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Senior Member
You know the thing about going in the winter is no one is fishing. Im like looking around the internet for information that doesnt exist. Then i find myself looking at the weather extended forecast which leads to zooming all the way in on the radar to LC which leads to google satelite maps and zooming in on all the creeks and shoreline areas i want to fish. Its fun to be excited and i cant wait to get there!Originally Posted by bsg2121
Senior Member
Lake is crazy right now. 729.5 and still coming up. Went to the dam last night to try to fish and they were spilling off the top with 6 gates. It looked like a nice white water rafting experience but fishing sucked.
Senior Member
very very cold temps forecast for the week prior to your arrival. bass fished wednesday and struggled to get 6 bites all day and managed to boat 5 small, pale, cold to the touch spotted bass. water is waaayyy up in the trees and water temps were in the 40s and found 50 in one run in. there is a little debris here and there but it was howling wind that day so im sure there wouldve been a ton floating around if it hadnt been for that.
it will be a difficult trip to say the least but on the other hand how many stripers have you caught at your house right?
p.s. if it was me i would be sure and fish midday and look for birds. we didnt see any birds wednesday but i think they were grounded during the cyclone
Senior Member
Thx for posting luv2hunt and stripernut. Im pretty sure we fish the same area of the lake
Senior Member
Duayne thx for posting too! I know your info is solid! Thinking you hangout down by the damm right?
Administrator
Thanks everybody for posting. Seems like such a long time ago that I fished (two months) I almost forgot what fishing was until I read this. Now I remember.
Senior Member
Yes. I focus mostly on Indian Creek and the main lake down to Beaver\Otter. Be very careful out there. The lake is a mess and debris can move from one area to another very quickly. There won't be a ton of boats out there if you have a problem so make sure someone knows where and when you are planning to fish.
The debris may also play havoc if you are trying to pull boards or even down rods. But as Stripernut said, your odds go up infinitely compared to sitting on the couch like I am right now. Ha!
Senior Member
Arriving sat morning leaving wed morning. Idk if anyone has looked at the weather but i feel like someone is looking out for me this trip! The warm up timing couldnt be any better for us. Now just need it to spark those fish and turn this trip in to one we tell stories about for the rest of our lifes.
Senior Member
If it were me I would plan to fish very cold water and the things that happen in it. I'd fish smaller bait, look for bait dying and fish spoons jigged off the bottom or Bucktail jigs free falled very slowly. Also look up dead sticking. I don't do it much on Cumberland but i would think hard on it if I were fishing this weekend. Down rods with live bait drifted with no extra movement if you can find schools should work but I don't know if they have broken up or not yet.
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Senior Member
Thanks! My primary plan is to pull bait but at least 25-50% will be bucktails. I have done really well pulling these in the winter. I like the tti blakemore bucktails with spinner. It looks like a big road runner. I will definitely play with speed and add in S turns sort of playing with the rise and fall of the baits. If i can find some schools definitely will try to sit on them and jig/spoon through them. The trick for me is going to be finding the schools early in trip and then working the adjustments from there. Really hoping the water is not muddy. Last yr was chocolate milk. I had never seen LC like that before. Thanks again i really like your ideas. Almost packed!
Senior Member
I just put a spoon on one of my poles. We all have baits in our box that we dont have faith in. The spoon is one for me and it always twist my line up. I put a swivel on with it today. Anyone mind giving the 101 on spoons for LC striper? Thx bg
Senior Member
when i crossed fishing creek bridge today i noticed the surface of the water was icing up. when the creeks freeze on cumberland it is COLDER THAN YOU KNOW WHAT!!
when Duayne was talking about spoons on/near the bottom he is referring to something completely different than jigging spoons in june.
as he mentioned you will be trying to imitate dying, stunned, lethargic shad instead of the fast moving fleeing frantic bait in warm summer waters.. if you think of winter time "float-n-fly" fishng the name of the game is avoiding over active presentation, appply this mentality to your spoon fishing for stripers in the winter.
find fish hugging the bottom, drop the spoon until it gets 10 feet from the bottom and slow the fall waaayyy down, gently easing the spoon into the school without spooking the fish with flash and speed. the first thing you want that fish to see is a dying/stunned shad slowly falling to the bottom. very short twitches of the rod tip will simulate the distorted throws of death of the dying baitfish. in water this cold you want to keep it real and keep it slow and give the fish plenty of time to decide to eat. they arent going to chase the spoon very far before just turning away and settling back to the bottom, a quality graph will show this in detail.
to avoid line twist use a baitcasting reel, use a quality ball bearing swivel and when reeling back up fromt the bottom hold the line just in front of the reel between your forefinger and thumb with moderate pressure , you should mitigate excessive twist from forming.
as far as having confidence in the spoon its an effective lure under the right conditions, one of the main conditions being a tightly packed school of fish , this adds the element of competition and that may be enough to get one fish to go.
good luck, BE CAREFUL, there is some debris and the water temps are downright dangerous
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