Lake Chatuge Fishing Report

It appears that the groundhog may have actually been right this year and spring is starting early! March weather is here and with it comes warming water temperatures across the entire mountain region and the big fish factory called Lake Chatuge. With water temperatures warming the big bass are returning to shallower water. The big female largemouth are moving to shallower structure and cover staging for the prespawn and spawn. I consider the early part of March the pre prespawn period. The biggest fish will be in the transition from 15ft of water to 2ft of water. You can do some serious damage to some giant bass flipping a jig around wood, docks and other shallow cover! A shallow crankbait on rock and wood will catch some good fish as well. If there is a little chop and breeze you can hang some hammers with a jerkbait. I like a deeper jerkbait this time of the year but I will mix it up when the conditions call for it! An olive green X-Rap deep will put some good ones in the boat! A big swimbait will entice the big fish to get a large easy meal! I will combo a big swimbait and jigs on shallow docks and wood with a high warm sun and the water warming. The ultimate battle is quantity or quality. You can run points and pockets with a jerkbait and catch numbers but to get a big largemouth you need to punch your ticket on shallow cover!

Lake Glenville Fishing Report

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Lake Glenville is without question one of the best lakes in Western NC and possibly the Southeastern United States. Tucked away in the mountains just 5 miles from Cashiers NC, Lake Glenville has all of the components of a perfect storm! Glenville has the extremely rare combination of blueback herring and smallmouth bass. While blueback herring alone will turn an okay fishery into a world class fishery, the largemouth and smallmouth also prey on trout, crayfish, yellow perch and bream. 

It's currently late winter, the water temperature is in the low 40's but there is warming water on the horizon! Even with water in the low 40's you can find a good population of largemouth and smallmouth bass pushing herring on points across the lake throughout the day. Don't hesitate to fish shallow on warmer days when the sun gets up. Big largemouth will get on dark pieces of cover that retain heat and wait for an easy snack to swim by! Finding the main channel in pockets or a deep bowl in coves could pay dividends as well. Big largemouth and smallmouth will get down into the warmer stable water and feed on passing schools of herring. A football jig or finesse swimbait could be your ticket to those deeper fish!

Bait Selection

Fishing Report Fontana Lake

Winter time on Fontana is without question one of the most challenging, fun and rewarding bites to get on. Challenging because you never know what the weather will bring, fun because the fish are gorging shad and rewarding because the fish you catch can be STUDS! The fish in Fontana are always aggressive, their lives revolve around eating Threadfin Shad!

The water is around 47* and the smallmouth, spots and largemouth are feeding heavy in the 15ft- 30ft zone all around the lake! Best advice we can give you, chase the wind! People often think that the"wind blows the schools of shad." This is indirectly true, wind blows the shads food source and the shad follow! Now what baits to throw... 

Jackall DD Jerkbait

Shadalicious Swimbait- Sexy Shad

Spy Bait- American Shad

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Fontana Lake!

Dream Catcher Guides 3 Favorite Top Water Techniques

Top water fishing is without question the most fun fishing in the world! There is nothing like seeing a largemouth, smallmouth or spotted bass come out of the water and strike a lure so violently! It'll make you jump, flinch and even scare you half to death if you're not ready for it. There are quite a few top water techniques we utilize here in the Smoky Mountains but today we will focus on Dream Catcher Guides Top 5.

#1 Buzz Frogs/ Whopper Plopper/ Hollow Body Poppin' Frogs:
Late Spring - Middle Fall: Water temp 65*-77*

When the bream spawn is over and you cruise down the banks and see schools of a hundred bream, bluegill and shell crackers we guarantee there will be packs of giants close by! The big bass will pack up in what we call a "wolf pack" and push these schools of bream down the banks. We will take a Reaction Innovation Trixie Shark, Keitech Noisy Flapper, R2S Whopper Plopper or a Spro Poppin' frog and run down the bank at a pretty fast pace until we run into a wolf pack and we'll destroy them!

#2 Wake Baits/ Bomber Long A:
Early Spring - Late Spring: Water temp 50*- 65*

You probably wouldn't believe it unless you saw it but some of the best top water fishing we do in the mountains is when it is 50* water! Those big smallmouth and largemouth push herring on to points early in the morning and if you have a slow (and I mean slowwww) retrieving wake bait like a Bomber Long A you can catch some big ones!

#3 Walking Baits/ Lucky Craft Sammy
Late Spring - Early Summer & Fall: Water Temp 55* -70*

Whether it is schooling fish, walking them over points or fan casting pockets and shore line, there is always a good fish or two that will inhale a walking bait. When it get's to be post spawn and those big females are ready to start eating again you can run these over points and pockets and put some quality sized fish in the boat! On lakes like Glenville or Chatuge you always have to keep one tied on because you never know when they will come up schooling!


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No cover, No Structure... No Problem!

Close your eyes and dream of the ideal "honey hole"... You may imagine some form of aquatic grass, lily pads, a stump field, fallen timber, a dock, deep brush, a point, a rocky bank, a culvert pipe or some other kind of structure/ cover. We are visual creatures, we like visualizing a strike, we like to picture what our lure is doing when it is hopping and weaving through the brush as we anticipate a strike! But what if there is nothing visual to throw at? No trees, no grass, no rocks, stumps or docks... 

We are so enamored with "beating the bank." It's like a magnet that pulls us in! We grew up learning how to fish from shore and that cover/ structure is where a majority of our bites came from. And when we don't get bites on our favorite stuff we say "they're just not biting." Here in the Smoky Mountains the lakes are pulled way down to winter pool and there is either very little or no structure/ cover in the water. This keeps a lot of anglers off the water because "they don't bite in the Winter" or (there is nothing to throw at, which can be intimidating).

