Lake Nottely Fishing Report – August 2008

Nottely: Level: Down 5.5 feet below full pool. Temp: 83 degrees. Clarity: Clear.

Bass: Heath Pack won a mid July Tuesday-night tournament by pitching a jig to blowdowns. “I’m using a 1/2-oz. Jewel jig in green-pumpkin orange,” said Heath. “Usually the fish hit the jig on the fall. If they don’t they will follow it down and look at it. I’ll hop the jig a couple of times, and a lot of times if they are looking at it, they will hit it. If they don’t hit it, I pull the jig out and hit another spot.” Heath said if you are working a jig through laydowns, start at the outermost end and work toward the bank rather than vice-versa so you don’t spook other fish when you pull one out. Spotted bass have been schooling on top, but there is no rhyme or reason to it, he said. “It’s like at Blue Ridge where the smallmouths are out in open water following the bait. If you are lucky they will blow up around the boat, but there’s no way to pattern them. They just follow the bait around.”

Stripers: Good. Nottely linesides guide Jeremy Seabolt said he had been picking up 10 to 20 stripers per trip pulling umbrella rigs on the upper end of the lake. “I don’t know why, but there have been some fish holding around Point 9,” said Jeremy. Jeremy has been catching fish on main-lake points pulling a 2-oz. U-rig with white bucktails dressed with chartreuse twister-tails. However, on the center line, instead of another bucktail, he has been tying in a gizzard-shad imitation swimbait. “About 90 percent of the fish have been hitting that swimbait,” he said. Jeremy said he is pulling the U-rig about 125 feet behind his boat at about two to three mph. That puts the rig at about 18 feet, he said, but he speeds up or slows down to raise or drop the rig according to what he sees on his electronics. The fish have been running from 8 to 14 pounds, and they’re all stripers. “I don’t know where the hybrids are,” he said. “They ought to be schooling early and late, but so far, I haven’t found them.” Nottely lineside guide Josh Garrison said the bite is extremely early with most of the fish coming on light downline rigs fished between 25 to 35 feet over 60-foot bottoms. “All the fish we have caught recently have been in the mid-lake area between points 3 and 6 over steep rocky points on live bluebacks. Try white bucktails at the same depth if you want to try artificials. Most of the fish have been in the 5- to 10-lb. range with one or two bigger fish each morning. The biggest recently being the 39-lb. striper caught by my 10-year-old daughter Emma.”