Post by mwardncsu on Aug 24, 2014 19:30:44 GMT -5
Weather: light rain, mist, overcast; winds 5-10 from E; temps - upper 60's rising to low 70's
Water: 79, visibility of a few feet
Techniques: Alewifes on downlines (6) and light lines (2) when we could keep them from getting tangled up
My name is Mike and I have a problem. A bait problem. I like big bait and I cannot lie, BentRod won't deny... err... I digress. I like bait to the point of excess. I like bait to the point of putting myself and the bait in harms way. My name is Mike and I have a bait problem.
Nathan, Tyler and myself were having fishing withdrawals (or maybe bait withdrawals - not sure). We were fishing Sunday one way or the other. Somehow their schedules would not allow them to get down to the lake to get bait Sat evening, and none of us felt comfortable waiting till early Sun AM, so I agreed to go load up the tank Saturday night. I arrived to the lake just about 10 pm Saturday and was greeted to this on the radar
Fortunately it was fairly fast moving - and about 10:45 the worst had past so that I could head out. I was worried that the rain would have put the kebash to the bait hanging on the lights and thought it might take a while for it to pull back, but I was going to get it a try for a while at least.... It was dark, still raining, wind blowing pretty good but I made my way down the lake to a good bait light. Got close, dropped the trolling motor and turned on SpotLock to hold position while I filled the tank - the wind decided it would over-rule the SpotLock, and the TM spun around on its own enough to snap my trolling motor transducer cable Not going well so far tonight....
I pulled out the 9', 1/2" Bait Buster cast net and eased over to the light. Sure enough, nothing circling on the surface under the light.... wondering if this is going to be a long night. Tossed the net, opening it about like an 8'er and let it sink. Felt a little bait in the net but nothing crazy - started to pull it up and it got real heavy pretty quick.
Saw beautiful flashes of silver - net full of nice sized ales - lifted the net straight to the tank and dumped them directly into the SBT-II. You know that saying "One and Done" - that was tonight - thankfully. Hard to tell how many were in the the tank but it was pretty full
And the bait looked to mostly be averaging the size of the smaller of these two, with a really good number of ones the size of the larger - and maybe a 1/2 dozen or so that were 8" sized baits 
Cleaned the scale basket / filters and texted Tyler & Nathan that I felt we had a good 60 baits in the tank and good to go for the AM.
So, back to my problem..... in addition to having a bait problem, I apparently have a problem of not being able to estimate and/or count. When we wrapped up for the day on Sunday, we tossed out at least 120 baits
and that was after my tossing probably a dozen on Sat night and Tyler tossing 12-18 Sat AM that were not looking great - as well as using 4-5 dozen while fishing Sunday AM. So that net yielded probably 200 baits 
I may have hope for recovery however, as I did have a thought of throwing the net a 2nd time but managed to pull myself back from the temptation.... 
Hey, if nothing else give props to the SBT-II, Dannco aerator, and some "Prime" water treatment to keep those baits in decent shape into the morning...... though I knew we were way over crowded as the water started going to crap about 7 or so.....
Tyler & Nathan rolled up a little after 6 am and we headed down to the boat, re-tied a few rigs and headed down the lake. Stopped to get a quick 10 gal of gas as I was low and forgot to get it the night before in the rain..... and then check out a near-by creek that did not show any fish - and both were a mistake as it cost us getting on some breaking fish that had been busting a little ways on down from where we were at the time
We started to scouted a mid-lake creek and about a 1/3 or so into the creek we started seeing what we were looking for.
It did not take long for the action to get started. We never got on a monster school, but did keep intersecting with some decent pods of fish that were generally in an eating mood.
Those screen shots yielded some fun - several doubles, at least two triples that I recall. Fish were on the smaller side, biggest two going about 6 lbs - aggressive fighters that came up pretty quick with the 20 lb mono / 15 lb fluro leader on Abu 6500LC reels. All fish released today due to the size, water temps depths (all caught above 40', most in the 25-30' range).
This guy was especially hungry - so much so that he wanted two baits..... :
Things died down for us around 8:30 or so - we did intersect the school again around the mouth of the creek at the main channel, but the school had broken up into much smaller pods and was hard to get on and stay on - though we did pick up a couple more.
We ran around a little while checking a few other spots - picking up one more fish in a creek closer toward the bridge, when we heard the call of the sirens.... not the game warden or coast-guard sirens, but rather the call of the mythical Ice Cream Boat.... Lines In, Trolling Motor Up, engine fired up and sprint across the channel to intercept this mythical beast.....
Yes, Ice Creams all around - it takes a lot to fuel a striper fishing crew..... and there is NO rule against eating dessert before lunch, right?
:bounce:
Oh, well if we've had desert, we might as well have lunch..... We headed to Mango's about 11 and had another triple - this time of the Mango's Burger.....
