Carters Lake Fishing Report October 2014

Carters: Level: 3.8 feet below full pool. Temp: 77-79 degrees. Clarity: Clear.

Spotted Bass: Good. Guide Louie Bartenfield reports, “The baitfish are most definitely starting to move a lot more than they were during summer. As typical with fall, look for windy days to really position the fish for you. I’m a big believer in shad patterns/shapes exclusively in October. Topwater, underspins, jerkbaits and spinnerbaits are my go-to lures this month. My choice weapons day-in-day-out will be SpotSticker 7/16-oz. underspins tipped with Big Bite Jointed Jerk Minnows in alewife color and a Mini-Me 3/4-oz. glimmer-blue spinnerbait always tipped with a trailer hook. Chase windy points and steep banks both in the creek mouths and on the main lake. There’s also a deep bite going on with a drop shot, but size is hard to come by right now. Look for the turnover to start sometime at the end of October when our temps get down into the low 60s. When this happens, fish really scatter. I stick with the same baits, but the shallow bite will be short lived each day, so I tend to focus more on the deeper, 40- to 50-foot fish with drop shots and underspins.”

Stripers: Louie reports, “Stripers will be following the huge schools of bait up and down in the water column in October. It’s entirely possible to find stripers in 80 feet or on the surface in the same area this month. I’m always looking for surface boils, and use a 7-foot St. Croix medium-action spinning rod with 30-lb. braid and a 12-lb. floro leader and a 1/2-oz. Castaway Bucktail in Lanier blueback to cast at these boils. Stripers are a sucker for the bucktail. I often catch big spotted bass doing this, too. For the live-bait fishing, it’s really simple. I run a spread of downlines 20 to 40 feet deep and one freeline with the biggest bait you have in the tank 30 to 40 feet off the back of the boat. Cover water, and keep your eye on your Humminbird Down Imaging for optimum coverage.” Guide Eric Crowley reports, “My best bite has been in the early morning hours from 2 a.m. to 7 a.m. Putting out the Hydroglows and drawing in the bait is also drawing in the fish. Watching your sonar, you will see the bigger fish on the bottom under the bait. I have been setting up in 50 to 75 feet of water and just fishing live baits on light line with little or no weight. Just let the baits struggle down the water column on a small circle hook. Let the baits fall all the way to the bottom, let them sit a second and reel them up. Change the bait, and throw it back out and repeat. We have caught stripers, hybrids, flatheads and spotted bass like this in the past few weeks. After the sun comes up, we are still marking and catching fish deep. The thermocline is still holding around 50 feet, and until turnover happens, the fish are going to be there. Slow trolling live baits in that zone is a great search technique. Focus these efforts around creek mouths, big points and edges of the river channel. Large alewife, big threads and smaller gizzards are all good options this time of year.”