By Ronnie Parris
This trip started like any other. I picked up my friend Stahle and we stopped at the bait shop for minnows and boat gas. When we got to the lake, the first thing I noticed was that the recent rains had the water level at least 15 feet higher than just a few days prior. This has always been a problem on Fontana in the winter. We had been catching some nice crappie and that was our plan for the day. We were gonna’ slow troll with the electric motor, pulling a mixture of soft plastics and hard baits with a couple of small minnows mixed in. We were using planner boards, so we were able to run 5 rods at once.
When we arrived where we had been doing our best on the previous trips, I stopped and set out our lines, figuring it wouldn’t take long before we would have some nice slabs on the line. I could tell right away something was off because I wasn’t marking any big schools of crappie on my Lawrance Sonar. I should have known it! We were in for a different kind of trip when the first strike came and Stahle set the hook on a fish that we knew was not a crappie or bass. When he got it up we were both surprised to see a nice bluegill had taken our small crankbait. We barely got that rod back out when Stahle set into a hard fighting fish that jumped several times and, after a good fight, I slipped the net under a nice rainbow trout. That’s when our luck went cold, for the next 2 hours, we marked fish on the bottom at 50 feet deep and a few scattered bass up top but could not get any takers.
As we passed in front of a fresh water branch that empties into the lake, the sonar lit up with a nice school of crappie but after several passes thru them without a hit, we decided to go to plan B. We brought all our rigs in and changed to live minnows and jigs and were sure those fish would come alive to this slower presentation, but after several casts and no hits, the school disappeared and we couldn’t find them anymore. That’s where plan C came into play. Remembering all the fish we saw on the sonar at 50 feet, I told Stahle we would see what they were. We searched a few minutes, till we finally located them again. They had moved maybe 100 yards upstream from where we marked them in the morning.
When we started, Stahle put on a small plastic minnow imitation and I put on a bass minnow. I could see the fish respond when the baits would hit the bottom but they were still slow. The first one hit my rod real soft and just sort of eased back to the bottom. I set the hook and I told Stahle it felt like a catfish. Now, you usually don’t catch a lot of cats in the winter but sure enough, when it surfaced, it was a nice 3-pound channel cat. Figuring that the others on the screen were cats, we put Stahle a minnow on and, as soon as it hit the bottom, he said he felt one take the bait. As soon as he set the hook, I could tell the way the fish rolled and twisted, it was another channel cat.
For the next hour or so, that’s the way it went. We were catching nice fat channel cats every few minutes. Finally, the wind set in and it was too hard to stay on the school. By then, we had a really nice mess of fish to take back for a fish fry so we packed it in.
I know a lot of people will target only one species and, if they don’t bite, they won’t change it up and go for something a little more aggressive, but I like to catch something even if it’s not what I came for, and that’s what we did on this trip. I think the cold rain had dropped the water temperature 5 degrees and that, coupled with the jump in water level, had made the crappie finicky, but those channel cats weren’t going to miss a chance at a free meal, and me and Stahle were more than happy to take these hard fighters. Next time you hit the water and the bite has changed, don’t give up too quickly; move around and watch your graph. Sooner or later, you will mark some kind of fish and you may have to try some different tactics, but you may just be rewarded with something special. As always, be safe on the water and take a kid fishing. You will get as much out of it as they do.
Ronnie Parris is the Owner and Head Guide of Smoky Mountain Outdoors Unlimited-Fontana Lake Fishing Guides, headquartered in Bryson City, North Carolina, heart of the Great Smoky Mountains. (www.smokymountainoutdoorsunlimited.com)
