I had another good morning fishing on Norfork Lake. I was fishing in the same area where I fished yesterday. The bite today was totally different from yesterday. I was out in this area by 5AM hoping to find striped bass and walleye on the banks. Not much was happening in the dark. The deep bass that had been on points disappeared and there was nothing on the banks. I landed a couple small, barely 20 inch long, stripers. I caught them by using a white trash Tater Shad in 25 feet of water. I kept cruising around looking in deep, as well as shallow water and at about 7AM I finally found a few striped bass. They moved into the same general area as the last two days. Today a few fish were 30 – 40 feet down. I was sitting in roughly 90 feet of water. These shallower stripers were not active and totally ignored my bait. I started to notice a few big arcs 60 to 90 feet deep. I dropped my Tater Shad down to 65 feet deep. I saw a big fish swim up to the bait and gave it a big thud. It took off running and I think it still is. It came close to spooling me, but with me tightening up the drag it broke off. It seemed like a really big fish. I ended up landing my limit of stripers. All came out of the deeper water and all had a ton of energy. My big fish today was an almost 13 pound fat striped bass. Somewhere between 8 and 8:30am the stripers disappeared, and I headed back to Hummingbird Hideaway Resort. All during the time that I was fishing for striped bass, the largemouth were feeding on the shoreline and out on the point I was fishing close to. The Wilson’s are having fun catching a few very nice crappie. They are jigging brush in 20 – 25 feet of water, as well as trolling the shoreline. The surface water temp increased a little and was around 56.5 degrees. The lake continues to fall and sits at 555.1 ft msl. There sure are a lot of loons on the lake. I enjoy watching them and sometimes they are a good aid to finding.