My name is Mike.... and I have a problem.......
Water: 79, visibility of a few feet
Techniques: Alewifes on downlines (6) and light lines (2) when we could keep them from getting tangled up
My name is Mike and I have a problem. A bait problem. I like big bait and I cannot lie, BentRod won't deny... err... I digress. I like bait to the point of excess. I like bait to the point of putting myself and the bait in harms way. My name is Mike and I have a bait problem.
Nathan, Tyler and myself were having fishing withdrawals (or maybe bait withdrawals - not sure). We were fishing Sunday one way or the other. Somehow their schedules would not allow them to get down to the lake to get bait Sat evening, and none of us felt comfortable waiting till early Sun AM, so I agreed to go load up the tank Saturday night. I arrived to the lake just about 10 pm Saturday and was greeted to this on the radar
Fortunately it was fairly fast moving - and about 10:45 the worst had past so that I could head out. I was worried that the rain would have put the kebash to the bait hanging on the lights and thought it might take a while for it to pull back, but I was going to get it a try for a while at least.... It was dark, still raining, wind blowing pretty good but I made my way down the lake to a good bait light. Got close, dropped the trolling motor and turned on SpotLock to hold position while I filled the tank - the wind decided it would over-rule the SpotLock, and the TM spun around on its own enough to snap my trolling motor transducer cable
Not going well so far tonight....I pulled out the 9', 1/2" Bait Buster cast net and eased over to the light. Sure enough, nothing circling on the surface under the light.... wondering if this is going to be a long night. Tossed the net, opening it about like an 8'er and let it sink. Felt a little bait in the net but nothing crazy - started to pull it up and it got real heavy pretty quick.
Saw beautiful flashes of silver - net full of nice sized ales - lifted the net straight to the tank and dumped them directly into the SBT-II. You know that saying "One and Done" - that was tonight - thankfully. Hard to tell how many were in the the tank but it was pretty full
And the bait looked to mostly be averaging the size of the smaller of these two, with a really good number of ones the size of the larger - and maybe a 1/2 dozen or so that were 8" sized baits 
Cleaned the scale basket / filters and texted Tyler & Nathan that I felt we had a good 60 baits in the tank and good to go for the AM.
So, back to my problem..... in addition to having a bait problem, I apparently have a problem of not being able to estimate and/or count. When we wrapped up for the day on Sunday, we tossed out at least 120 baits
and that was after my tossing probably a dozen on Sat night and Tyler tossing 12-18 Sat AM that were not looking great - as well as using 4-5 dozen while fishing Sunday AM. So that net yielded probably 200 baits 
I may have hope for recovery however, as I did have a thought of throwing the net a 2nd time but managed to pull myself back from the temptation.... 
Hey, if nothing else give props to the SBT-II, Dannco aerator, and some "Prime" water treatment to keep those baits in decent shape into the morning...... though I knew we were way over crowded as the water started going to crap about 7 or so.....
Tyler & Nathan rolled up a little after 6 am and we headed down to the boat, re-tied a few rigs and headed down the lake. Stopped to get a quick 10 gal of gas as I was low and forgot to get it the night before in the rain..... and then check out a near-by creek that did not show any fish - and both were a mistake as it cost us getting on some breaking fish that had been busting a little ways on down from where we were at the time
We started to scouted a mid-lake creek and about a 1/3 or so into the creek we started seeing what we were looking for.
It did not take long for the action to get started. We never got on a monster school, but did keep intersecting with some decent pods of fish that were generally in an eating mood.
Those screen shots yielded some fun - several doubles, at least two triples that I recall. Fish were on the smaller side, biggest two going about 6 lbs - aggressive fighters that came up pretty quick with the 20 lb mono / 15 lb fluro leader on Abu 6500LC reels. All fish released today due to the size, water temps depths (all caught above 40', most in the 25-30' range).
This guy was especially hungry - so much so that he wanted two baits..... :
Things died down for us around 8:30 or so - we did intersect the school again around the mouth of the creek at the main channel, but the school had broken up into much smaller pods and was hard to get on and stay on - though we did pick up a couple more.
We ran around a little while checking a few other spots - picking up one more fish in a creek closer toward the bridge, when we heard the call of the sirens.... not the game warden or coast-guard sirens, but rather the call of the mythical Ice Cream Boat.... Lines In, Trolling Motor Up, engine fired up and sprint across the channel to intercept this mythical beast.....
Yes, Ice Creams all around - it takes a lot to fuel a striper fishing crew..... and there is NO rule against eating dessert before lunch, right?
:bounce: Oh, well if we've had desert, we might as well have lunch..... We headed to Mango's about 11 and had another triple - this time of the Mango's Burger.....
My name is Mike.... and I have a problem.......
