Want to fish a foothills lake where the water’s cool during July and bass hit topwater lures? Try Lake Hickory.
Jimmy Campbell moved slowly away from Wittenberg Landing near the mid-point of Lake Hickory. Weather reports predicted a hot summer day, one in a string of such days.
“Jimmy,” his guest said, “where do you want to start?”
“Well,” he said, “at this time of year, somewhere where the water is coolest. Probably at the upper end of one of the major creeks.”
He knew several such spots and put the boat on plane and headed toward one.
Lake Hickory, with a little more than 4,000 surface acres, is a long, narrow Duke Power reservoir north of Hickory. Although it’s relatively small, water passes through Lake Hickory much more rapidly than it does through larger reservoirs like Lake Norman.
As a consequence, cool water coming in from creeks has less opportunity to warm. That meant the upper ends of its feeder creeks were spots Campbell was going to target because during the heat of July, bass seek cooler surroundings, just as do anglers if they’re available.
Those who fish with Campbell during summer soon learn he’s a buzzbait fishin’ fool.
We’d scarcely begun fishing when Campbell’s dual-blade buzzbait disappeared in a huge boil. In another half hour, Campbell caught another hungry bass. Both of Campbell’s fish were solid 2-pounders.
I put on a single buzzbait with a clacker because that seemed to be the right tactic in light of the guide’s success.
Soon in the early morning light, two lures were splashing across the surface. They sounded similar to scrambled egg beaters being used at a cheap diner — not something you’d think bass were accustomed to hearing and certainly nothing similar to any baitfish a bass likely would see at the surface.
The area Campbell had chosen to fish included shallow flats with fallen timber in the water. The largemouth bass that exploded to engulf his buzzbaits were caught within 5 or 6 feet off the tips of logs resting in the water.
We cast toward shore and brought the splashing lures parallel to the wood. Strikes came after the lures passed the trees.
During other trips to the creeks at Lake Hickory during the heat of summer, I’d caught largemouth adjacent to or underneath the fallen timber.
Obviously, every trip requires some searching to start with. On those trips, Texas-rigged plastics — worms or lizards — or jig-and-pig combos pitched to or underneath the laydowns had been the right lure choices.
The most effective summer colors for worms or lizards had been pumpkinseed or watermelon seed. Brown, black or blue colors worked with jigs, usually with a plastic trailer, pretty standard stuff.
Another preferred method for hooking up with hot weather largemouths at Lake Hickory in mid-summer had been to bump a spinnerbait near the edges of laydowns. A tandem spin with a plastic trailer can be tossed into the fallen trees and retrieved without snagging.
Veteran local bass angler Banks Miller once said after a mid-summer trip to Hickory that I caught fish using a spinnerbait because I threw it in better places than I did other lures.
The most productive creek arms at Hickory are Gunpowder Creek, Upper Little River, Mill Creek and Middle Little River. A number of smaller creeks enter coves at both sides of the lake.
During 2004, when fishing the south bank at Mill Creek, the trees along the shoreline were dotted with subdivision markers. So unfortunately, by the time you read this story, property owners eager to improve the shoreline may have removed abundant fallen logs and good ambush spots for lunkers may be not as prolific.
Indeed, suburban developments are significant threats to shallow-water largemouth bass fishing at Lake Hickory.
“Much of the lake is already developed,” said Kin Hodges, the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission’s District 7 fisheries biologist. “A new wave of development is beginning at Upper Little River and Gunpowder Creek, which are some of the more productive areas of the lake.
“There are a couple of negatives associated with shoreline development. First, it creates the potential for more sediment to be deposited in the lake as land adjacent to the water is cleared. Secondly, shoreline development often reduces the amount of shallow-water fish habitat, as homeowners attempt to ‘clean up’ the shoreline by removing fallen trees, bushes, etc.
“There are some nice stretches of natural shoreline at Gunpowder and Upper Little River (or Bethlehem) that still have a lot of fallen trees, stumps, etc. But I’m afraid much of that cover will be lost once development takes place.”
Development doesn’t necessarily mean there’ll be fewer largemouths, but it does mean there may not be shallow cover to hold them.
During preceeding years of fishing at Lake Hickory, a number of productive spots have silted in and favorite logs pulled from the water — a sign of progress for people, perhaps, but not much help for bass anglers.
