8/31/13 - think I'm done with summer fishing
Sept 1, 2013 14:01:20 GMT -5
jb4sml, grasscutter, and 2 more like this
Post by mwardncsu on Sept 1, 2013 14:01:20 GMT -5
Weather: Sunny, light & variable winds, started about mid 60's and rose to low 80s.
Water: 80-81, visibility of 5'
Techniques: Alewives on downlines (4) and lightlines (4), fishing downlines around +/- 30' and the lightlines about 50' back from the boat.
Based on last week's bait catching challenges I expected it to be a little tough, so I did not even go out until right at mid-night. A mostly new moon that was not rising until something like 2am, so I had hoped it might not be as bad as last week - WRONG. Bait was very tough and it seems the bait that is there is very small. I threw from mid-night till almost 3am to put 2-3 dozen baits of mix decency in the tank. I did have one nice through that netted right around a dozen nice big alewives, but otherwise it was one or two every few throws. About 1/2 way through I noticed a 3' tear in my net out towards the edge which probably did not help
Sewed it up on the boat and back to throwing - about time to retire that Cracker net.
Tyler and my buddy Mark were heading out with me on Sat AM and our plan was to head down-lake to the general area where we found fish last weekend and we had reports of a good school holding in the area. Mark met me at the house and we headed down and picked up Tyler around 6:30. Got to the fishing grounds a little before 7am to start looking.
A nice artistic shot by Tyler
We looked, and looked, and looked, and looked - looked till close to 9 am I think, checking several near-by spots (and one not so near-by to try and find the school - never saw much more than some small groups of 2-3 fish at best. Finally decided we could not catch them if we didn't have lines in the water and decided to put bait out. Still were making basically nothing, though there were probably 20+ boats in the general area. Only guy catching anything was a guy jigging - he can out fish most, even bait fishermen a lot of the time jigging.... He had caught a few just sitting still, banging on the boat a bit. We worked that area a while till the boats continued to multiply and we still hadn't gotten a bite so we decided to head back up the lake and try a few spots. Tyler suggested we try a particular cove - turned out to be a very good call.
We pulled in and very quickly were marking a few fish - then saw a good number of fish off to the left on the side-scan. We got the boat turned around and put out the baits as we tried to get back over them. We had a good hit on a lightline that did not hook up so we knew we were close - kept working around, watching the side-scan to try and find them and get back over then. Then, we did
It took us a while, but once we found them we needed two hands
I think we caught 5 in just about as many minutes. All smaller fish in the 20"-24" range.
Another artistic shot taken by Tyler - shame his subject matter ruins the artistic nature of the pic
Worked the area for about an hour or so - got back over the fish a few times, and picked up several more, though no more fire-drill frenzies
Sorry for the glare - one of these days I'll start doing screen shots and loading pics off the memory card
We called it quits about 10:30 as the recreational traffic started to get really cranked up...... Pretty much everything came off the downlines today - think we only got 1 or 2 of the lightlines and a couple of hits - today they wanted the downlines. I guess today just proves that sometimes you've got to go where others aren't.
Water: 80-81, visibility of 5'
Techniques: Alewives on downlines (4) and lightlines (4), fishing downlines around +/- 30' and the lightlines about 50' back from the boat.
Based on last week's bait catching challenges I expected it to be a little tough, so I did not even go out until right at mid-night. A mostly new moon that was not rising until something like 2am, so I had hoped it might not be as bad as last week - WRONG. Bait was very tough and it seems the bait that is there is very small. I threw from mid-night till almost 3am to put 2-3 dozen baits of mix decency in the tank. I did have one nice through that netted right around a dozen nice big alewives, but otherwise it was one or two every few throws. About 1/2 way through I noticed a 3' tear in my net out towards the edge which probably did not help
Sewed it up on the boat and back to throwing - about time to retire that Cracker net.Tyler and my buddy Mark were heading out with me on Sat AM and our plan was to head down-lake to the general area where we found fish last weekend and we had reports of a good school holding in the area. Mark met me at the house and we headed down and picked up Tyler around 6:30. Got to the fishing grounds a little before 7am to start looking.
A nice artistic shot by Tyler
We looked, and looked, and looked, and looked - looked till close to 9 am I think, checking several near-by spots (and one not so near-by to try and find the school - never saw much more than some small groups of 2-3 fish at best. Finally decided we could not catch them if we didn't have lines in the water and decided to put bait out. Still were making basically nothing, though there were probably 20+ boats in the general area. Only guy catching anything was a guy jigging - he can out fish most, even bait fishermen a lot of the time jigging.... He had caught a few just sitting still, banging on the boat a bit. We worked that area a while till the boats continued to multiply and we still hadn't gotten a bite so we decided to head back up the lake and try a few spots. Tyler suggested we try a particular cove - turned out to be a very good call.
We pulled in and very quickly were marking a few fish - then saw a good number of fish off to the left on the side-scan. We got the boat turned around and put out the baits as we tried to get back over them. We had a good hit on a lightline that did not hook up so we knew we were close - kept working around, watching the side-scan to try and find them and get back over then. Then, we did
It took us a while, but once we found them we needed two hands
I think we caught 5 in just about as many minutes. All smaller fish in the 20"-24" range.
Another artistic shot taken by Tyler - shame his subject matter ruins the artistic nature of the pic
Worked the area for about an hour or so - got back over the fish a few times, and picked up several more, though no more fire-drill frenzies
Sorry for the glare - one of these days I'll start doing screen shots and loading pics off the memory card
We called it quits about 10:30 as the recreational traffic started to get really cranked up...... Pretty much everything came off the downlines today - think we only got 1 or 2 of the lightlines and a couple of hits - today they wanted the downlines. I guess today just proves that sometimes you've got to go where others aren't.
