Lake Hudson 20 Oct 2012

[Mike Cork]

Fished the American Fishing Tour Angler of the Year tournament on Lake Hudson.

Very neat lake, lots of offer most anglers, well except those of us from the south that like to fish vegetation 

Prefished the 19th and tournament on the 20th.

During prefish I spent the day scouting the northern half of the lake. My goal was to find the shad migration. This was not difficult to do as the lake has a tremendous amount of shad in it. Starting about halfway up the lake all the way until about 2 miles short of the Grand Lake Dam the shad were prevalent and easy to find. In the creek arms just below and just above the bridge shad had migrated nearly to the back of them but about 1/4 of the way from the end of the arms the shad seemed to stop. All minor creek arms had shad all the way to the backs in shallow water. White bass and hybrids drove me crazy both days with massive schools herding the shad. While fun to catch, in limited time situations they were bothersome. An angler could easily limit out on these species in a matter of an hour.

Bass had not migrated very far back in the creeks just yet. From the mouths of creeks to about halfway back I caught black bass on top water, crankbaits, and shake head watermelon red plastics. Wood cover was a key. Both days I had a good topwater bite in the morning before the sun got up, then switching to cranks and finally picking docks and brushpiles apart with the shakey head.

In prefish I caught a few keepers with not much size. On tournament day I managed 9 keepers that went 11 pounds, so thats a 2 and a quarter pound average.

We had 39 boats fishing this event, First place had just over 12, second had 12 and I had third with the 10.96.

Very fun lake and lots of potenial given some more time and a little bit farther into the fall bite I can see this lake producing some great black bass fishing.

Water temps were mid 60's, we had a front blow through the day before the tournament with winds above 30 mph which had the lake pretty stirred up. So even with post front conditions we all had a great time and caught a lot of fish.