I had a great time…other than that (and believe this or not) there were no fish boated between my partner and I over the course of the three and half days we were there (Sun, Oct 29th thru Wed, Nov. 1st). Water temps were 63 degree’s and holding steady each of the three days we were there. We got skunked but it was still a great time!
The first day (Sunday), there was a tourney taking place out of Pumpkin Creek. It looked like there were 30 boats or so that were signed in. We were at the ramp about the same time they were weighing in and from what I saw it didn’t look like very many people were holding any bags of fish, although we did see a couple of bags with a few fish. I have no idea what it took to place in this particular tourney. Anyways, on with our first day, first day in we discovered the boat had a very nice leak in it where the inlet for the live-well enters the boat. My buddy had just put some new automatic controls on it and hadn’t had any problems prior to this, we believe the water was coming through the aerator pump itself. At any rate, we discovered this while sitting in about 120’ of water. Also, his trolling motor was on its last leg and may as well have been used as a boat anchor. It still “worked” (sort of) and it was working fine the last time he had the boat out which was back in the spring. Oh well, ”stuff” happens. We high tail it back to the ramp, pull out and try to seal up the leak, take the lower unit of the trolling motor apart and try to fix it. It was caked with mud on the inside. My buddy said he had this problem before and cleaned it out and put it back together and it worked fine. Please remember this is old equipment we’re dealing with here, the O-rings were probably shot which is the reason for the mud on the inside I would assume.
Day two (Monday). Put in at 5:00 am, we don’t take the boat off the trailer but instead choose to simply back the boat in the water and see if the leak issue has been resolved…no luck, our bucket still had a hole in it. Back up the ramp we go to the BP to see if there is something there for us. At last, problem solved, we found a plug that would fit inside the inlet and away we go. Back down the ramp, boat does not leak, problem #1 solved. The trolling motor issue (Problem #2) was still a problem however. While in Pumpkin creek there was another guy in a bass boat fishing alone so we asked him if he had any idea’s as to where we could get a new/used trolling motor at close by. He suggested Bill’s Boat Barn across from the same BP we had just left. (This goes out to the gentleman in the bass boat, if you’re reading this and remember two guys in an older Procraft fish/ski asking you about a trolling motor we thank you for your suggestion because it turned out being fruitful.) We were eager to fish though so we fished till late morning, pulled out and went to the Boat Barn. Good news was they had a trolling motor but the bad news was we’d have to wait till 2:00 pm as the guy was getting ready to leave for a few hours. Day #2 was basically shot but we did manage to finally get back in the water before nightfall and we fished on up until around 9:00 or so with no luck.
Day three (Tuesday), everything is lovely, boat does not leak, new/used trolling motor works like a champ, we’re ahead of a frontal system moving in, we’re thinking today is our day…HA,, HA…Not so…still no fish caught. What a difference a day makes for in the morning and early afternoon we were in our tee shirts and by end-o-day we were in howling rains and fairly cool temperatures, (thank goodness for raingear for it was coming down in droves there for awhile, we were beginning to wonder if it was going to start sleeting).
Last day (Wed), heavy fog and NO WIND!!! Man, what a relief to have calm weather because up to this point we were battling the wind each day we were there. We fished all around the island, etc…it was raining off and on and it just felt right, everything felt good, there was surface activity as far as fish busting the surface was concerned. I’m fairly certain it was stripers busting the water. At any rate we couldn’t even get a strike. Although there was a Tracker with three guys in it dragging lines and after they got about 150 yards away from us they had a fish on. I’m under the impression that this was the same single fish that was causing all the commotion in and around the area we were in at the time.
I can’t remember which day or days it was for all of the bad luck we had but we did have a couple of nice hits and I even had a small mouth on at one point. This happened in Pumpkin Creek. I know it was a smallmouth because that sucker pulled hard, came up out of the water and shook its head as if it was laughing at me while saying just before he spit out my Silver Buddy: “Ha, Ha, you’re not catching me today sucker!”
All in all it was tough fishing for us. I was warned about it before heading down by Elwood and Mhall…Oh well, we had a great time anyway, it didn’t spoil our Pinto Beans one bit and I’ll definitely return. The island area looks great to me, in my opinion it looks like it should be infested with Stripers.
In closing I have a question just to get your all’s opinion. Do you all think Cumberland is pretty much a striper only lake? It seemed like everyone we saw was striper fishing and everyone there was down rigging or using deep diving lures, one of the two, we didn’t see very many at all fishing for bass. I like Cumberland, I like Cumberland a lot but at the same time I want to catch fish. I realize Dale is a better fishery for smallmouth, but what about Cumberland, is this just a bad year for it as far as largemouth/smallmouth are concerned?
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