Transcript:
Melea Hames: [00:00:01] You're listening to the Unexpected Adventures in North Alabama Podcast, part of the Destination Marketing Podcast Network.
Welcome back to Unexpected Adventures in North Alabama and thank you for listening. This podcast episode today is for all you fishing enthusiasts and those of you who want to know more about the exciting fishing opportunities in North Alabama. All right. I'm going to confess that I know nothing about fishing. I have brought in some experts. Our guests today are two of our amazing guides in North Alabama, Lee Pitts and Jimmy Mason. They'll be telling us all there is to know about fishing on our eight lakes. Welcome to the podcast Lee and Jimmy.
Jimmy Mason: [00:00:47] Thanks for having me.
Lee Pitts: [00:00:48] Oh, thank you.
Melea Hames: [00:00:49] Great. I know that I've introduced the two of you, but would you be willing to share in more detail what it means to be a guide and your background? Lee, we will start with you and then Jimmy you can follow.
Lee Pitts: [00:01:03] Well, it's one of those things. I've been doing this a long time and just being able to be in the outdoors is one of the biggest things. I've worked at a lot in different places and done a lot of different things. I worked with Nucor Steel for a long time and, welded and rigged and built joists. Man, I tell you what, I sure do enjoy being on that water on our Alabama lakes a whole lot more than I do rigging joists and working in the steel plant.
Melea Hames: [00:01:36] I bet. It does sound like a lot more fun.
Lee Pitts: [00:01:39] It is. One of the things that I'm so excited about with what I get to do when you've got lakes like we have in areas in Alabama that we have. It's not too hard to try to boast and brag about what we've got because there's so much. I mean it kind of speaks for itself. I've got to meet so many people from different areas, so many people from other states and all around the country. I'm very, very proud to represent our state and get to show off the things that we have to offer.
Melea Hames: [00:02:23] Okay. Cool. All right. Jimmy, how about you?
Jimmy Mason: [00:02:27] Yeah. I mean a lot of them are an echo of what Lee just said. I come from an engineering background. I've got an engineering degree and worked in the Huntsville area. North Alabama is a very high-tech area. It has a really well-educated workforce. You have a lot of guys coming from all over the country moving to North Alabama because of Huntsville. They want to be introduced to the lakes and like Lee said, by doing this you're able to meet a lot of different people from across the country and from all walks of life. One of the coolest parts is getting to introduce people who don't fish much or who don't fish. A lot of times their kids will want to go. Getting to introduce people to fishing and into fishing, the North Alabama lakes is really a rewarding part of it.
Melea Hames: [00:03:19] Okay. Cool. Well, that's really neat that you all have vastly different backgrounds and now you're getting to fish for a living, which I know is a dream for you. Right? Well, cool. Let's talk about these amazing lakes that Lee mentioned. Okay, so Jimmy, tell us what lakes you fish on the most and what makes each one unique.
Jimmy Mason: [00:03:44] I get on all four lakes. I got on Pickwick, Guntersville, Wilson and Wheeler, which are all of the Tennessee River lakes that stretch across North Alabama and all of them are very different. Guntersville is one of the premier largemouth lakes, one of the best grass lakes in the country. Wheeler's has had that reputation in the past several years ago kind of went through a down cycle, but it is really exploding and coming back. Wilson and Pickwick are two of the very best trophy smallmouth lakes in the country.
In the last few years, a lot of my business has been because of the trophy smallmouth fishing. I mean you have a lot of customers catch their personal best smallmouth every year. Those two lakes right there. They are two of the very best for someone that wants to catch a six-pound plus smallmouths, then those are two of the very best lakes in the country for that.
Melea Hames: [00:04:38] Okay. All right. What are some of the big personal best fish that people have caught? What are they weighing?
Jimmy Mason: [00:04:47] I've had a lot of smallmouths over six caught. Usually, I'll have 30 or 40 six-pound plus smallmouth caught a year. A six-pound smallmouth is generally considered equivalent to a 10-pound largemouth. The biggest smallmouth I had a customer catch this year was six 97 and that client also caught eight 4 largemouths as well. Last, last year I had two clients catch largemouth over 10. Those are definitely rewarding fish right there.
Melea Hames: [00:05:20] Okay. Cool. It sounds like a good day out on the lake. All right, Lee, tell us what lakes you fish on the most and what makes those lakes unique.
Lee Pitts: [00:05:32] I mainly focus on the coastal waterways. I fish in Weiss and Neely Henry. That's the two lakes that I try to focus on and really with both of those lakes, we've got 32,000 acres on Weiss and a little over 11,000 acres on Neely Henry down there. That's a whole lot of water to be fishing on. It's kind of like Jimmy and I kind of share the same mindset on this thing. We've got a lot of big spotted bass, good largemouth bass on the Coosa chains. My end of it is more of the crappie aspects. We do a lot of crappie fishing. We were bringing in people from Upper Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, and all the way up to Indianapolis.
