Fishing at Cedar Creek has been hit or miss through the brutal heat of August and early September, with some tough days, but some surprisingly good ones, too. Cedar Creek is now 5 1/2 feet low. The last working boat ramp that I know of on the lower lake, the Log Cabin City Park ramp, closed this week. I’m still able to launch at a POA ramp mid lake, but it’s a long run from there to most of my good fishing spots. Most of my favorite spots from the past are high and dry now. Plus, with the brutal heat, I’m doing most of my fishing near bridges, so I can use the shade of the bridges for a break from the heat often during the day.

But I had a good week of fishing in spite of all that, this week. On Tuesday, I caught 13 bass and 6 crappie. The best bass weighed 5.03 pounds, and there were two other 3 pounders. Three of the crappie were really nice ones, and came home with me for dinner. On Thursday, I caught 15 bass, including a 4.38 pounder. Those are good days by my standards under any conditions, much less in stifling heat, with the lake level so low. All bass, and the second best crappie, were caught on soft plastic jerk baits, rigged on a hover jig. Other than crappie jigs, that’s pretty much all I’m using right now.

I’m really ready to just move on to Lake Athens as my regular fishing place, until the water level at Cedar Creek improves, but there is just no shade on Lake Athens. So as long at it’s still reaching the upper 90’s in the afternoons, I’ll continue fighting the conditions at Cedar Creek, as long as I can still launch the boat here. The days have gotten noticeably shorter already, and I just know the afternoon temperatures will moderate soon, but it hasn’t happened yet. It’s 80 plus degrees first thing in the morning, and close to 100 in the afternoon, every day. That’s just too hot for me, unless I have some bridge shade to escape to often. The upside of all this is that, seeing the lake this low, I’m learning a lot about what’s under the water near the shoreline, that I could never see when the lake water level was higher. That will serve me well when the water is higher again. The other thing is: I always knew there were lots of bass around the bridges, but these bass are finicky, tough to catch bass that I just never spent a lot of time chasing. Needing that shade to escape the heat gave me the incentive I needed to spend time fishing for them, and I’ve been surprised at how well I’ve done. I’ve always spent time crappie fishing the bridges. Now, I do a lot of bass fishing too, while I’m there. I never had finesse baits in the past that were as good at catching finicky bass as I do now, and that’s been a large part of my success at catching them. That is likely to remain a big part of my Cedar Creek fishing from now on. Meanwhile though, I’m sure ready for Lake Athens, some cooler weather, and some flooding in the Cedar Creek watershed sometime in the near future. We’ll see.

Tuesday’s biggest bass, a 5.03 pounder.

And Thursday’s best bass, at 4.38 pounds.