Allatoona After Work, 11/6/15

An unseasonably warm November Friday afternoon found me heading as far as I could toward the dam at Allatoona Lake.  Cooper's Branch is a lot farther from home than Little River, but I had to find some clearer water.  Torrential rains had turned the upper reaches of the lake into chocolate milk. However, I knew my days were numbered for finding bass in the shallows, and I had to get out while I could.  Daylight Savings had said goodbye a week ago, and I only had a couple of hours of daylight  to make something happen before I went home and cleaned up to go to dinner.

This was my first time launching from Cooper's, and I found it to be one of the prettiest areas I had  seen on Allatoona.  I turned upstream, northward from the ramp, throwing a chatterbait along some rocky bank until I went back into a cove.  I hung up the chatterbait, eventually losing it.  As I was trying to get it out of the tree it was stuck in, I noticed a nice bass hanging out in the blowdown, and figured I would take my chances on that being the pattern.  I started hopping coves and throwing my confidence bait near blowdowns - a trick work on a 1/4 oz Owner shakey head.  I ended up catching three bass totaling over 40 inches - one largemouth and two spotted bass.  This picture is actually the smallest of the three fish, but I wanted to share it because I got it right at sunset, and naturally, it's the best photo of the three (with a little help from Instagram, of course).