St Jude practice Day 2

Day 2 started much the same as day one with cold weather and the looming chance of rain. The only thing different was that we were heading to Pool #5 today. We trailered down and launched there rather than have to deal with the possible barge traffic. I have not spent a lot of time on pool 5 but it is a section that I want to learn more about due to the potential that it has and the bags of fish that seem to come from there every year. I started down on the south end of the pool fishing a large are called weaver bottoms. I have never spent much time in this area and I started by just driving around and seeing what looked interesting. I found a few areas that looked really good but I was not able to get any bites as I think the water was just to cold for them to be in there really good. Had I gotten any bites I could of and probably would of spent a lot more time in there.

I left the bottoms and went further south and fished some rip-rap that I have had success on in the past. I was not able to get any bites in this area. The only thing I can think of is that the water is either too cold or there is current here where normally there is not. Not a good morning so far...

I then headed to a shoreline that normally has current on it and fairly deep water on it as the fish I caught yesterday were mostly all in current. I was hoping to work this area with an outkast tube but the current was way too strong and I had to just drift with the current and throw a crankbait. I picked up a couple smaller fish but there was no rhyme or reason to where they were. Which is fine if I am able to catch a good number of fish but when you only catch a couple, it's not worth going back to find them if they are not "locked on" any structure.

I then switched gears and tried my luck at some largemouth and fished some backwaters. I flipped a Berkley 4" Flippin tube in some laydown timber and had a couple smaller fish eat the tube but nothing with much size at all.

I proceeded into an area that gets fished quite a bit, but consistently puts out fish. I threw an outkast tube on top of this structure and after a few casts I caught a decent smallmouth. I made a few more casts with the tube with no success. I decided to throw the crankbait to try and cover a little more water to see if they were scattered or if they were on a particular spot there. After a few casts with the crank I hooked another decent fish. I decided to leave that area as I knew there was probably more fish around and in order for us to make the run down there, we would need to find more than that area.

I proceeded north on the river stopping to fish a few wing dams outside of spawning areas hoping that the fish would be stopping on them before they made there way in to spawn. I was unable to locate any wing dams that were holding the number or fish I was looking. I know there was one out there somewhere but I was unable to find the proverbial needle in a haystack.

That was about all of the time I had to fish that day as it was slightly shortened due to the tournament meeting. I got back to the launch about the same time Brian did and with the exception of a man bear pig that went around 6 pounds he had a similar day to me.