North of the U.S. 321 bridge, largemouths often use the large beds of parrotfeather (an aquatic weed) as habitat.
“(Parrotfeather) has taken hold in the upper end of the lake,” Hodges said. “Above 321 it chokes off a good chunk of the river channel during its growing season.”
Parrotfeather probably was introduced by aquarists, who dumped the contents of an aquarium in the lake. In any event, it has created dense weed beds.
Wayne Gales, a frequent largemouth bass angler at Piedmont lakes, heads for the weeds in Lake Hickory during August and September.
“I always go up river and fish the moving water and the abundance of grass,” he said. “I’ve caught some real nice fish up there.
“Spinnerbaits and buzzbaits work especially well at that time of year. I also take an old buzzbait and cut the head off and wrap the wire through the o-ring of a Rat-L-Trap. I’ve caught some nice bass doing that even after the sun has gotten high.”
Gales’ modification is an interesting thought and worth keeping in mind.
Last summer when fishing the parrotfeather beds, the surface temperature was several degrees lower than surface temperatures a few miles farther downstream.
Hodges said aquatic weeds provide excellent habitat for largemouth bass, but he a downside exists.
“Once the majority of an area becomes covered with high densities of vegetation, fish populations usually suffer,” he said.
During 2004’s summer, the parrotfeather beds were dense surface mats. But they did make for interesting and productive fishing targets.
In addition to running buzzbaits over the mats and at the edges of the parrotfeather, I also a fished heavy jig and flipped it into pockets of the weeds. A heavy weight is needed to punch through the matted surface of the weeds. Texas-rigged lizards and worms work in the parrotfeather beds.
In order to keep the weight and lure from separating in the weeds, with a Texas-rig the weight needs to be pegged. For those who don’t want to pinch the line between the weight and a toothpick, try knotting a piece of monofilament (half a blood knot works well for this trick) above the weight and jamming the knot against the weight.
Dense weeds such as parrotfeather usually form mats along the surface with open spaces beneath them. Bass linger in the shady open water under the surface.
That summer I didn’t have the rubber rats widely used to fish milfoil weed beds at such spots as Guntersville Lake in Alabama, but I’ve taken several “rats” since then to Hickory.
When the buzzbait fizzled at 10 a.m., Campbell switched to a huge black worm fished with a Texas rig. While I teased this fine angler that I’d never throw anything as ugly as his rig, he kept right on catching fish, just a few feet deeper than those we caught earlier.
While chuckling at my expense, Campbell offered me a couple of worms from his sack. But after making an issue of how ugly they were, I was too proud to take one.
Maybe Mom did raise a dumb son.
Warm summer days are always good prospects for Texas-rigged plastic worms.
Even with development and a weed infestation, largemouth bass numbers at Lake Hickory have remained robust for the last decade or so.
“I’d characterize the bass population at Lake Hickory as being pretty good,” Hodges said. “The catch rates we see electrofishing are above average (for Piedmont reservoirs) at around 100 fish per hour.
“As far as the sizes we get, there are a good number of keeper fish in the 14- to 20-inch range. Fish in the 6-pound range are usually about as big as we get shocking, but obviously there are bigger fish out there as you hear of larger fish being weighed in from time to time.
“I’ve had a complaint or two in the last few years about the bass population declining. But comparisons of current data vs. historical data don’t suggest that much has changed as far as the sizes and numbers of fish are concerned.
“What I suspect, though, is the fish have gotten a lot harder to catch in the last 10 to 15 years as fishing pressure has gotten so high. They’re still out there, but they’ve already seen 10 lures each day before you throw your own lure in front of them.”
Of course, fishing pressure is a constant at most Tar Heel reservoirs. Most anglers probably would give up bass fishing if we knew how many fish backed up to let our lures pass by.
So there’s really four principle reasons to try Lake Hickory for summer largemouths — the quality of the fishing is pretty good as the bass are decent sizes, relatively abundant and they’re battlers. Finally, the cooler water entering the lake — compared to other Piedmont reservoirs — provides better shallow-water angling during the deep heat months than at most other lakes.
So pack your gear for Lake Hickory some time this summer. If you get there and see two guys throwing buzzbaits, come on by and we’ll exchange fish tales.
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