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SMITH MOUNTAIN LAKE FISHING REPORT
March 2012
DALE WILSON’S
SML GUIDE SERVICE
PHONE NO: 540-297-5650 / 540-874-4950
www.captaindalewilson.com
Picture is of Chris Wilson (son of Captain Dale) with a nice striper caught 2/20/12
OVERVIEW: Fishing continues to be excellent for stripers, crappie and largemouth bass. The weather has been extremely warm for this time of the year and water temperature is above normal making for great winter fishing! Water temperature will be 50’s.
Largemouth Bass-Fishing will be good. Best lures will be jig & pigs, Carolina rigs, spinner baits, Alabama rigs and jerk baits. Most largemouth bass will be caught on points, rocky areas, creek channel banks and docks. Largemouth bass will start to relate to shallow structures this month. Best depths will be from the 2 to 20 feet deep Find areas with the largest concentrations of baitfish. Some largemouth bass will start to spawn later this month.
Smallmouth Bass- Fishing should be fair. Best areas will be humps, ledges and main points. Best lures will be jig & pig, spinner baits, jerk baits and Alabama rigs. Best areas will be in the mid to the lower sections of the lake. Most smallmouth bass will be suspended around baitfish. Cloudy days and windy days are good times to try your luck!
Striped Bass- Fishing will be good. Stripers will be caught in mid to upper areas of the lake. The best areas will be in the larger creeks and main river channels. Best lures will be Alabama rigs, swim baits, buck tails, spoons and Zoom flukes fished with 1/4 to 3/8 oz. lead heads. Live bait will also be productive. The best depths will be from 2 to 35 feet deep. Stripers will start to feed at night as the water temperature rises. Some stripers will surface. Try to find areas with the largest concentrations of baitfish. Seagulls are a good way to locate feeding fish.
Crappie-Fishing for crappie will be good. They will be found 5 to 15 feet deep this month. Best areas will be in the main creeks around deep docks, fallen trees, and brush piles in the mid to upper parts of the lake. Small live minnows and 1 ½ inch tubes fished on 1/16 to 1/8 oz. lead heads will work best to catch crappie this month.
TIP OF THE MONTH: With warmer than usual water temperatures some species of fish will start to spawn later this month. Please practice catch and release when fish are spawning. Take a kid fishing! Always wear your life jacket!
SHREVEPORT-BOSSIER CITY, La. – Chris Lane caught fish in Pools 4and 5 of the Red River to win the 2012 Bassmaster Classic, but his victory was primarily earned between the ears.
Lane made multiple decisions that might’ve baffled the weekend angler, adjusting each day and managing his fish in order to win the tournament. He coddled the fish he’d located to last three days and claimed victory by a margin of 3-7 over runner-up Greg Vinson. Whether that difference resulted from a single good decision or from a suite of them will never be known, but Lane credited his success to his devotion to a game plan that he developed during practice.
Perhaps most impressive was his willingness to contravene the fishing adage that one should never leave biting fish to find more fish. Each day he left an area that he was sure contained more fish and went elsewhere.
In each case he got fewer bites in the subsequent area, but the bites he did get allowed him to cull. In fact, after weighing 16-4 on Day One mostly from an area across from the take-off site, he never went back, despite the fact that it was a prime backwater that produced strong catches for others on Days Two and Three.
“It’s all about the willingness to win,” he said. “Going back to my first-day decisions, my second-day decisions and my third-day decisions, I stuck to my game plan.”
That game plan included parts A and B, plus part C, implemented Sunday, which was a combination of the other two.
He started the final day in a backwater pond with both Bill Lowen and Matt Reed and hoped to leave with a limit no later than 11:30. Early on, the other two anglers scored while Lane looked on sheepishly.
“Watching those other guys catch them plays into your head,” he said.
As the morning progressed he openly expressed concern about the need to lock back up from Pool 4 into Pool 5 without losing too much time.
“One more pass down this bank,” he said aloud on multiple occasions.
The willingness to stick to his guns and not push the panic button paid off when he caught the day’s big fish, a 6-10 largemouth, shortly after 11 o’clock. At 11:23 he filed out his limit.
“That one more pass was truly a blessing,” he said. “I made the right decisions.”
Then he left the fish snapping and headed to the lock. He spent the remainder of the day in a small Pool 5 backwater where he culled out his two smallest fish.
His older brother Bobby, who finished 20th with 36-10, lauded his brother’s maturation process and partially credited their Florida upbringing for the winning tournament blueprint.
“When you’re on a body of water like Okeechobee and you know 10 pounds is no good and you’re catching 50 fish and they’re all small, you need to leave,” the elder brother said. “We just know when it’s time to move.”
This was the younger Lane’s first Classic since 2008 and second overall, as compared to his brother’s five straight, but the younger brother has been on a tear lately after a couple of tough years.
“He’s always been an excellent fisherman, but when you struggle like that you learn what to do and what not to do,” Bobby said. “Over the years I’ve watched him mature, particularly in the past three years. He’s got his mojo going now.”
Ultimately the biggest change for Chris Lane was developing the belief that he could compete at the sport’s highest level.
“I tell myself ‘You’re here for a reason. You fish the Bassmaster Elite Series for a reason,” he said. “You’re fishing the Bassmaster Classic for a reason. It’s because you made the right decisions in the past so go back and do what you did to get there.’”
That mentality allowed him to take calculated risks that were rooted in experience.
He’ll be free to gamble on another win throughout the 2012 Elite Series campaign. By virtue of his Southern Open victory on the Harris Chain last month, this week’s Classic win means he’s already double-qualified for the 2013 Classic on Oklahoma’s Grand Lake. Should he win another event or finish high enough in the rankings, he could qualify in a third way, too, or perhaps even more. That’s never been done before, but given Lane’s upwardly mobile decision-making prowess, it would be foolish to bet against him.
