Lake Weiss Fishing Report – May 2006

Weiss: Level: .5 feet below full pool. Temp: 76 degrees. Clarity: The main lake is clear, the Coosa is dingy.

Bass: Fair. Lake Weiss fishing guide Mark Collins said the bass spawn is winding down. “I have seen a few bass guarding balls of fry,” he said. Mark said the grassbeds are just beginning to emerge and that the bass are starting to pull up into the grass. He has been catching fish with a 3/8-oz. spinnerbait with double-Colorado blades and a white-and-chartreuse skirt. “Look for banks that drop off quickly to at least two feet,” he said. “The fish don’t seem to be on the real shallow banks.” A Texas-rigged lizard in green pumpkin has also been catching fish along the edges of the grass. A topwater bite should fire up after the postspawn, but it hasn’t happened yet. Mark said he had been throwing a buzzbait early and late but had not had anything blow up on it yet.

Stripers: Slow. The fish haven’t made it back from their run up the rivers yet, said Mark. In the next few weeks when they do, they will stack up mainly in the Coosa River channel to feed on shad. Mark said downlining live shad while pulling freelines behind the boat is a good way to catch them during the summer.

Crappie: The majority of the crappie have spawned and pulled off the banks, said Mark. “You can still find a few up shallow, but most of them have pulled back to boat docks or to the river channel. I am going fishing today, and I will go to the river channel with minnows and a bottom-bumping rig.” The fish are holding in about 14 feet of water on the ledges, and that bite will hold up through May before the water temperature rises into the 80s and the fish head deeper and become more difficult to catch, he said. Dock shooting is holding up. Mark says he uses a 1/32-oz. chenille jig made by Wanda’s Jigs. “They have a pipe-cleaner body instead of plastic and the chenille holds a little air, which makes the jig fall a little slower.” Mark fires the jig under the docks and lets it swing back on a tight line. Gray/gray/gray is his go-to color.

Bream: The bream are starting to bed, said Mark, but almost nobody messes with them. “There’s just no size to them,” he said. “If you get one that is hand-sized, that’s bragging rights.” There are bream in the back of nearly every bay, he said, and if you wanted to take a float, small hook and some red wigglers you could catch a lot of bluegill and shellcrackers.