Lake Guntersville is special. On the Tennessee River in north Alabama, it is a grass filled bass factory. The Bass Anglers Sportsman Society ranks it in the top ten bass lakes in the nation most years.
When big tournaments are held there it is common for five bass limits weighing more than 20 pounds to come to the scales, and catches of five weighing 30 pounds are weighed in most years.
But there are two sides to this story. Bass clubs in Alabama send in tournament results and the state compiles it in their BAIT report. That report shows Guntersville has a lower percent of anglers catching a keeper bass in tournaments than all but three other Alabama lakes.
Fishing can be great there but the whole lake looks “fishy.” When you stop on a point or in a cove and see hydrilla, water willow and eel grass everywhere it is hard to decide where to cast. It looks like a bass could be anywhere, or everywhere.
The Sportsman Club fished there last weekend and our results are more like the BAIT results than the results of pro tournaments or tournaments fished by local fishermen that know the lake well.
After fishing from 6:30 AM to 2:30 PM Saturday and 6:30 AM to 1:30 PM Sunday in very hot weather, we brought 21 keeper bass weighing about 45 pounds to the scales. Nobody weighed in a five fish limit and three of the nine fishermen didn’t have a keeper.
Guntersville has largemouth, smallmouth and spotted bass. The length limit on smallmouth and largemouth is 15 inches and in our tournament a spot had to be 12 inches long. About 14 of our bass were largemouth, six were spots and one a smallmouth.
Raymond English had bad/good luck and won and had big fish. His boat motor would not go into gear so he had to fish around the ramp both days, but caught six keepers, four largemouth and two spots, weighing 15.14 pounds for first and his 5.40 pound largemouth was big fish.
My six, three largemouth, two spots and one mean mouth, weighing 8.80 pounds was second, Zane Fleck had three largemouth weighing 7.97 pounds for third and Billy Roberts had three largemouth weighing 6.13 pounds for fourth.
I went up on Wednesday and camped at Guntersville State Park, a beautiful facility with good shower houses. As usual I was shocked at the number of huge motor homes and fifth wheel trailers that came into the campground, were set up and the folks went inside.
I seldom saw anyone else outside except midmorning when some came out to cook breakfast and then came back out late in the afternoon to cook dinner. I guess it was just too hot to leave the air conditioning in their home away from home, but I don’t understand driving to campground on a beautiful lake and staying inside almost the whole time.
I spent Thursday and Friday riding around looking for deep fish on ledges on my electronics. Guntersville is famous for its deep ledges as well as its grass beds. I found many schools of fish but could not get them to bite. One local guide told me they were inactive and would not feed unless current was moving from power generation, and there was no current the whole time I was there.
Saturday morning I started on a grassbed a guide had suggested, and caught two short bass and one barely 15 inch long keeper. At about noon I was fishing down a bluff bank, mainly keeping my boat in the shade, and caught a keeper spot. Then a little later on another bluff bank a good keeper largemouth it my small jig in a treetop. Those three put me in third the first day.
Sunday the grassbed produced only one short fish so I headed to my shady bank early. I caught an unusual looking fish, it looked olive green, not green like a largemouth and not brown like a smallmouth. I looked it up and it was a cross between a spot and a smallmouth, called a “meanmouth.” It had a patch of “teeth” on its tongue like a spot and, according to what I found on the internet on my phone and a text to a local guide, it was considered a spot for size limits so I could weigh it in.
I stayed on that shady bank the rest of the day and lost a keeper spot and caught two short spots. Then, with ten minutes left to fish, I caught a keeper spot. At 1:17 I thought to myself I could make two more cast before running in. That cast produced a hit on my small jig and I landed a barely keeper largemouth, giving me second place.
I didn’t have time left to make my last cast!