I've had people coming from Canada, which I can't really take all the credit for that because they came in for the Talladega Race. They saw a flyer that we had Alabama tourism there. They said, “Man, we got to come catch these crappies.” That's one of those things you get guys from Canada coming in. That's something to brag about there. We've got great fisheries here up and down that Coosa chain and that's one of the things Jimmy and I, we've known each other for several, several years. He does a great job over there on all the Tennessee waterways. I stay over here on the Coosa. We both enjoy a good business doing this. It's something that you look forward to every day getting to come out here and take different people out and kind of show them what we've got.
Lee Pitts: [00:07:11] That's right.
Melea Hames: [00:07:12] That's neat. I know Weiss Lake is called the crappie capital of the world.
Lee Pitts: [00:07:17] Yeah.
Melea Hames: [00:07:18] When we go and do travel shows up north in Indianapolis, that's one that I've worked. I tell you the people in Indianapolis love it. They call it, Weiss, Weiss Lake. We always have to tell them, “Oh it's Weiss Lake.” Of course, they love Guntersville as well. They love it. The first time I went, I thought, “Oh my goodness people really, that's amazing that they will drive that far just to fish our lakes.”
Of course, they always tell us, they're like, “You know Alabama has the friendliest people.” He's like, “In most states, they just want you to come spend your money and leave.” They’re like, “People in Alabama want you to spend your money of course, but they want you to have a good time. They will show you a good time.” I thought that says a lot about our tourism industry and our hospitality industry. That's cool. What are some tips for fishermen and fisherwomen who want to get started fishing? Jimmy, you want to start?
Jimmy Mason: [00:08:13] That's a great question because I have so many people that catch their very first fish with me. If I had to pick one bait and Lee would probably agree with this. One bait for somebody who has never caught one. It's hard to be the shaky head, like a little eighth-ounce shaky head with a four-inch green pumpkin finesse worm in there. Another tip is to start off with just good-quality equipment. It doesn't have to be expensive, but just has quality where you can feel the bites and set the hook like a 6.5 or 7 ft. medium spinning rod and with a shake.
If I had to pick one bait to go anywhere in the country and just catch a fish, that's what I would pick. From January to December, you can catch a fish on our lakes with a shaky head. For somebody that's never caught one and wants to come here and catch one. That's something they can catch fish with every day of the year.
Melea Hames: [00:09:08] Okay. All right. Those are some good tips. What about you Lee? What are some tips that you would give somebody who wanted to start off fishing?
Lee Pitts: [00:09:16] Well it's the same. It's just what Jimmy said there? I think the shaky head and spinning gear is something that as a producer in lakes all around. It doesn't take a whole lot of action on the part of the angler to get bit doing this. I have so many people that come out. We do a lot of what my crappie fishing and it's so funny. I'll have couples come with me and the guys bring their wives. I may have in my situation three, four or five people in the boat with me because I use a lot of rod holders. I put the rods in the holders and we do a lot of drifting, a lot of trolling and things like that. I have so many of the ladies that come out and say, “Look, I want to go ahead and be honest with you right now, I don't fish much, I don't really know what I'm doing.” My response to that is, “Well, thank goodness you don't have any bad habits. We have to work for it.”
They're looking at me like, “What are you telling us?” You don't have to be great or lifelong fishermen to be able to catch fish. Here's what I do a lot of the time on my end of it, we're doing a lot of trolling. Even if we are casting, we've got thorn-floating fly, things like that. What I'm saying with that is a cord with the jig on the bottom of it, that you're manipulating that and just kind of shaking that float. I learned something. Every time you get on the water, you learned something. I had some guys here about a month ago tell me when I said, “We are going to be throwing a jig with afloat.” They said, “What do you mean afloat?” I said a cork. He said, “What do you mean by cork?” I said, we're throwing it. He said, oh, you mean a strike indicator.
See, I learned something, I never knew you that you called a cork a strike indicator. When it goes under, you jerk. It's one of those things. It's just a great experience, not only for the people that go with me but also that I learned something from them too just the back and forth, our conversations through the day and getting to meet some of these people. Being on the water is just such a great experience for the novice and for the people that have fished all their lives. It is just one of those things that just getting people together, getting them in the outdoors, and getting them underwater. It's just something that kind of makes my job rewarding.
Melea Hames: [00:11:49] Yeah. I love that too, that you don't have to know anything to go and do. I love that. You make people feel at ease like, “Hey, you don't have any bad habits.” That's great. You can teach them the way that you-
Lee Pitts: [00:12:01] Right.
Melea Hames: [00:12:02] The way that the professionals fish. Did you want to add anything, Jimmy?
