We had another great week in Weldon, with mostly 50-100 fish half days. The fish are really getting bunched up now, but rising water from this past week’s rain will certainly change things around. The pool height at Kerr Lake is at 307.8 and slightly rising still. Target pool height is 298-300. 8 feet of water spread out over the area of that lake is ALOT of water, so the river will be flowing at max capacity (20,000 cfs) for the next couple of weeks at least. That’s not ideal for the spawn, but it will surely make for some awesome fishing. It will get all the stragglers up to us, but I think alot of them will go right on up to Gaston. The “fastwater” fishing up the river ought to be good as well as below the ramp in the typically spring spawning areas. Some of the fish have already spawned, but many more still haven’t. The relatively cold weather last week stalled it some more.
We are looking forward to another great week and enjoying the scenery and some really good jig fishing. We had a really interesting trip Saturday afternoon. The afternoon before, we caught 92 on bait. My good client, Bob, who fishes with me several time a year picked a bad day to chase the fish on artificials and fly. The bait fishermen killed them, but the fish just weren’t biting artificials very well. It was just one of those days where they were behaving weird. At 6:30 p.m. we had scrapped out a handful or two on fly and jigs. We found them feeding on top, and from 6:30 -8:30 (yes…..we took the boat out in the pitch dark), Bob crushed them on topwater fly. The fish were in a wide area. I took the hook off my plug and teased them within casting range for Bob. He casted his popping bug right behind my plug as multiple fish were trying to eat my plug. The “bait and switch” technique worked really well, and I pulled off the all time best turn around on a trip this season. Sometimes you just have to do whatever it takes to make a trip successful.
Here are some pictures from this past week. We had lots of happy anglers. It’s difficult not to please clients with this fishery.
