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Fred Raby
Fred Raby
Volbasser@att.net

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Pensacola Blue Angels
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hook 1. com

"FISHING WITH FRED"
covering tidal waters and impoundments

Fishing clear water

Fishing clear water takes patience, and a special skill to catch the bass we all want to see in our live well at weigh in time. The perfect setting for clear water techniques is Lake Martin, at Alexander City, Alabama. This is a deep spring fed clear water lake loaded with Spotted bass and Largemouth. It is also one of the most utilized recreation areas in the South, which add to the challenge of catching fish with the water skiers and jet skis.

Rock ledges, bluffs, docks and a few lay downs provide the cover along with old flooded roadbeds and if you’re lucky a bridge. There are huge creeks feeding the lake throughout the lake.

This spring has been fickled as far as weather is concerned. Warming has been stopped abruptly with cold fronts and falling temperatures. The rain has been sporadic causing flooding above normal pool and near draught to below normal pool. The spawning activity has been interrupted so many times the bass do not know whether to gee or haw.

Basics tell us to start where we caught fish before. So first thing I head to the flooded island where I won the last tournament. Sure enough we started catching fish, spots that were 8 to 10 inches long. All on a carolina rig watermelon Ringworm by Zetabait. Now lets reason this thing out. It is mid May the spawn has been interrupted too many times and we have small fish where we expected big fish. There should still be some spawning activity, some have gone into transition after the spawn…time to head to the points and pockets. With the boat activity there is a stain in the water on the main lake so I start out on the points working into the pockets with a white and lime green single spin spinnerbait. On the second cast there he is, a six pound from the point I find another good keeper then the wind gets up so I change to a shad crankbait. I catch a couple of shorties and lose a couple more. The fish are finicky, they won’t take a crank or a carolina rig and they have turned off to the spinnerbait so I switch to a 4" Crawdude and follow the short strikes with this realistic crawfish plastic. Crawling, swimming and popping the Crawdude was more than the bass could stand. They would hit it and hold on until I set the hook enough to win the tournament with just over 18 pounds.

In situations like I have described a fisherman has to evaluate all conditions, be aware of changing conditions, including wind direction, velocity, cloud conditions, temperature changes, water clarity and the signs the fish give you to make them strike. As the day progressed and more and more pleasure boaters appeared the fish pulled out to the ends of brush tops and suspended. The Crawdude was an ideal bass forage and made an excellent presentation to trigger the strikes other fishermen could not get.

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