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| Fishing |
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| No Grass? No Problem! Pickwick’s Ledges and Humps |
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| By Greg McCain |
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Originally published in the August 2011 issue of AON
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Buddy James caught this 4 1/2-pounder in Indian Creek. Although Buddy doesn’t fish many tournaments anymore, he put together a five-fish limit that weighed 14 pounds when he took out AON freelancer Greg McCain.
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Like a championship 18-hole golf course, Indian Creek takes a pounding from the myriad of anglers who daily make the rounds of its numerous humps and ledges. The Pickwick Lake tributary, perhaps a thousand acres of prime Tennessee River real estate, lies just across the Alabama state line in the edge of Mississippi.
In an area permeated with ledge-fishing opportunities, Indian Creek is one of the hottest destinations for bass fishermen along the river. Boats cruise from hole to hole, GPS waypoints and other modern gadgets providing an electronic path to each stop. Continuing the golf analogy, it’s like a hidden cart path available to anyone with the right technology.
“I used to think of some of these spots as my own,” said Buddy James, of Iuka, Miss., a Pickwick veteran who makes regular excursions to the lake. “But there are very few secrets any more. It seems like everybody knows about the offshore spots, the ledges and the creek channels. That’s one thing that electronics will do for you. There’s plenty of ledges to fish in Indian Creek, and a lot of people know about them.”
I spent several days on Pickwick in early July immediately after the Fourth of July holiday, including one day in the boat with Buddy, who mainly fun fishes now after years on the local tournament circuit. He warned me in advance that the fishing had slowed in recent weeks and then proceeded to produce quality largemouth bass on just about every stop we made.
“The fishing has been tough the last couple of weeks, but we should be able to find a few fish,” Buddy said when we met at the J.P. Coleman State Park ramp, a staging area for major tournaments on the lower end of Pickwick. “The fish have moved out on the deep ledges and schooled up. That’s where I like to catch them. You won’t find me beating the banks at this time of year.”
Buddy’s ledge-fishing insight serves him well in the area around J.P. Coleman. Just upstream is Bear Creek 4 miles to the southeast; an equal distance in the opposite direction is Yellow Creek. Right in the middle of this 8-mile section of Pickwick and adjacent to J.P. Coleman is Indian Creek, where Buddy, his Jack Russell, Petey, and I spent a good portion of our day. The plan was to fish Indian Creek until the current started sweeping over the main-lake ledges.
After perhaps 30 minutes on our first stop in the creek, Buddy swept the hook back on a quality fish. Safely in the boat, the largemouth weighed 4 1/2 pounds, a good start to the day but the only fish that came from the first spot. As we fished on, Buddy strung together a five-fish limit of about 14 pounds, culling several 2-pounders along the way.
Running a short distance into the creek, Buddy stopped his Mariner-powered Allison boat near an offshore ledge that runs adjacent to the J.P. Coleman campground. We plied the spot with big football jigs and bigger Texas-rigged worms with little success. As we fished, Buddy pointed out other general locations in Indian Creek that he likes to fish, noting that there seemed to be a boat and at times two around most of them.
“That doesn’t mean they are always on the sweet spot,” Buddy said. “That’s important, knowing how and where to setup and fish a spot.”
He pointed to a boat perhaps 200 yards farther up the creek as an example.
“Take that boat right there,” he continued. “It seems like it’s a little too close to the bank to effectively fish the best part of that ledge. I’m not saying I know everything there is to know about this lake, but I’ve managed to learn a little through the years.”
We bounced from one spot to the next, each producing at least a few fish. Buddy dropped a marker on each spot after identifying it with his GPS. He finally settled on one of his favorite ledge areas, opting to change from the football jig to a big spinnerbait, a “Buddy Brand” 1-oz. model.
“The fish are just not hitting the jig right now like I would like them to,” he said. “Sometimes you just have to change. I am seeing a lot of fish showing on the graph, some of them suspended off the bottom. Maybe they would like something other than a jig.”
The big spinnerbait, featuring twin willowleaf blades and sporting a blue-and-white skirt, proved to be the ticket as Buddy boated about five good fish in succession. Petey barked with excitement on each hookset and then enthusiastically “helped” Buddy play the fish into the boat.
“He’s my fishing partner,” Buddy said. “I fish by myself a lot, and he provides good company. He sleeps under the console a good bit, but he always knows when you catch a fish.”
Buddy experimented with several different lures during the course of the day, catching a few fish on a swimbait and casting a deep-diving crankbait and Carolina rig a few times.
“About 90 percent of the time, maybe 99 percent, you will find me throwing the football jig,” he said. “I will throw the jig mainly and also the big worm. But the spinnerbait is a good alternative on certain days. They seem to want it today more than the jig. You have to recognize that need to change.
“A lot of people catch fish on a crankbait. That’s not my favorite thing to do, but they are still effective at times.”
On most of the stops in Indian Creek, Buddy kept his boat in at least 20 feet of water, fishing the ledges from the shallowest spots into deeper water. One area along a clearly defined creek channel offered slightly shallower water.
“This proves you don’t have to be super deep to catch summer fish,” Buddy said after we caught three fish in succession from a spot 12 feet deep. “The difference here is the bottom structure. Can you feel the difference? There’s a shell mound right on the break that almost always holds fish.”
