, 19 smallmouth, and my very first meanmouth...No overs today but we had some really really healthy 19's and 20's

Top this with the 29 we caught last time out and I'd say the live bait bite at Dale is great right now...Catching tons of fish with really good size

Steven,
are you fishing shad,chubs or shiners?

Great report! You all did a better than us, but we did decent throwing mostly FnF and a little Jig and tailspinner.

What kind and size hook are you using?

This weekend we were using shiners bought at Strange bait right down by the lake....The guys there were very friendly and I would recommend for anybody to stop by there on their way...Last weekend we used creek minnows, chubs and suckers....Our minnows last weekend were bigger and so were the fish...Like i said of the 24 smallmouth i had last weekend, 18 were 18" or bigger....With the smaller minnows this weekend we were catching a lot more of the 15-16" fish, but still had a bunch of 18+'s mixed in....I actually use some hooks I bought online, don't know the brand but I think they're actually used for catching live bait in salt water....They're a very small, yet very stout silver hook...Most of the fish I catch are hooked right in the corner like you want them ....I landed a 25lb striper on one a few weekends ago and even it was hooked right in the corner of the mouth...We usually roam from the state park to Illwill

keep at it, once u find em you have to keep following them good job.

I got 2 over today, an your right the size of the bait the more confidence u have.
its a fine line between perfect, too small or too big....you kinda of know when you put it on the hook