Here's a little secret, as long as a fish is living it is burning calories, as long as it is burning calories it needs to eat! The only reason why a fish gets locked on to cover or structure is because it holds food. Being that we have an abundance of shad (and I mean an abundance) the fish continuously gorge because they have to eat! When there is nothing to throw at, the schools of SHAD BECOME YOUR STRUCTURE AND COVER! If you find shad or some other kind of bait you have found where the bass will hold! Shad very rarely swim directly on the bank but will often swim in the middle or top of the water column. So the question becomes "How do you find shad?"

Shad eat plankton which are often on the top 1/3 of the water column. Wind creates surface current and will blow plankton, the shad follow the plankton, the bass follow the shad and we follow the bass! I call it "chasing the wind." Using your electronics are also very helpful in keying in on what depth the schools of fish are active as well as where the specific schools of baitfish are located! This will then help you narrow down your bait selection to match the hatch! 

If there is one thing to remember when the lakes are pulled down with nothing to visually throw at, the bait or SHAD BECOME YOUR STRUCTURE AND COVER! Match the hatch!

Dream Catcher Guides Top 5 Favorite Techniques

There are very few things as cool as fooling an apex predator! That's why I think so many people enjoy bass fishing. You are fooling one of the most dominant freshwater predatory fish to strike your a lure that resembles something in their diet. I think that is so fascinating! There are so many techniques, lures and presentation to use to catch fish and some work better than others in certain times of the year. I wanted to highlight my 5 favorite techniques to use when fishing for bass!

#1 Swimbaits
Swimbaits are among the most fun lures on the planet, from big jointed hard swimbaits to soft body and hollow body swimbaits! Baitfish are the main food source for a bass and when they feed on baitfish they inhale them into their mouth to ensure that they wont escape. When you're mimicking a baitfish with a swimbait a bass absolutely crushes it, sometimes it will feel like they are trying to rip the rod right out of your hand! You can catch numbers on a swimabit and size depending on the conditions and lure! They are pretty easy to throw as well, most swimbaits all you need to do is cast and reel!

#2 Frogging
Whether you are throwing a hallow body frog in shallow water or on top of grass or throwing a soft body frog cruising the bank it is fun! Watching a giant bass explode on the top of the water is the craziest thing and hooking the aggressive monsters can be a fight of a lifetime! Frogging explosions are never the same and can show you how creative a big bass can be when ambushing prey!

#3 Jerkbaits
Jerkbaits for essentially the same reason as swimbaits. When you are ripping a jerkbait and you feel your rod load up it is an exciting feeling! Make sure you hold on to your rod tight!

#4 Flipping Jigs/ Texas Rig 
When you are flipping a heavy weighted craw and/or flipping jig your heart will skip a beat when you feel the hard THUMP from a big bass! It can almost feel like somebody is hitting your lure with a sledgehammer! Then you set the hook with a stout rod and it doubles over and you can't help but to smile!

#4 Flukes
Flukes dip, dive, weave and jump out of the water and it is unbelievably fun to watch a bass chase a fluke. When you get them chasing it at what appears to be 100mph and then you stop it and they crush it, you will go just as crazy as the fish!

Top 5 Fishing Lakes in Western North Carolina

What a blessing to live and be able to fish here in the beautiful mountains of Western North Carolina! This place has it all! GIANT fish, numbers of fish, spotted bass, smallmouth bass and largemouth bass! All of these lakes have what I call "The Secret Formula" for being world class fisheries. First, almost every lake has a great abundance of shad (threadfin, gizzard, herring)! A shad is to a bass as a glazed munchkin donut from D&D is to a human! Bass don't stop eating them (EVEN IN COLD WATER)!!! These fish continuously gorge year round which produces above average size fish and feeding frenzies when you run into them! These lakes also provide bigger forage once a big ol' fish gets to big to be efficient chasing shad. This is when your bream, perch and trout become your big players! Mimicking this bigger forage can and will produce STUDS! But here is the thing, there is such an abundance of big fish you can hone in on them and not only have a great day for size but numbers with size!

Here are my Top 5 Fishing Lakes in Western North Carolina

#1 Lake Glenville, Cashiers NC

Lake Glenville is the best smallmouth bass fishery in the southeast! It's one of few lakes that has the odd combination of Blueback Herring and smallmouth bass! The abundance of herring, bream, yellow perch and trout make this lake absolutely lethal! A lot of big largemouth are caught year round to compliment the great smallmouth!

#2 Lake Chatuge, Hayesville NC

Lake Chatuge is almost identical to Lake Glenville except a few minor differences. Chatuge has big spotted bass instead of smallmouth. These spotted bass eat like you wouldn't believe and they really do look like a football! There are also Florida strain largemouth that swim around in Chatuge, they can grow up to 1.5 pounds per year! That combination of fish leads to some incredible days on the water!

#3 Fontana Lake, Bryson City NC

Fontana has some of the craziest fishing you've ever seen! With depths that exceed 500ft this lake is a big, clear, deep, honey hole! There are tons of shad which make for crazy top water explosions fishing for smallmouth, spots and largemouth! The fish are always schooling and if you can find some shallow largemouth on the bank you can bet they will dandy's!

#4 Bear Lake, Tuckasegee NC

Big largemouth is the only thing you need to know! Very few shad in this lake but the bass feed very heavily on bream, trout and crawfish! The largemouth grow and grow and grow. There is not a high population of fish but that means more food for the ones that are swimming around! 

#5 Lake Burton, Tiger GA

Lake Burton is not even in NC but is about 15 minutes from the state line! It's combination of Florida strain largemouth and big spotted bass make for a trip worth taking! The bass eat blueback herring and trout! They get huge, they get crazy and this lake is a little secret!