Jimmy Mason: [00:12:07] No. I agree with what Lee said right there.
Melea Hames: [00:12:10] Okay. Where are some of the I guess, sweet spots? People call them a honey hole on the lakes. Where are some of those best spots to kind of hang around and find some fish and you can just pick a lake, what's one of your favorites?
Lee Pitts: [00:12:28] I’ll let Jimmy go first because I want to know where he's fishing.
Melea Hames: [00:12:32] Or maybe you don't want to tell. I don't know. Maybe we should put this in the podcast.
Lee Pitts: [00:12:38] We both will let you spy on that one.
Melea Hames: [00:12:40] Y'all got very quiet. You're like, no, no, no. All right. Maybe what's a better way I could phrase that would make you want to answer that question?
Jimmy Mason: [00:12:51] The thing I like about Guntersville and Pickwick, is fishing is seasonal. There is no pattern. You're not going to catch them this time of year, you're going to catch them in March or April or June or July. The fish’ locations change seasonally, spring, fall, summer, winter. You're fishing at different locations and in different patterns. That's a hard question to answer. What I tell people, you go to Lake Guntersville. I mean there will typically be certain areas of the lake that are hotter during any given season, sometimes the upriver, sometimes the downriver.
Wherever you are, you know, whatever boat ramp that you launched at Guntersville, somewhere, there's visibly a spot that you can within eyesight of where you are, you can catch a 20-pound bag any day. The lakes are so good that fish are spread out throughout them. It's really just somebody in any given tournament, somebody's going in the top 10, and somebody's going to catch them spread out. As I said, there will typically be certain areas that are a little hotter, but somebody is going to do well throughout the lake. I think we agree with that.
Melea Hames: [00:14:10] Okay. All right. When is your favorite time to fish Lee on Weiss Lake or Neely Henry? When is your favorite time?
Lee Pitts: [00:14:20] Well, once again, I hate to repeat, but that goes just what Jimmy just said different times of the year. I guess that's Mother Nature's way of kind of positioning things and moving things around where it's not always the same bay, the same creek, and the same split somewhere. It moves around. Early springtime, we're looking for the bigger creeks, the bigger tributaries that come into the lake. We're fishing those as spring progresses and the fish and what day it is. It's how the fish live their life cycle.
They went there in the deeper parts of the lake. They stay on the water, we have that knowledge that we know the life cycle of that fish, what it's going to do and how it goes back and where it stages up and then once again when it finishes, it comes back out and it makes its move back out to the main river and gets back out there again. It's all to do with what time of year it is and how that fish is going to spawn. How it moves back out is where we try to target and set up where we know these fish are. That just comes with us being on the water and knowing the waterways and knowing where the fish like to get and like to go and typically that will hold true all through these lakes and we just follow them.
Jimmy Mason: [00:16:19] That’s right.
Melea Hames: [00:16:20] Okay, well that kind of makes it exciting, more exciting then because you can have like you said it's a different experience each day. Okay, that's cool.
Jimmy Mason: [00:16:30] Yeah. Like certain times of the year, like spring, early spring, they’re feeding up. You're fishing differently for them as they go into the spawn and the postpone. As you get later into the year, it's more of just a feeding period. Every season is different. That's like leisure, that's what makes it fun is. A lot of times every day is every, and that's one thing with fishing every day is a different day on the water. Very seldom when you catch them two days in a row even. When you have the same clients in and, and multiple days, we all have a lot of guys fish two or three days at a time and very seldom when you catch them exactly the same two days in a row. Part of it is just that changing with the conditions and that makes it pretty neat because you will very seldom ever have two identical days.
Melea Hames: [00:17:20] Oh cool. If we were to go out on a guided trip with you Lee what could we expect?
Lee Pitts: [00:17:29] Well, one of the things that I try to tell and just like Jimmy said earlier, every day is different. Every single day is a different day. All right. I can't always help what the fish are going to do but the one thing that I can tell you is that we're going to have a good time. We're going to have fun. We're going to go. I'm going to do everything in my power with every trip I have. I'm going to do everything in my power to put them in the position to have the best days fishing they can have. Like I said Jimmy and I both, our whole job is we want to see that excitement in these people. We want to see them have fun. We want them when they come off the water and say, “Man, I have had a great day. We caught more fish or the biggest fish I've ever caught or something.”
That's what we try to do every single day. I think and Jimmy he may agree with me here, but I think the days that it's tough and the days that we struggle are the days that they don't really, it hurts me worse than it does them because I want everybody that walks off my boat to have just the excitement and the good days fishing and the good days on the water, that's what we strive for every day. We want them to have fun, have a good time and just walk away with a good outlook and a happy memory of what we've done.
