Recapping The First FLW Event With Cody Kelley

This post was guest written by Cody Kelley, FLW angler!When I first began taking bass fishing seriously, I told myself that I would try to learn something every time I put my boat in the water, no matter how the day went. After the first FLW Tour event I would say that I still have a ton to learn about Lake Guntersville. I’ve always said that pre-spawn bass in sub-emergent grass are my largest weakness in fishing. There is absolutely no doubt about that, but WOW. Absolute poor performance on my part. I, along with many others, simply didn’t find the fish this past week. Lake Guntersville is primarily a shallow lake. Once you get out of the main channel, you are in a jungle of grass and shallow bars with ditches and drains everywhere. Almost everything looks good when you look at the map, and much of it is. There was a ton of different things going on at Guntersville to make it extremely tough, so I’ll run through a few of them. Primarily temp, grass, water level, and current.

Two weeks prior to our event, the area had multiple days that warmed the water up to around 60 degrees. Of course this brought a large number of hungry bass up to the shallows and people absolutely caught them for about two weeks. Just a few days before we showed up, a massive cold front rolled through (imagine that). Now anyone who has been bass fishing for any amount of time knows what happens to shallow water fish when a cold front hits….it’s not good. Some will stay put and simply not bite, while others will roll out to the first drop, and still others will roam back and forth between the two. Simply put, the fish get very scattered (especially when you throw in the next few factors). When we dumped the boat in the first morning, we were greeted with 48 degree water temps. Not bad in most situations, unless it had been 60 just one week prior. The water in the back of pockets and creeks, where a lot of fish most likely were when the temp was 60, was actually significantly colder than the main river. Remember talking about the fish scattering?I mentioned earlier that pre spawn grass bass aren’t exactly a favorite of mine, so you can imagine that I was hoping the hydrilla and coontail would be somewhat dormant to the point that a person could find good patches of it that would hold fish. You know, that good 1 foot tall stuff that you can burn a trap through. This wasn’t even close to what I found. Due to the warm winter in the area, the grass never died out. We found some grass that was even topped out still. Heck I event caught some punching hydrilla! This tall grass made it extremely tough to fish the traditional lipless crankbait pattern. The grass, although tall, wasn’t healthy and simply balled up on a bait. When it gets like this it is extremely hard to rip off the bait, even with braided line. To throw another variable in the grass equation was a new appearance of eel grass. Now eel grass has been in the TVA river system for a while now and even produced a win at Lake Pickwick last year. However, it was EVERYWHERE at Lake Guntersville. So much of it that it made it tough to get a cast in at time because so much was floating on the surface. Something everyone had to deal with, but still a headache and a challenge to get around.

Water level ALWAYS plays a role in fishing tournaments. In the weeks prior to our event, the water level of Guntersville fluctuated greatly. Up 3 feet in one day. Back to normal 3 days later. Back up 1.5 feet in 12 hours. Back down. When you pair that with warm water and also heavy cold fronts, you really start seeing fish getting lock jaw and scatter. In general, bass prefer consistency if they can get it. They will definitely bite in cold water, but it seems like the bite is always a lot better if it is cold and has BEEN cold for some time.The last large variable for the week was current. There was definitely no lack of it. Most days we had about 50-60K cubic feet per second. If you fish a river much, you know that is rolling pretty good. Now this I won’t complain about. I really like fishing current. It typically just puts the fish in predictable areas. It did seem to make the fish bite in the mornings pretty well. For me though, it seemed like the short fish were the only ones that wanted to play the game.

Having a bad practice, I decided to go check out new water and new techniques that I hadn’t messed with too much already. I opted for 5 inch swimbait on a swimjig head. Something that I have confidence in and knew I could get through all of the thick grass. Early the first morning I boated two keepers on the rig. Several shorts came on it later in the day, but nothing to help the cause. On day two, I made the decision to run up the river to the Mud Creek area and just go ‘junk fishing.’ I caught a keeper flipping a Vile Craw to a small hydrilla stand in a current break first thing in the morning. I definitely thought I would be able to run the pattern and make something happen. Not the case.This was definitely not the event I was looking for to open the season, but if it weren’t for the bad ones, the good ones wouldn’t be as sweet. Time to re-group, re-tie, and re-pack for Lake Travis. I learned a lot from Guntersville and will undoubtedly be able to apply it in the future!All images via FLW