"For numbers and size of shellcrackers, it's the best," Slaton said. "I start locating beds around the 20th of April. That's when the water temperature starts to get right. It needs to be up there toward 70 for them to get wound up. I always get my better fish in the two weeks prior to the full moon in May."

While the lake well deserves its reputation as one of the country's premier bass factories and is also a quality crappie lake as well, Guntersville attracts visitors from around the country purely for its bream fishing. Slaton's customers arrive from such extreme locales as Texas, Michigan and Indiana.

Like most lakes, Guntersville continues to evolve as a fishery. According to Slaton, one change that has manifested itself in recent years is the mixture of shellcrackers and bluegills in the same spawning area.

"There was a time when I could go to certain spots and find only shellcrackers," Slaton recalled. "That's not the case anymore. Almost always, I find them together, so catching only shellcrackers these days is a difficult proposition. That's only started to happen in the last four or five years. But you can still catch a lot of them. It might be a five-shellcracker-to-one-bream ratio on one spot, and then the opposite on the next."

Biologist Donny Lowery noted that he encounters the same situation on Guntersville and elsewhere.

"I don't know if there is any way to pinpoint just shellcrackers," Lowery said. "Where you find shellcrackers, you will likely also find bluegills."

While the entire extent of Guntersville holds good populations of shellcrackers, Slaton confines most of his guiding to the mid-lake area, from just upstream of Guntersville State Park to the Goose Pond area upriver.

Like most other species on Guntersville, the shellcrackers have adjusted to the abundant milfoil and hydrilla during the spawning season.

"There's not as much structure as there used to be," Slaton said. "The stumps have rotted out.

"What I normally look for is good green grass in about 5 feet of water or less. The grass is starting to emerge about 6 inches off the bottom. You can see it down there if the water is clear and is shallow enough.

"The fish are usually found on some type of break, maybe on a point. An added bonus is if you can get a stump or two around that green grass on the point. Sometimes they are on the sides of the point or maybe they locate in a ditch that runs into the flats."

Slaton acknowledged an "old-school" approach to shellcracker fishing. He strongly believes that the spawning bream emit an odor that can be smelled by fishermen. He also abides by the adage that you should be on the water in the days leading up to the May full moon.

"You can smell them," Slaton emphasized. "A lot of people don't realize that or don't believe it, but you can smell that musk scent that they give off. Start casting around when you smell it, and you will quickly locate some fish.

"I get my better fish two weeks prior to that full moon in May."