Trip to Demopolis Lake in LA

Monday December 29 - Day 349 - 15 days missed

Met Boyd Duckett at Lake Demopolis to get information for a February
Alabama Outdoor News Map of the Month article. We got on the water at
9 AM on a clear, bright, cool day. The first place we fished I was
impressed by the care Boyd took picking apart the cover, from flipping
mats of dead grass to hitting the base of trees in the water.

He told me we had a bad day - the water was rising due to upstream
rains and that rising water on Demopolis is not a good thing. We also
had a cold front, bright sun and high pressure after a week of clouds
and rain. The water temperature was in the upper 50s and there was a
good bit of current in the river.

I didn’t fish any in the first spot, busy taking notes. Boyd caught
one small keeper on a spinner bait out of a ditch and missed a hit on
his Chigger Craw.

We started looking at spots to put in the article and talked about
February patterns there. Demopolis is basically a river with an
overflow dam - very flat all around it, lots of swamps and shallow
sloughs. We went into several and fished but the river water had
backed up into them and stained them up. I loved the look of the
places we fished - lots of standing razor grass and bushes in the
water and mats of what he called alligator grass and hyacinth. The
lake looks very “fishy.”

About the third or fourth place we tried the water was clearer - we
were a long way off the river, and there was lots of hydrilla in this
slough. He said fish had been schooling in there pretty good Saturday
and we saw some chasing shad. Lots of shad about 3 inches long - I
hooked one on a Yozuri Shallow Vibe. Boyd got a couple of keepers on a
shallow crankbait.

After looking at and fishing several more spots we hit one where he
said he had caught a bunch of fish on Saturday. There was some
activity but the water had stained up a lot. It was getting later in
the day - after 3 PM now, and the sun was lower. Boyd started just
crawling a spinner bait along the bottom and caught several keepers,
then the best of the day, a 3.25 pounder. Some of them hit the spinner
bait several times before taking it.

I managed to catch a drum and two bass on the Yozuri. Had to fish it
almost like a worm on the bottom, like he was fishing the spinner
bait. Boyd kept working and trying different things until he hit the
way the fish wanted the bait. We worked around the end of the slough
several times before leaving.

We looked at several more places - this is a fun lake to run, if you
know it. We would run on plane through ditches not much wider than the
boat to get back into “lakes” off the river. Boyd says this is a
pretty big lake but it fishes small because most of the fish,
especially the largemouth, are back in sloughs and many of them have
silted in at the mouth and you can’t get back in them. Would be a
great place to take a small aluminum boat and a push pole.

On a tough day Boyd got 12 to 15 bass and I landed two. Was very
interesting spending the day in the boat with a Classic winner.

Ronnie

http://fishing.about.com

On Tue, 30 Dec 2008 18:15:53 -0800 (PST), Ronnie
backed into a tree whilst ridin inna park
then wrote:

Monday December 29 - Day 349 - 15 days missed

Met Boyd Duckett at Lake Demopolis to get information for a February
Alabama Outdoor News Map of the Month article. We got on the water at
9 AM on a clear, bright, cool day. The first place we fished I was
impressed by the care Boyd took picking apart the cover, from flipping
mats of dead grass to hitting the base of trees in the water.

He told me we had a bad day - the water was rising due to upstream
rains and that rising water on Demopolis is not a good thing. We also
had a cold front, bright sun and high pressure after a week of clouds
and rain. The water temperature was in the upper 50s and there was a
good bit of current in the river.

I didn’t fish any in the first spot, busy taking notes. Boyd caught
one small keeper on a spinner bait out of a ditch and missed a hit on
his Chigger Craw.

We started looking at spots to put in the article and talked about
February patterns there. Demopolis is basically a river with an
overflow dam - very flat all around it, lots of swamps and shallow
sloughs. We went into several and fished but the river water had
backed up into them and stained them up. I loved the look of the
places we fished - lots of standing razor grass and bushes in the
water and mats of what he called alligator grass and hyacinth. The
lake looks very “fishy.”

About the third or fourth place we tried the water was clearer - we
were a long way off the river, and there was lots of hydrilla in this
slough. He said fish had been schooling in there pretty good Saturday
and we saw some chasing shad. Lots of shad about 3 inches long - I
hooked one on a Yozuri Shallow Vibe. Boyd got a couple of keepers on a
shallow crankbait.

After looking at and fishing several more spots we hit one where he
said he had caught a bunch of fish on Saturday. There was some
activity but the water had stained up a lot. It was getting later in
the day - after 3 PM now, and the sun was lower. Boyd started just
crawling a spinner bait along the bottom and caught several keepers,
then the best of the day, a 3.25 pounder. Some of them hit the spinner
bait several times before taking it.

I managed to catch a drum and two bass on the Yozuri. Had to fish it
almost like a worm on the bottom, like he was fishing the spinner
bait. Boyd kept working and trying different things until he hit the
way the fish wanted the bait. We worked around the end of the slough
several times before leaving.

We looked at several more places - this is a fun lake to run, if you
know it. We would run on plane through ditches not much wider than the
boat to get back into “lakes” off the river. Boyd says this is a
pretty big lake but it fishes small because most of the fish,
especially the largemouth, are back in sloughs and many of them have
silted in at the mouth and you can’t get back in them. Would be a
great place to take a small aluminum boat and a push pole.

On a tough day Boyd got 12 to 15 bass and I landed two. Was very
interesting spending the day in the boat with a Classic winner.

Ronnie

http://fishing.about.com

Good report Ronnie! Sounds like a fun place to fish with a local.

Dan