Blue Cat Saturday

I called RodMaker and arranged to meet him at 5:15 Saturday at Blue Cat, one
of the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency ponds at Williamsport, TN. A
sliver of moon accompanied my drive, and as I pulled onto the gravel road
leading into the preserve, the stars were fading in the soft predawn light.

I discovered the three dollar day-use fee had gone up to five back in April.
A one-year pass good at all TWRA lakes is now $40, I think... not a bad idea
since there are three such areas within an hour and a half of the house.

RodMaker had not signed in, so I headed on down to the lake, rumbling across
two levees above Whippoorwill, my personal favorite. At 5 AM, there was no
one on that nice little pond, and the laydowns down there looked mighty
inviting. Incidentally, that was the lake written up a few years ago in the
Bassmaster's series where a bass pro fishes a local lake to demonstrate how
they approach an unfamiliar body of water. There are good fish in all these
lakes -- former settling ponds for a phosphate mining operation. I drove on
by, leaving it for another day.

Winding down the final slope and onto the earth dam at Blue Cat, I saw
another boat with two men already working the riprap with buzzbaits. Fish
were breaking the surface all over the lower end of the lake... bream, bass,
and hybrid striper (Cherokee bass, in these parts), but I didn't see either
of them connect. Pulling down to the ramp, I waited until the cloud of
limestone dust settled, then clambered out, unstrapped the ODF, and dropped
it in the drink.

RodMaker still wasn't in sight, so I spent a few minutes making a needed
adjustment to the bunkboards on my trailer. Finally, I pushed off and
started fishing the ramp area with a one of our new buzzbaits. As the sun
crept over the hill a half hour later, it dawned on me that RodMaker was a
no-show and I was going to fish solo that day, so I kicked the trolling
motor into high gear and headed for one of the lake's two main points.

The top water action had become sporadic, and after a while, I put away the
buzzbait in favor of a spinnerbait. I rotated between it, a 4-inch black/red
fleck tube, a chrome/blue back Rat-L-Trap, and a pearl Driftwood Lures
Flippin' Shad, working around the point and picking apart every stick,
stump, and laydown down the side.

My first bass, a 10-inch dink, came about 6:30 on the Flippin' Shad that I
cast toward a boil fifty feet off the bank. A second, slightly larger, took
the bait moments later as it chased shad across the surface.

When I switched to my lipless crankbait, the quality of fish improved
slightly. A one-pounder jumped all over the 'trap when I threw it about six
inches away from the water's edge. Bass were herding 4 to 5-inch shad to the
surface and onto the shore, and I happened to time my cast just as a bass
was closing in on his prey, and he took the bait.

The lake was starting to get crowded by 7 o'clock, but most of the boats
seemed intent on catfish or bream. I pretty much moved wherever I chose, and
I moved quickly along the sides of the points, targeting every rockpile,
stick, or shady spot with a plastic worm or shad. By 11:00, I'd caught and
released only three more bass, each about 14 inches. Surprisingly, I caught
them all in about 1 foot of water, where sun shone full force. It was 88
degrees at the surface. It must have been a little cooler in the shade and
close to the bottom, but bass were chasing food and were able to stand the
tepid bathwater temps.

The heat may not have affected the fish much, but it sure did the people. By
noon, the sun was bearing down hard and drove off most of the other anglers.
Building clouds and a freshening breeze, though, made the humidity bearable,
and I decided to hit one more bank before I pulled out for home.

There were two other boats, all dunking chicken livers for catfish, on the
little lake when I returned to the point where I'd started. The opposite
side of the left cove, near the dam, had been occupied earlier in the day,
and I hadn't been able to work down it. RodMaker had proven to me that this
was the best water on the whole lake, with relatively deep water right up
against the shore, lots of overhanging trees, fallen timber, and laydowns to
hold fish.

As I'd hoped, shad were moving up and down the bank, followed by marauding
largemouth. I caught three nice-size fish (posted on ABPF) by waiting until
the school moved within range and tossing a Flippin' Shad into the middle of
it. Sometime I saw bass ripping through the shad, casting right into the
center of the commotion, but most times I just spotted the tale-tell signs
of shad.... the popping bubbles produced by thousands of shad as they swim
below the surface.

I tried throwing a white Senko back in the tree-tops while I waited for the
schools to pass by, but it was a lot more prone to hang-ups than the shad,
and I couldn't even get a bump on it. The shad, though, produced another
bank runner or two, and I also lost two bass in the three-pound range that
hit the lure right at the boat. I'm not sure what happened.... probably
didn't hit them hard enough to set the hook.

Those of you who've fished with me know my penchant for plucking lures from
lakeside trees. As usual, the pond produced a nice assortment, each hanging
about ten feet above the water. My extending lure-retriever doesn't work too
well on my lures hung on the bottom brushpiles, but it does net me a lot of
interesting crankbaits. If the Flippin' Shad wasn't producing so well, I'd
have followed my normal custom and tied them on to see if I could catch a
bass on someone else's choice of baits. Odd tradition, but I find I usually
catch plenty of bass that way..... Maybe it proves something, but I'm not
sure what. Probably that I put too much thought into my own lure selection.

Anyway, I packed up, strapped down, and rumbled off in a white cloud of dust
by 3 PM. Total count for the day.... eleven bass, three of them what I'd
consider tournament keepers.

No crazies on the ramp... no spectacular fish. I did wonder if someone had
siphoned off my gas tank, because when I parked it showed 1/8-tank, and when
I cranked it up, it showed empty. My computer calculated 4 miles range left
in the tank. I made it to a nearby gas station, but on the way there the
fuel tank seemed to fill itself back to 1/8 tank. Must have been some
heat-induced sensor error.

Joe
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