April Week 2 (Toad Pic)

[Mike Bucca]

Water temps 58-59.
Water level is 1.5ft over full pool.
Water Clarity ranges from Mud to clear.

The cool front that we had last week put a damper on my pattern for just a bit. I will say that on each day last week I had atleast one and sometimes 2 5lb + fish roll on us or follow our bait to the boat. I always want a nice cool snap just after the fishing starts to get good to set us back a few days so that the pattern will restart itself all over again. I like to call it prolonging spring LOL.

Tuesday afternoon I was to meet ESPN writer John Geiger with me to do an article on Allatoona. About 10 minutes prior to picking John up at the dock I hooked and landed this toad. So John got to see first hand a GOOD fish from the not so dead sea. The 8 inch Hampton Shad is still the bait of choice and if you understand the spring patterns fully than you will have zero problems finding locations that are holding the quality fish especially if you hit enough of those types of areas within the day. I did have a very nice 5lb + spot follow me to the boat in edition to the fish in the pic. I fully expect this week and next provided that the weather doesn't vary much for the bigger fish to start hitting the beds. I have seen very little bedding activity up to this date, but it will start anyday now and the staging of the smaller fish will start up very very soon as well. Typically the largemouth bed and at the same time the spots start to stage and get ready to bed usually 2 weeks or so after the largemouth hit the beds. If you can find one of the staging areas of fish you can easily expect to catch 30+ in short order and sometimes 50+. Historically, these staging fish are in the same areas year after year.

I do have some trip availability in April but it's going fast. Email me at [e-mail] for more info.

Mike