Cumberland River Report 12-18

[troutcrazy]

Monday 12-18 Beautiful day with good fishing / decent generation schedule. Got to the river around 9:30 CT and the river was wide, high and fast, but that didn't stop us. They shut down the generators at 10:00 until 4:00 so we knew we had plenty of time to fish.

Caught almost all our fish below helms landing from the power lines by the short bar and a little beyond. (2) browns 14 and under (12) bows all were good size 1 18" 2lb and 1 19" 2lb11oz. The color prefrence for the fish was white...we used wht. super dupers (502's - 503's). We threw shad rap, little cleo, little phobe, kast masters, bronze super's and other odds and ends, but the wht. super was where it was at.

We weren't able to wade until around 3:00. Until they start running generators like did in the summer wading dates will be few and far between.

Water level when we got there was 550-555 and it didn't get down to 445 and under until 4-5 hours later, which seems to be when you can start wading. Hope this helps!

Go get 'em...

[Chubminnow]

Thanks for keeping us posted. Judging from the website/link thing you shared with us a few weeks back it sure looked to me like this past weekend (12/16 and 12/17) would have both been good days to wade because judging from what I'm looking at (if I'm looking at the correct thing), it looks like the red line is lower than what it was back in October.

All in all it almost seems to me like hitting the river at the right time this year is a crap shoot. It sure is a LOT different than last year. Last year it was either Thanksgiving weekend or the day after Christmas that I went down there...anyway's a year ago we caught the water so low that there wasn't any wading at all in order to get to the gravel bar. As soon as we got down the bank we just walked across the mud to the gravel bar.

I'm planning to wade it on Friday, December 29th, I hope it's low, if it ain't I guess I'll once again be looking at a bunch of high water.