Lake Hudson - muddy water, almost no fish 8-21-2016

[djkimmel]

Since there was likely to be only 2, maybe 3 boats counting us, at the Frogs only tournament, Derek and I canceled and decided on some 'adventure' instead... He's never been there and I haven't been there in at least 15, maybe 20 years - Lake Hudson in the Lake Hudson State Recreation Area.

It was a fairly weedy lake in parts and turbid water in the main lake when I last went there but this time was even more so on the turbid water and hardly any weeds except for lily pads and a few scruffy milfoil and mixed junk weed beds shallow. Very spotty and mostly very small other than lots of pad patches. Turbid water is saying a little... visibility was maybe 6 to 8 inches!

It's got a nice little boat ramp. Not knowing what we would find and seeing some pads right by the boat ramp we started there in what would be a long day of hardly any bites.

We tried frogs over the pads, and pitching Bullet Craws around the very few weeds or pad edges. We tried shallow cranks. We tried deep cranks. We could find very little weeds past about 3 feet deep - mostly just open water. We found a few pieces of wood in the water including one in deeper water away from shore, none of which produced a bite.

It was breezier than we expected to but didn't think that would make much a difference in water this turbid and muddy. Most other boaters were trolling - many seeking the muskie that live in the lake and have been rumored to be quite large in the past as Hudson has been a brood lake - not sure if it still is?


Finally, I was dragging a black and blue Kustom Kicker Jigs Dock Monkey with a black and blue pork frog in less than 5 feet of water along a shoreline edge coming out of a small, shallow bay when I felt a bite and hooked this small dinker bass with some sores on its body.

One or two casts later I had another small ~12 inch bass grab the same jig just a few feet away from where this one was hooked. Then Derek caught a small bass on a dragged Bullet Craw! A hot streak! The bite is on! Only we got one more bit from a dink and that was the end of our hot streak...!?!

We failed to see anything definitely different about this shoreline than any other shoreline though it was facing the breeze so we put more time into fishing shorelines facing the breeze elsewhere... but for naught!

I wanted to find the old bridge I remember in the lake from the distant past so not remembering where I found it before we headed towards the dam. I was dragging a Carolina Rig with a large black and blue Bullet Craw on it when I got to more pecking bites along another nothing bank landing two more 'giant' dinks back to back! Again, why there and why they would only seem to hit something dragging on the bottom is a mystery.

Near the dam Derek got a bit in the actual creek channel and lost another bigger dink. I had one hard bite on the Carolina Rig but missed it. To make a longer story short that was the end of your day really.

We fished a lot more pads. We fished some great looking laydowns and the banks out from them. We didn't find the bridge but we fished a couple points in 9 to 11 feet all for naught again. We tried to find the old road bed in the back end of the lake but it appears to have been silted in and over now. There weren't hardly any weeds in the back end though it was mostly 6 feet or shallower. I don't know if they treat the lake or not but some good weed growth could possibly clear it up a little and provide some much needed cover for fish.

The only other thing that happened the rest of the day was we had a medium sized muskie come up in front of the trolling motor along another nothing bank with a slightly steeper drop. It checked out me and the trolling motor before disappearing back into the muddy waters.

We won't be going back to Lake Hudson anytime soon. Good luck to anyone who fishes there!