Lake Blackshear Fishing Report April 2011

Blackshear: Level: Full pool. Temp: Low 60s. Clarity: Heavy stain.

Bass: Good. Jim Murray Jr. says half the bass will be spawning, and the other half will be in prespawn and postspawn stages in April. Regardless, they are all feeding in shallow water. Cypress trees and grassbeds are the key to catching April bass on Blackshear. Jim will have a simple selection of baits tied on this month. A 1/4-oz. gold-bladed buzzbait, a 3/8-oz. chartreuse and white spinnerbait with gold Indiana blades, and a frog will be for fishing fast. For slower fishing Jim likes an 8-inch green-pumpkin Zoom lizard with a 1/8-oz. sinker or a green-pumpkin Senko rigged weightless. If the water is clear, he will throw one of his Custom Bass Tackle swim jigs.If there is some cloud cover and breeze, Jim will run and gun, hitting as much cover as fast as possible. When it is bright and calm, he will slow down and pick apart the cover. Bass are much more aggressive when their visibility is limited by low-light conditions or surface chop on the water. “Isolated cover it the key,” Jim said. There is so much cover like grass and cypress trees it is easy to make lots of unproductive casts. Don’t fish a big clump of cypress trees or a huge grassbed. Instead, target trees standing alone or out from the clump. Find small patches of grass with open water around them. Those kinds of places will draw in the bass, especially the bigger fish. Bass will be bedding around the cypress trees, too. Jim says if you catch a bass off a tree, especially a smaller buck bass, return to the tree later, and you will have a good chance of catching the female there when she has time to calm down and returns to the bed. For more on Blackshear bass in April, turn to page 90.

Crappie: Good. “If you find the right dock, you can catch the heck out of them,” said Rusty Parker. Rusty said the fish were starting to spawn and some were in the backs of creeks on March 24, but they were not yet “full blown.” He was catching fish shooting the biggest, shadiest docks he could find with an A&R Betsy Bug with a sickle hook in either black/green/chartreuse or red/green/yellow. He also had some luck pitching to trees in Smokehouse and Collins Branch.