Fished Thursday evening thru Saturday. Air temps ranged from mid-50s to 80 and water temps 60-63, mix of sun/clouds and wind/calm throughout the weekend. Thursday and Friday were tough. Caught probably 20 fish total (three guys fishing) in multiple different places all over the lake but couldn't really put a pattern together. We were fishing mostly flooded trees in 8-20' near points, coves, islands. Bites seemed kinda random and far apart. Finished the day up the Colorado and my dad's friend caught a 5 pounder. Saturday we started out in the Colorado and found a pattern on rock banks with deep water nearby. Caught them pretty well on T-rigged zoom worms and wacky senkos. Caught an 8-5 bass (my PB), a 5-14 bass, and a 24" channel cat in about a 100' stretch of bank.

Challenging days, but felt like I learned something. My question for you guys now is:

When you're fishing a lake like Ivie, where there's miles on miles of shoreline that have deep water, channel swings, flooded brush, clear water, etc., what do you target to make the lake smaller? We kept running into the problem where some of the fishiest looking stuff you could imagine produced no bites, and that made it really hard to figure out where to go next when a lot of the lake looks just as good.

The area where you caught your fish had something to it. I would have fished that area hard and gone back and forth a few times with different casting angles and different baits to get the most out of it. Then maybe something could have clued you into a pattern. Sometimes just letting it rest for some time helps.

I had the same deal this weekend on a lake here, I caught fish in a tight area, left and fished a few spots with different features and couldn't get a bite with the same baits, went back to the spot later, expanded on what I was doing and caught more.

congrats on the PB btw

Congrats

I study the contour lines off shore to determine if they are good enough to deliver the fish for the spawn. These contours are very irregular with protrusions and gouges that are underwater. Many of these will not show up as a shoreline read; so you are not seeing any gouge in the bank or protrusion off the bank. Those sections of shoreline have been good producers if the contour lines off shore are super good. If the fish are not in the shallows they will be on the staging slopes and irregular features sitting on those super contours as they return to their comfort zone. If interested in more; please send me a PM.. I have lots of articles.

Using your graphs will tell you if it has fish or not.

Dude I feel your pain! ive never really fished sticks the way that lake has.....and theyre everywhere!!! Id say go by the mapping...but Lakemaster doesnt have good HD maps for that lake. so go Navionics if you go back and take everyone elses advice.

Hows the lake? Crowded yet? i feel like sneaking away for a few days in a week or two....but it looks like they are having tourneys every weekend. I wonder what the lakes like during that time....considering I was there when the hype was probably at its peak 🤔

All the rain we got a little over 2 years ago brought the water levels up to where it hasn't been in 20 years. Heavy brush and trees everywhere. Twin Buttes is the same way.

Nice post! Also congratulations on the PB!

It was a little more busy on Saturday, but not too bad. It was somewhat windy so that meant a few more boats were with us in the upper lake area, but still nothing like Rayburn on a tournament day.