SHREVEPORT-BOSSIER CITY, La. — “Go, Chris Lane!”
As he stepped off the 2012 Bassmaster Classic stage on Sunday, Bobby Lane bellowed his brother’s name. Bobby had just been knocked out of contention. He knew Chris still had a good chance.
More than good. Chris Lane of Guntersville, Ala., won the Bassmaster Classic Sunday by more than 3 pounds, fending off hard-charging Greg Vinson. Lane’s victory was his second Bassmaster tournament title of 2012. Each came with a qualification for the 2013 Classic.
Lane brought 51 pounds, 6 ounces to the scales over three days to claim the 2012 crown of professional bass fishing and the $500,000 first-place prize. It was his first Classic win.
Vinson, of Wetumpka, Ala., had a 47-15 total. Finishing third was first-day leader Keith Poche of Pike Road, Ala., with 45-15. Fourth was 2008 Classic champ Alton Jones of Woodway, Texas, whose tournament total was 45-14. Ott DeFoe of Knoxville, Tenn., shot from 15th to finish fifth with 44-14.
Lane started strong and stayed strong in the Red River competition that pitted 49 of the world’s best anglers against each other. Lane was sixth after the first day — tied at 16-4 with brother Bobby — then moved up into the lead after the second day with a 1-pound lead over Vinson, who continued to chase Lane into the final round.
Lane said he was exhausted as he waited in the wings for his turn at the scales on the Classic stage at the CenturyLink Center in Bossier City.
“I’m ready to weigh these fish right now to see if I’ve won my first Bassmaster Classic,” Lane said. “I put everything on the line today. I felt I fished flawlessly today. I left everything I had to give on the water.”
Lane’s catch Sunday was 15 pounds, 14 ounces, which came from two areas of Red River backwaters. He picked his first stop as the Sullivan’s area in Pool 4. Without much to show for the decision, Lane was on the verge of leaving to see if his second stop upriver in Pool 5 might hold better bass, but his instincts told him to stick around a few more minutes. It paid off with what proved to be a 6-10, his biggest of the day. By the time he left Pool 4, he had most of his day’s weight.
“I’ll never again second-guess a decision I make when fishing,” he said. “I listened to what my instincts told me to do, and it was right.”
He named two lures for helping him to victory. One was a Luck “E” Strike G4, a tube with a surprise inside. It has a new inner laminate of a contrasting chartreuse color (which Lane helped design) and the tube’s tentacles flash alternating colors on the fall. His other go-to lure was a Gambler Ugly Otter, a three-paddle soft plastic. He flipped the tube in shallow, stained water; he worked the Otter slowly in clearer water.
Vinson, an Elite pro who celebrated the birth of his first child just weeks ago, said he had the numbers of small bass but not the quality he needed out of the one shallow backwater area he stuck to all three days.
“I culled a lot, but only an ounce at a time. I needed to be culling pounds at a time,” he said.
Vinson, who brought in 13-7 on Sunday, said he fished cleanly and was satisfied with his tournament — no regrets, no errors.
“I felt I had the area to win but it came down to it not giving up enough quality bites,” said Vinson, who stuck to one area all three days.
Otherwise, the area looked like the perfect setup. The fish were in a wintertime mode under matted vegetation when he first found the spot in practice. By Day One of the Classic, the bass had moved to nearby stumps, setting up to spawn.
“That made them very aggressive and they were feeding off the large amount of baitfish in there. I caught them really good (17-12),” he said.
By Day Two, the bass has shifted into a full spawn, throwing another challenge at Vinson to adapt. He had to slow down and sight-fish. Each afternoon, more fish moved in and his late bite was what he looked forward to.
But on Sunday, the fish had not yet moved up when Vinson decided he must leave to ensure he could lock back up to Pool 5 and check in on time.
“I didn’t see that new group of fish coming up until about 12:45, and I had to be out of there by no later than 1:30. I didn’t have enough time to capitalize on those fish,” he said.
Vinson’s lure arsenal included a NetBait Paca Craw in Cajun craw or black shadow colors; a NetBait Saltlick in black neon and in watermelon red; and a Bandit 100, a 1/4-ounce square-bill crankbait in chartreuse-black; and a 5/16-ounce War Eagle spinnerbait in chartreuse and white.
“I used a trailer hook on it, and that was important because the fish often just swatted at it, they weren’t trying to eat it,” he said.
Poche, fishing his first Classic, said he had a surprise at one point Sunday: He slipped into the water as he reached to lip a 4-pounder.
“I actually had it for a second, but it came unbuttoned and I fell in the water after it,” he said. But that was early in the day. He boated about 15 fish all day to build his 16-10 bag, a showing that put him in contention for the crown up until the final minutes.
Poche fished Sullivan’s area of Pool 4, far in the back in a clearwater pond loaded with stumps, grass and fish. He had to run skinny water to reach it, kicking mud to clear a hump.
He pinpointed what he felt was his downfall.
“I didn’t execute on Day Two. If I had, it would have been lights out, game over today,” he said.
Carhartt Big Bass honors went to Poche for his a 6-pound, 13-ounce largemouth on Day One. The bonus is $1,000 for largest bass of the tournament.
Defending champ Kevin VanDam of Kalamazoo, Mich., finished with 40-10 in 11th place, pulling up from 18th place on Saturday.
“I just had a tough first day as far as executing,” VanDam said. “Today I caught all the bites I had, so I had a better day, but you just can’t have a bad day at this level against these guys.”
VanDam is a four-time Classic winner who has qualified for 22 consecutive championships. After winning in 2010 and 2011, VanDam had been trying for a record third consecutive Classic title
