As Dave Mercer explained previously here in a blog video, there’s a lot of junk fishing talk this week at Lake Dardanelle. Gerald Swindle junk-fished his way to the Toyota Bassmaster Angler of the Year title last year. He’s always one of the first names mentioned when there’s talk of having several rods on the deck and using a variety of techniques to achieve success.
Here’s Mike Iaconelli’s take on what junk fishing might look like this week: “This doesn’t seem like a place right now where you can just pull up to one spot and catch ’em. You might catch one offshore, run down to a water willow bank, go down a mile stretch and get one bite, then run to a log that’s sitting on a mud flat and get one bite. It’s that kind of deal.”
Iaconelli noted there is an offshore bite in Dardanelle right now, but largemouth bass aren’t there in big schools yet.
“That’s the problem, they’re not stacked out there,” he said. “But it’s definitely getting less pressure than the bank fishing is getting. They’re not deep, deep, not Kentucky Lake deep. They’re 8 to 12 feet. But one of the hard things out there is picking through the white bass. Your 10th fish might be a largemouth.”