Post by mwardncsu on Jul 22, 2013 8:51:11 GMT -5
Water: 85, visibility of around 3-5'
Weather: Overcast to start, changing to sunny. Light breeze from NW at times. Temps in the upper 70's rising to high 80's but it sure felt hotter - Pretty humid - glad that breeze was around at times
Techniques: downlines & lightlines with alewives; gizzards on lightlines / downlines (tried boards at one spot)
Tyler and I were fishing the Club tourney together, so we headed out on Friday about 10p to fill the tank with water, get some gas and then chase bait. We decided to fill his tank as our backup, so my new pump rig came in real handy - pumped up 67-68 degree water from about 35' and shuttled it back to his dock to fill his tank, and then filed, mine again - love my new pump
We wanted to get a mix of ales & gizzards to have some flexibility if the opportunity presented itself so we hit a light which has held gizzards recently.
One throw and we had about 40 too many in one net.
Filled the tank and ran these back to Tyler's dock to put in his tank - emptied and refilled my tank since the water was now 50% slime - did I mention I love my new pump Then it was off to get ales
Three or four tosses of the net and we had probably 6 dozen alewifes, with some really nice, plump ones.... so we called it a night with a 4:30 wake-up call, just in case we needed to get some more bait should things go bad over night.
Woke up to a happy tank of ales (with a few gizzards), but Tyler's tank with the big gizzards were not looking great, so we hit the light again to pick up a few "fresher" ones - the light was still loaded.
Then it was time to head to the fishing grounds. Like Bigun said in his report, the big schools have not been showing up on the Roanoke side, so we decided to see if they all took a left-hand turn when coming back up the lake after the spawn and made the long run over to the Blackwater side.
Got to the area and there were a bunch of boats looking - the big monster school never materialized, so we did some searching in the area and checked the mouths of some coves and looked at a couple of points, and did find a few fish off one the points...
This one was not going to win the tourney, but at least we were on the board. After a very quick photo it went back.
We did manage to get on a pretty decent group for a while which provided for some nice action. I think we caught the fish coming out of the back of the cove heading to the main channel and we had a frenzy for about 15 minutes - provided for several doubles and at least one or two triples and stripped the rest of the lines of our baits. Lost two when one fish hit a rod and wrapped around another line, that also had a fish hit it - as I was fighting one of the fish and trying to see if I could untangle it, the tension of the mono on mono broke the line... We never did find the numbers again - just some scattered fish after that.
No screen shots due to the frenzied action which had me distracted.
This was mostly a small to mid-size class of fish - several in the upper teens (inches), and then most were in the 22-26" range, with a few in the high 20" range. We got a few "upgrades" to our two-fish (each) total length total - putting several fish in the box to harvest for a Club fish fry in a few weeks.
Our biggest was a little over 28" which we knew would not take big fish and probably did not give either of of enough total length, so given we still had room in the box for 2 more, we packed it in and checked a few spots elsewhere with our bigger gizzards - you know, "go big or go home".
It almost paid off - we did pick up a 31.25" (though the pic makes it look just under 31.25" I guess...
) and had another one come unbuttoned, along with a couple of chases that would not commit.
Placed 3rd and Tyler took 4th (Tyler let me catch all the bigger fish
) behind the May son / father team of Chris & Macky May which again went 1st & 2nd and took Big fish at 34.5"
A hot and muggy, but fun day on the water with some good, frenzied morning action and some fish in the freezer for the Club fish fry in the coming weeks.
Weather: Overcast to start, changing to sunny. Light breeze from NW at times. Temps in the upper 70's rising to high 80's but it sure felt hotter - Pretty humid - glad that breeze was around at times
Techniques: downlines & lightlines with alewives; gizzards on lightlines / downlines (tried boards at one spot)
Tyler and I were fishing the Club tourney together, so we headed out on Friday about 10p to fill the tank with water, get some gas and then chase bait. We decided to fill his tank as our backup, so my new pump rig came in real handy - pumped up 67-68 degree water from about 35' and shuttled it back to his dock to fill his tank, and then filed, mine again - love my new pump
We wanted to get a mix of ales & gizzards to have some flexibility if the opportunity presented itself so we hit a light which has held gizzards recently.
One throw and we had about 40 too many in one net.
Filled the tank and ran these back to Tyler's dock to put in his tank - emptied and refilled my tank since the water was now 50% slime - did I mention I love my new pump
Then it was off to get alesThree or four tosses of the net and we had probably 6 dozen alewifes, with some really nice, plump ones.... so we called it a night with a 4:30 wake-up call, just in case we needed to get some more bait should things go bad over night.
Woke up to a happy tank of ales (with a few gizzards), but Tyler's tank with the big gizzards were not looking great, so we hit the light again to pick up a few "fresher" ones - the light was still loaded.
Then it was time to head to the fishing grounds. Like Bigun said in his report, the big schools have not been showing up on the Roanoke side, so we decided to see if they all took a left-hand turn when coming back up the lake after the spawn and made the long run over to the Blackwater side.
Got to the area and there were a bunch of boats looking - the big monster school never materialized, so we did some searching in the area and checked the mouths of some coves and looked at a couple of points, and did find a few fish off one the points...
This one was not going to win the tourney, but at least we were on the board. After a very quick photo it went back.
We did manage to get on a pretty decent group for a while which provided for some nice action. I think we caught the fish coming out of the back of the cove heading to the main channel and we had a frenzy for about 15 minutes - provided for several doubles and at least one or two triples and stripped the rest of the lines of our baits. Lost two when one fish hit a rod and wrapped around another line, that also had a fish hit it - as I was fighting one of the fish and trying to see if I could untangle it, the tension of the mono on mono broke the line... We never did find the numbers again - just some scattered fish after that.
No screen shots due to the frenzied action which had me distracted.
This was mostly a small to mid-size class of fish - several in the upper teens (inches), and then most were in the 22-26" range, with a few in the high 20" range. We got a few "upgrades" to our two-fish (each) total length total - putting several fish in the box to harvest for a Club fish fry in a few weeks.
Our biggest was a little over 28" which we knew would not take big fish and probably did not give either of of enough total length, so given we still had room in the box for 2 more, we packed it in and checked a few spots elsewhere with our bigger gizzards - you know, "go big or go home".
It almost paid off - we did pick up a 31.25" (though the pic makes it look just under 31.25" I guess...
) and had another one come unbuttoned, along with a couple of chases that would not commit.Placed 3rd and Tyler took 4th (Tyler let me catch all the bigger fish
) behind the May son / father team of Chris & Macky May which again went 1st & 2nd and took Big fish at 34.5"A hot and muggy, but fun day on the water with some good, frenzied morning action and some fish in the freezer for the Club fish fry in the coming weeks.
Right Gotcha 
