Aliceville, also called Pickensville by some, is an 8300 acre impoundment formed by a lock and dam on the Tombigbee River west of Tuscaloosa right on the state line. The dam was closed in 1980 and water from the river filled many sloughs and shallows on both sides. There a couple of good ramps and some lakeside campgrounds for visiting anglers.
Many bass fishermen from both Alabama and Mississippi fish Aliceville and it hosts a good many club and pot tournaments. In the 2007 BAIT Program it ranked in first place for the bass per angler day and pounds per angler day categories. Combine that with a third place ranking in percent success, fourth in average bass weight and second in hours per bass over five pounds and Aliceville got the top ranking of the 27 lakes in the survey.
Local Pro
Steven Fikes has lived all his live around Tuscaloosa and loves bass fishing. He grew up fishing and got serious about tournament fishing about four years ago. Up to that time he had fished with the Tuscaloosa County Bass Club and some other tournaments with buddies and as a no boater in some BFLs. When he started fishing the BFLs as a boater he did well, qualifying for the All American in 2007 and qualifying for the BFL Regional again last year. He is on the Grammer Marine fishing team and also fishes their tournament trail as well as other local pot tournaments.
Steven fishes Aliceville often and knows what the bass are doing there. He says many bass will spawn on the full moon around March 11 and another smaller wave will spawn on the April 9th full moon. That means right now there are post spawn bass in the shallows guarding fry and feeding as well as pre spawn bass looking at bedding areas. By mid April there will be some post spawn fish guarding fry but most of the bass will be feeding in the shallows through the end of the month.
In an April Aliceville tournament Steven weighed in his best five bass limit in a tournament at 16.25 pounds and had a personal limit while "fun" fishing weighing 21.5 pounds. His best bass from Aliceville is just under seven pounds but he has seen many bigger bass caught there.
Bait and Tackle
Aliceville is full of sloughs and shallow flooded flats covered with hydrilla, milfoil, lily pads and several other types of grass. Some sloughs have cypress trees standing in water six to ten feet deep. All this cover offers bass great places to hold and feed and makes the lake look "fishy" everywhere you turn.
Steven is on the Castaway Rods fishing team and uses their casting rods in a variety of actions to cover the baits he likes to fish in Aliceville right now. He will have a couple of heavy rods and reels spooled with Power Pro braid for flipping creature baits, lizards and jigs into grass and around trees. He will always have a rod and reel rigged with a Zara Spook for fishing open water and a buzzbait tied on for heavier grass cover.
A Strike King spinnerbait is ready to run around grass and cypress trees and he will also use a Bandit Footloose shallow running crankbait to fish over grass that is still under the surface. A floating worm is also a good bait to have ready. He uses Bass Pro Shops Excel monofilament line for baits where it works best and will go to Segar Fluorocarbon if the he needs an invisible line in clear water.
Steven and I fished Aliceville the last day of February - the day after the flooding rains. It was cold and cloudy and the river was running as fast as he had ever seen it and rising all day, pushing water back into the woods. Muddy water was also pushing into the shallows but we were still able to find some clear water to fish, which is important and you can almost always find it even when the river is muddy.
Even under the bad conditions we landed 14 or 15 bass up to three pounds. Most looked like bucks moving in to check out spawning areas so by now many will have spawned and the bucks will be guarding fry and the females will be feeding to recover from the spawn in the following areas.
