12/22/15 - Pre-Holiday Fishing part-deaux

[mwardncsu]

Weather: cloudy and misty once the rain moved out around 7am- temps starting mid-50's rising into the 70's
Water: 52-54, visibility of a few feet
Techniques: Gizzard buffet - medium to mongos on boards, light-lines, floats, downlines

We had a bit of a delayed start as Charlie and I waited for a strong line of rain to move on out, but we still got out on the water a little after 7am. Rolled down to the dock, filled open the bait tank to clean the filter and was greeted to this....



After cleaning the filter box the night before and putting it back it, I think the filter box bumped the pump and knocked it a bit loose of the elbow fitting and it blew off a bit later..... leaving the pump to recirculate the filter side - but not push water - and thus air, into the bait side. Not a good combo with 50 larger gizzards in the tank......

So, we reset - pitched the baits, emptied and refilled and headed out looking for bait. We found them eventually and loaded the tank on up to get back in business....







Anyone want some crappie?


We setup around 11am to start pulling a channel bank and pulled it around 15 min with a blow-up but no hook-up when Kurt transferred over from Yam's boat (Yam had Sutor above for the day as well) to ours for the rest of the day. We spend a little while catching some bigger bait out in the main channel and then fished the rest of the afternoon. Pulled a channel bank and Kurt hooked up with a nice 16 lber



We got on a really good bite for a while with fish all over the channel hitting down-lines and light-lines more than the bank-side free-line planners.








We picked up 4 or 5 fish there and moved on up a little bit further and then worked a 100 yard stretch of bank for probably 2 hours with constant action on each pull through the area.

















We kept three during the day to filet up and enjoy that evening.... as dusk set in we loaded up on a few more baits and then headed to the house where Kurt filleted the fish, and prepped a great meal of surf & turf and Charlie ran the grill - I just sat back and drank a couple Bold Rocks and chilled. We had invited Gator to come over and join us and we all enjoyed a great evening together talking fishing and just generally cutting up



I think we had close to 15 fish to the boat and a whole lot more laughs in the process.... great day as we wrapped up dinner and hit the sack around 10:30 to get some sleep for one last morning session to come on Wednesday....

[jon]

Great report and great day fishing. What size net are you throwing in the down scan image? I have been thinking about picking up a new net for deeper water and it seems that one is still opened good at that depth.

Jon

[mwardncsu]

10' net. Not sure which one that was - 3/4" mesh I think. Heavier weights are not your friend that deep however.

[jon]

What's the least amount of weight you would consider still effective? May get a custom Wade net made. I've always gone 1.5 per foot for faster sinking but after reading other posts this is not the answer for deep bait.

Jon

[mwardncsu]

Probably 1 lb/ft. It's a balance of the weight pulling down against drag that the net mesh is creating. The larger the mesh and thinner mono (thus less resistance) the less drag the net will create. Just keep in mind this will tend to only work on big bait when it's deep but they are moving slower due to cold water. For most of the year you want a net that can sink fast to keep them from getting away - and target sub-15' baits (for gizzards at any rate).

[jon]

Thanks for the info.

Jon

[jt]

Thanks for the report, I hope someday I can catch fish like that. Beautiful picture of the net descending on the bait, awesome