This trip was taken the week of 4th of July 2001
You can write the resort at: Hendricks Creek Resort P.O. Box 35817 Canton, Oh 44735 Or Call them at: 1-800-321-4000 (Reservation Office open weekdays 9:00am to 5:00 pm (EST/EDT) Or Fax them at: 1-330-854-4290

Looking out at the truck sitting in the driveway I realize we are about to head out of town. My brother and his wife have rented a houseboat on Dale Hollow Lake. They have asked me to go along so we are hooking up my bass boat to act as a dingy. They are three cars on this trip, well two cars and a pickup truck. We head out of Ashland Ky, going to Dale Hollow as hard as we can go. The trip is pretty uneventful except for the blow out we have on the boat trailer. After a quick change of tires we are on our way again. We pull into the Hendricks Creek Resort about two o'clock. We are met with 4 or 5 guys that jump right in and help us get loaded. The dock is equipped with these little trucks that look like garden bends on wheels. After a check list and a few lessons on where everything is on the boat and how to operate it we start getting ice and bait. One of the hands that is working the dock seems to be "our guy" to check us out and see we get out on the water safe and sound. "Our guy" his name is Freddie Bow, hops Into the captain chair and starts backing out the boat. Now I'm in the bass boat and I follow the houseboat out of the no wake zone where I pick up Freddie to bring him back to the dock. On our way back into the dock I look over to the shear wall to the left and I see a little deer fawn, it still has its spots. It looks like its stranded on this little shelf (see picture)
Freddie and I slide the boat right up to him. He let us pick him up and we take him to the back of the cove where he can get his feet back on solid ground. I'm thinking man what a way to start a trip!


Now we are out on the water. Where do we go! What do we do first! After looking over a good structure map. We decided to tie up the first night along Scull Bluff. I want to be in the channel. I know the houseboat is 72' and we are going to be fishing out the back the first night. We find the spot we want and we tie off. This can be a real job if you don't have some hands on board. We have three crappie lights on board. If you don't know what a crappie light is let me explain. A crappie light is a light that is incased in Styrofoam with two clips to hook to a car or marine battery. You can get these lights at any good tackle store. Once the lights are all on the water and the sun goes down the lights carve out a hole in the darkness where we start to see the shad gather under our lights. Our rods are simple. Light line, crappie hooks, a split shot and a minnow dropped right around our lights to the depth of about 20ft. It's not long till the action starts Connie (my brother wife) boats a good one. Then Misty (my nephew girl friend) lands another fish. They were spaced out that night one or two here and there but when the last rod was rolled up for the night we had about twenty-five really good fish in the icebox

The next morning we rise and have a good breakfast and we take another good look at the map. As a young boy I grew up fishing out of the Wolf River area. It's a part of the lake I really know .We decided to head that way and check out a few places that we know held crappie in the past. We end up going all the way to the mouth of Spring Creek. We find a spot where we can back in the houseboat and fish out of the front. This is a tricky set up but we get it done. By the way this is about a three-hour ride if you just take your time and enjoy the view. After we get all set up I jump in the bass boat and head back to Wolf River Dock and get more Bait and Ice. They treat us very good at Wolf River they help load our 12 bags of ice and 12 dozen minnows quickly. They are very generous with the minnows that's a good thing considering the water is 82 degrees and we know we are going to loose some of them before we get them floated off and in the water. This second night is a repeat of the first. We caught about forty more really nice crappie. This is the fourth of July so we see fireworks from two or three different areas along with our generator running you would think we wouldn't catch a thing. All of this boom-in and banging and generator humming don't affect the fish at all. Its starts a little later, by one in the morning the fish start hitting. I fish till the sun comes up this morning.


