Quote Originally Posted by DHart View Post
Cap, I also fished at the Dale this week...from Oct. 1st until this morning.

I have been fishing the first wk. of Oct. for 25 years on Dale Hollow, as the start of "cool weather" fishing (the first of several visits into January). Well, it was not the start of cool weather...it was hot as is the case with a few previous years. But it was different this time.

At the lower lake (say, Cedar Hill area), there seemed to be less shad than previous years; and - being as warm as it was - the absence of bass boats in the evening got my attention. Also did not see any trolling in the river channel.

I also had very little action with any bass species. In past yrs., the 20 - 30 ft. flats would produce down that way at night when hot in Oct.

Would love to hear some other opinions about the early fall fishing this year. But hey, I probably wasn't deep enough.
I probably need to be asking advice from you DHart. I'm relatively new to the lake. I've been fishing it on and off for maybe 10 years or so. My go to lake is Ky lake however that might be changing. I absolutely love spring fishing at the Dale! I know this week was very hard on my buddy and I. We were able to find all the shad you could possibly find up in sulphur creek, and fish were following them and we'd find them in deeper water around flats. We managed to catch very few small ones with top water but nothing deep. The gar, of course were having a ball. We managed to pull a couple of nice smallmouths up by jigging at the end of trees that quickly went into about 25-30 foot of water. We had to go home yesterday afternoon, earlier than planned. Yesterday we were in the center of a high I reckon. We were in Sulphur and had bluebird skies, no breeze, 74-75 degree water and mirror water. Only the gar was disturbing the water. Had to go home after the morning session. We even tried to get some more gills at the same places we did Tuesday but only was able to get little ones. A complete turn around! I hope to get down later in the month or November. I can take the mild cold better than the bright sun and heat.