Submitted by lknbassman

Date Fished: 7/4/2008
Water Temperature: 84
Water Clarity: 4 feet or greater

Fished for about 4 hours from pre dawn through 10 with a buddy who wanted to do a little fly fishing from the big Triton 21 foot aircraft carrier so I obliged.

We fished shallow and he caught a ton of perch, crappie, and even a catfish (about 4 lb) on a little popper. I fished topwater with the buzzbait and missed a few as I was laughing so hard at the numbers of bream just mashing his flies and aggressive those little guys were that day on that bait. We fished mid lake and up river some and I then went to the senko and boated two nice LM bass out of the 10' foot depth off of a point.

Typical Lake Norman Summer Pattern, fish move deep and under docks during the heat of the day around the entire lake.

Flippin Freddie, got your note and am glad you are coming to visit the lake. Lots to do, see, eat, and the fishing is good. Mid lake is great so you won't have to run far to get to some of these places.

Early AM fish topwater along rip rap. The hwy 150 bridge on both sides holds fish on the long stretches of rip rap, the pinnacle boat ramp adjacent to the hwy holds fish on those rocks (be careful, very shallow there), and just about any point with rip rap that comes out to the main channel will get you some bites early in the AM. Baits to use are buzzbait 1/4 oz, Lucky Craft Gunfish 95 w/feather treble in back, Lucky Craft Sammy 100, Zara Spook, or the steady Rebel Pop-R. Just keep moving, put the TM on medium and go down the bank with the buzzbait or topwater of your choice and find them. Point fishing with topwater will get you some good bites from schooling fish if you want to stay in one spot. Mostly numbers in that situation but you can get well in a hurry if you can locate a good sized school.

Once the sun comes up find you some deep docks or points that touch the main lake (get a map to see the channel so you can target accordingly). Any docks on points in deep water that look decent are worth fishing. The ones with the lower decks are better than the ones with the black foam that raises the decks high over the water as they provide better cover. Deeper tapering points will hold numbers for you as well. Worm and Jig fishing will outproduce most other patterns this time of year for numbers and quality. TX, wacky, carolina rigs, etc all are working.

The larger fish are deeper and remain so throughout the day so to target them you have to get way back up under the deep docks and just about dead stick your baits to get them to bite which is where the senko comes in handy since you can skip it. The jig is also great for this too. Green Pumpkin is your color, Watermelon seed is also good if it's bright out. Those are about all you need this time of year unless you find some water with some color in it which there is not a lot of on Norman this year with the lake being close to full.

Places to go from mid lake; Mountain Creek (start at the mouth on the left) and work your way back about 1/2 way to see if you can figure something out. Stumpy Creek, Rocky Creek, Lucky Creek, same thing. For spots, go south to Ramsey Creek and throw the shakey head in 20' or shallower, they are all over the place down there and around the hot water discharge by the dam. The rip rap along the dam is always great for a buzzbait bite too but that's a long ride for you from mid lake and I'd stay close to where you are as there are plenty of fish in that area.

If you want a unique Lake Norman fishing experience, contact the Great Outdoors in Cherryville, NC and ask for David or Jason and have them rig you up 2 Brian's Bees Prop Bees #3 in bull bream. The bream are spawning and it's sight fishing at its best in my opinion. Read up on bream spawn but in short go in the backs of pockets and look for bream beds (they look like clusters of volcanos) and throw that bait around or any bluegill imitation and catch some big female LM bass. They are on that bite through the end of August so that's some fun fishing. You can buy the bait directly from Brian at http://www.brianscrankbaits.com/ but you'll need to get split rings and trebles seperately. These baits are incredible and are now finally famous as they are a well made very productive bait that also works in open water.

Good luck and have fun!!

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