Jimmy Mason: [00:18:56] That's right. No doubt. The weather is different every day. I mean some days you're going to have a lot of wind, high winds or whatever but them walking out where they want to come back is what you shoot for every day. I'm probably 65% to 70% repeat and so many of my trips are a variety. You'll have anywhere from somebody wanting to go fishing for the first time or interested or take their kids fishing. No high school fishing. It is getting so big now you have a lot of parents bring their kids to try to learn a specific technique or to help their high schoolers learn and do a lot of corporate trips. For those it's more about just having fun. We do a lot of group trips. I can handle, anywhere from 20 to 24 people on a corporate group trip with multiple guides that I work with.
Most of the time, those people, a lot of those don't fish much. They're more interested in numbers versus size and just having a blast. You have those guys that come there that don't really want to catch a lot of fish, they're coming there for a trophy fish. They would rather work hard all day. Fishing techniques typically don't catch much fish, but you’re going to give them that chance for a fish of a lifetime. That's one of the neat things. Many clients have different expectations or what they want out of the trip and from learning and teaching to trying to catch that fish of a lifetime to just catching numbers and getting a lot of bites. It's pretty cool it’s kind of a neat diversity right there.
Melea Hames: [00:20:36] Okay, now I see why the guys from up north want to come down because it sounds like that, y'all really make sure that they have fun. That is so cool. I always ask on Facebook, I asked our followers a question that they would like answered on our podcast. The winning question this week is where is the best place to fish with kids? Would you like to answer that question?
Jimmy Mason: [00:21:04] Lee go answer.
Lee Pitts: [00:21:05] Put them on the water. As long as you've got them on the water, it doesn't matter. Just get your kids out, get them on the water. Get them. Let them hear the geese honk and let them see the birds flying around. Get them out there where everybody's laughing. Even if you're out there watching afloat and you're eating hamburgers and just spending time with your family, just get them on the water.
Jimmy Mason: [00:21:29] Yeah. From personal experience, our kids are eight and nine. My son, he's nine and he's super addicted to fishing. He is a really good little fisherman. I started each of them fishing when they were probably two to three. The most important thing with kids is fish when they're going to get bites. Kids are not what you want to take when you're fishing all day for that one or two bites of a trophy fish. I mean you want to go take kids fishing when they're biting. They have a short attention span. My very favorite, when I have people calling with kids, I want to kind of target more the white bass or brim. I don't crappie fish much like Lee.
I’m not the greatest crappie fisherman, but we do a lot of white bass trips for kids where they'll catch and just get tons of action. When the white bass is really feeding, you will catch 50-200 on a trip, and then they're getting constant action. That's what you want with kids. In the same way when the bream are on the bed at Guntersville or Wilson when you can pull up on the bream bed and anchor down and catch 50 to 100 on real light tackle. That's what gets kids addicted to fishing. The biggest tip I can have for anybody wanting to get their kids into it is don't take them when it's tough and don't stay past their attention when they're ready to go quit fishing. It's been a real success with my kids and with a lot of clients. I love the kids’ trips. I do a lot of them. It's more so than anything else to me around here. White bass is what gets kids addicted to fishing.
Melea Hames: [00:23:19] Yeah, that's a good point about attention span, being around toddlers.
Lee Pitts: [00:23:29] That’s what they like. Jimmy just said it. I have so many dads that want to try to pound that. “Oh, you got to stay with it, stay with it, keep on, keep on.” When they lose that interest, call it a day and they still got a good memory and that's-
Jimmy Mason: [00:23:31] Absolutely.
Lee Pitts: [00:00:00] Yeah that way they'll come back.
Melea Hames: [00:23:44] Yeah.
Jimmy Mason: [00:23:47] Leave them by.
Melea Hames: [00:23:50] End on a high note. Well, that is some great advice. Well, I thank both of you all for being here today. It's been so much fun talking to you all about the beautiful North Alabama lakes. Now for our listeners, Jimmy you want to tell us where our followers can find you on social media or how they can get in touch with you to go on a trip.
Jimmy Mason: [00:24:12] My website is jimmymasonbassfishing.com. Or you can go to jimmy mason bass fishing on Facebook. @JayMasonFishing on Instagram.
Melea Hames: [00:24:22] Okay. Lee, how can we find you?
Lee Pitts: [00:00:00] Yeah, you can find me on Facebook @leepitts, also at leepitslive.com. Or just call me at 256-390-4145.
Melea Hames: [00:24:36] Well, all right. I sure appreciate both of y'all being on here today. Remember that you can follow Visit North Alabama on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and TikTok. All of them. So follow us at Visit North Alabama and thanks for joining us. We'll be back next time with more about North Alabama adventures.
This has been another episode of the Unexpected Adventures in North Alabama podcast, part of the Destination Marketing Podcast Network hosted by Melea Hames and produced by Relic.
[End of transcript]
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