We spent the rest of our outing on main-river ledges and finally ended the day on the humps at the mouth of Bear Creek. None produced as well as Indian Creek even when the TVA started moving heavier current later in the day. We caught several smaller fish on the river ledges, but few of the bigger “tournament” fish we found earlier in the day in Indian Creek.
“All of these places we have fished are good places,” Buddy said. “I’m not sure where the better fish are today. On another day, they might be on the main river rather than in the creeks.”
The day, however, proved that Pickwick continues to thrive. Local anglers, visitors and tournaments pros alike have flocked to the lake in recent years. Both BASS and FLW have fished successful tournaments on the lake already this year with another major FLW event scheduled for late July.
Not even the absence of grass on the lake this year has slowed the fishing. The grass, mainly hydrilla with a little milfoil and assorted other aquatic vegetation that had spread through most of the lower half of the lake in recent years, never emerged in any significant amount. Without the grass option, anglers have reverted almost exclusively to fishing ledges and humps during the day, long a Pickwick tradition.
“I’m not sure what’s happened to the grass,” Buddy said. “There’s a lot of theories, heavy current and the like. I like to fish the grass when it’s available, but there are still plenty of places to catch fish on Pickwick.”
Buddy suggests the football jig as a first option. He acknowledges that’s a personal preference because other anglers have successfully used other approaches, notably Carolina rigs and deep-diving crankbaits. Buddy makes his own jigs and fishes them with a NetBait Paca Chunk. He favors green-pumpkin or peanut-butter-and-jelly colors, occasionally opting for a black-and-blue combination.
“There’s something gratifying about catching fish on the lures that you make,” said Buddy, who also makes a good-looking and smooth-running spinnerbait.
A common denominator in his lures is size, which trend toward the larger end of the scale. He normally throws a 3/4-oz. football jig and a 1-oz. spinnerbait. When he changes to a Texas rig or Carolina rig, he favors bigger plastic, like the Zoom Ol’ Monster 10 1/2-inch worm in redbug color.
Buddy fishes most of the lure combinations on medium-heavy Carrot Sticks, either 7-foot, 6-inch or 7-foot, 9-inch, and Bass Pro Shop Pro Qualifier reels, which he spools with 17-lb. test Bass Pro Shop XPS fluorocarbon.
“I really like the Carrot Stick for my jig fishing,” Buddy said. “The rod and the fluorocarbon line give you a good feel of the jig and the bottom.”
Buddy fishes the jig slowly and methodically, dragging it most of the time with occasional hops.
“I try to maintain bottom contact most of the time,” he said.
With the spinnerbait, Buddy successfully used a classic slow-rolling technique on the day we fished. He favors a 7 1/2-foot Daiwa rod for his spinnerbait fishing.
“Cast it out as far as you can, let it settle to the bottom, and slow-roll it back to the boat,” he said. “I don’t do much else with the spinnerbait.”
While the jig, Texas rig and spinnerbait are the main parts of his arsenal, Buddy acknowledged the need for an occasional change with various other lures rigged and ready in the boat, including a crankbait, swimbait, Carolina rig and spoon. He also had a Little George style tailspinner tied on.
Even though we never sampled it, the topwater option is also an exciting part of bass fishing on Pickwick.
“I also like to get to the lake early for the topwater bite,” Buddy said. “We didn’t really get here early enough today for any topwater action, but it can be really good for the first hour or so after daylight.”
His favorite topwater lure is a Storm Chug Bug, but Buddy also likes the Heddon Baby Torpedo and the Zara Spook Jr.
The one element missing from our day’s catch of perhaps 20 fish was a smallmouth, the fish for which Pickwick is best known. The largemouth population has always easily surpassed smallmouth numbers on the lake, and with the proliferation of grass in recent years, the largemouth population has exploded on Pickwick. Largemouths typically provide a more reliable option than the moody smallmouths.
“Everybody loves to catch smallmouths,” Buddy said at one point during the trip, “but they are hard to pattern. They are on a certain place one day and gone the next.”
Buddy suggested the main-river ledges as the best opportunity for a big smallmouth. The humps and ledges in the creeks also hold smallmouth at times but are predominantly largemouth hotspots. Buddy particularly mentioned the humps at the mouth of Bear Creek, which catch a lot of current headed downriver, as a likely location for smallmouths.
“The smallmouths are not going to be stationary on any one place,” Buddy said. “They are going to roam and chase bait. If I wanted to zero in on a smallmouth, I would head out on the main river ledges. The smallmouths seem to be more active early or late in the day and especially at night. You would probably catch more smallmouths at night than at any other time at this point in the year.”
For first-time visitors to the lake, quality ramp and lodging facilities are all over the lake. J.P. Coleman, off Highway 25 about 12 miles north of Iuka, Miss., is a good launching point for fishing the lower end of Pickwick and also features quality and affordable lodging and camping facilities. Several ramps are located in Yellow Creek and in Bear Creek as well.
“Looking back over the years it’s the best by far,” Buddy said. “It’s better than it’s been in the last five or six, say the last 10 years. I think the technology helps us find the fish, but we are also taking better care of the fishery. That makes the fishing good for everybody.”
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