Timmy Jr. hangs in there with me. We look at the banks as the sun burns off the fog. It's time to hit the banks so we break off from the houseboat and start casting. I try the "Beehead Gig" but the fish don't seem to want it so I tie on a top water chugger and BAMB! A smallmouth takes an ugly swat at my bait. We just stop and look at each other as I pop two more fish. Tim ties on a bang-a-lure with a little spinner on the tail. He doesn't have to wait long SLAP! One hits his plug. After about two hours we head back to the houseboat to take a nap. We had a good morning we boat 8 fish one over the 18" size limit but all the bass are released. Crappie is the take home fish on this trip and we already have a good sack of fish. We decided not to move from this spot it has all we need and we are fishing out the front of the boat this make for a lot more room and we don't have the generator in our face plus the fishing is good here. I sleep most of this day. I hear my niece Linsy and her girl friend Holly on the fly bridge honking the horn and waving at the boys as they fly by doing tricks on the wave runners and skis. By the way they are 15 and 16 years old so as I get up I hear the boys in the houseboat across the river are real hotties…LOL. These two girls are a source of fun for me the whole trip. After you hit the big 50 watching 16 year olds brings back a lot of memories. My dad is on this trip. He is 82 years old. Loves to night fish and he is having a ball One of the things he likes to do is to set a trotline. I'm not sure why he likes to do it. I guess it's the wondering what's on the thing as you raise it. Anyway I take him up in a near by cove and we set a trot-line then we head back to the houseboat where we settle in for the night fishing. Like clock work the crappie start biting another 20 plus fish night and we all hit the bed about 3am. After another morning of smallmouth fishing with about the same results the top water bite seems to be still working. We catch a good number of small fish and handful of largemouth in the same size range 12 to 18" we head back to the houseboat and have some breakfast. Oh we do check the trot-line two gar one catfish and a turtle we keep the catfish and release the rest.
We know we have got to have the boat in by 9am Saturday morning so fishing another night in our little honey hole is not going to be possible. We break out the map again and try to pick a place that we know will be close to the Hendricks Docks. Again we try to find a place that is in the channel this is in water I really don't know. As a boy the Hendricks area was a little far for me to go since I was fishing out of the Wolf River Dock area. This kind of fishing is all about the spot. We know we are just taking a chance this last night on the water as it turn out it was a bust after getting all setup we fish till about 3am. We catch 1 good crappie and that's it. I guess you can't win them all.

The next morning we head back into the dock my brother Tim runs the houseboat and I take the bass boat. I know that all my gear goes back into the bass boat so I park it so I can take my stuff from the houseboat to the bass boat. As we get docked we are looking forward to seeing all them hands helping us to unload as they did when we came aboard. This never happen we understand as we start unloading that all the help is on arrival not on departure. We are a little disturbed about this since the guys that helped us load are just standing around. While checking out we find this is the dock general rule help them on but don't help them off. I'm only covering this because if you take a trip you need to know what to expect when its time to leave. We get loaded. The boat is on the trailer and we start back home.
I thought I would tell you about a few other things I thought you might want to know. Our boat was a 72-foot houseboat. With a 135hp outboard motor. The boat was set up very good with air, refrigerator, two baths, six bedrooms and fly bridge. It had Dish network TV on board. The TV worked great as long as you had a clear path in the right direction. HBO was included. It had a 100 gal gas tank for the outboard and another 100 gal tank for the generator. It had NO ship to shore radio something I missed from other houseboat trips I have taken. Generally speaking the boat was in good shape everything worked as expected. The people on the dock were nice and very helpful except for departure. We felt the dock had the help to help us unload the boat and get us off the ramp. The boat used $138.00 dollars in gas this was for both the out board and the generator This also included the first round of ice and bait. We were please with this, it was less than we expected. This boat was about $2500 and a $500 deposit. The $138.00 was deducted from the 500 At departure. This was for Tuesday 2pm -Saturday 9am All in all we had a great time. Caught a ton of fish and really didn't have any trouble to speak of. If you think you would like to take a trip like the one we took we would be glad to answer any questions or give you any information we have to make it a fun trip.
Till next trip
Good Fishing!!
Chris Erwin
Kentucky Angling.Com