10/5/14 - Post front fishing the Roanoke arm
Oct 5, 2014 19:49:35 GMT -5
CorneliaGale, smlmike, and 1 more like this
Post by mwardncsu on Oct 5, 2014 19:49:35 GMT -5
Weather: low 40's rising to 60's, white-out fog to start, burning off around 8am, mostly sunny after with winds 5-10 from WNW
Water: upper 60's to 70, visibility of a few feet
Technique - large alewifes on downlines (4) and light-lines (2) over 25-35' of water to start the day - pulled gizzards on freeline planers later in the morning.
Tyler and I fished on his ride Saturday morning and experienced the lovely post-front blue-bird skies and what seemed like a full-on gale most of the day - and it sucked. We decided to try and see if it was really October by pulling big bait away from "the fleet" both morning & evening and it was a gamble that did not pay off on Saturday - after fishing 7-10:30 and 4-7:30 we had a few swirls, two missed hook-ups and ended the day with an extra passenger - the dreaded skunk.
So, Sunday it was time to find some redemption. We transferred the 7 or 8 left-over gizzards to my tank and I went and hit a few lights to load up 4 or 5 dozen alewifes to give us a variety of options on Sunday as we had not made up our mind on the game-plan. It took a bit more work and running around than I was hoping - I had hit some lights on Thurs night to try and get some gizzards and the ales were plentiful, but with the cold-front that passed, and the full moon approaching there were not as easy at the lights closer to me - so I ended up running down the lake to a "sure thing" light.
I did catch a nice 12 lb flathead in the castnet at one light..... always a pleasure to get out of the net...
A face only a momma could love... 
Also caught a couple of stripers in the net.....
And - who wants a tank full of these? A 10.5" alewife? Or Blueback? Or Aleback? Or Bluewife? - heck, call it what you want - I call it heavenly....
We headed out around 6:45 from the dock and quickly ran into white-out conditions
- nice to have the radar aboard the boat to be able see through the soup....
But as the fog cleared we were treated to a nice sun-rise.....
While we considered running way down the lake to join the fleet and catch some schoolies and increase our chase of shedding the skunk from the day before, we decided to be stubborn and go with our plan from the day before, with a small twist to start. Tyler had marked a decent number of scattered fish in an area on Friday afternoon when he was out chasing gizzards, so we decided to give it a look. Sure enough we found fish in 25-30' of water off a main-channel point fairly schooled up, but very inactive. At first we were not sure if it was striper, gizzards, perch or what - we did have a couple of "pecking" strikes (and one ale with its eyes pecked out), so there must have been some perch mixed in. With the very inactive fish with some choice alewifes being pulled right by them, we wondered if it would have helped to have some juvenile gizzards out in the spread as well.....
We deployed down-lines and light-lines and pulled the area a while - should have put out some planers but we were too lazy to re-rig some rods that were setup for pulling big gizzards. If these fish had been active we would should have had a dozen in short order - but we picked up 4 in the area in around an hour. Should have dropped a few jigs on these fish holding the bottom - but again, too lazy to re-rig the casting rods to take off the top-water plugs. These fish were nothing huge, but went 26"-30" with the biggest around 10 lbs - all released to grow and be caught again.
Around 8:30 we decided to leave fish to find fish..... and give our Saturday plan another go. Perhaps we should have stayed on those fish, but we wanted a little redemption. We got to our target area and put out a spread of planers - 4, with gizzards and 2 with jumbo alewifes. Pulled this area until around 11 am and we had a few blow-ups, I had a planer with an alewife get blown-up on and tugged back and when I set the hook I felt the snap of the line getting cut right at the hook...
Finally a blow-up happened on Tyler's side of the boat and the board took off and he set the hook solidly and brought a 32", 12 lber to the boat to be released - not a citation, not a monster, and just one, but it was a little bit of vindication from the day before 
We wrapped it up around 11 and called it a decent morning of fishing
Water: upper 60's to 70, visibility of a few feet
Technique - large alewifes on downlines (4) and light-lines (2) over 25-35' of water to start the day - pulled gizzards on freeline planers later in the morning.
Tyler and I fished on his ride Saturday morning and experienced the lovely post-front blue-bird skies and what seemed like a full-on gale most of the day - and it sucked. We decided to try and see if it was really October by pulling big bait away from "the fleet" both morning & evening and it was a gamble that did not pay off on Saturday - after fishing 7-10:30 and 4-7:30 we had a few swirls, two missed hook-ups and ended the day with an extra passenger - the dreaded skunk.
So, Sunday it was time to find some redemption. We transferred the 7 or 8 left-over gizzards to my tank and I went and hit a few lights to load up 4 or 5 dozen alewifes to give us a variety of options on Sunday as we had not made up our mind on the game-plan. It took a bit more work and running around than I was hoping - I had hit some lights on Thurs night to try and get some gizzards and the ales were plentiful, but with the cold-front that passed, and the full moon approaching there were not as easy at the lights closer to me - so I ended up running down the lake to a "sure thing" light.
I did catch a nice 12 lb flathead in the castnet at one light..... always a pleasure to get out of the net...
A face only a momma could love... 
Also caught a couple of stripers in the net.....
And - who wants a tank full of these? A 10.5" alewife? Or Blueback? Or Aleback? Or Bluewife? - heck, call it what you want - I call it heavenly....
We headed out around 6:45 from the dock and quickly ran into white-out conditions
- nice to have the radar aboard the boat to be able see through the soup....But as the fog cleared we were treated to a nice sun-rise.....
While we considered running way down the lake to join the fleet and catch some schoolies and increase our chase of shedding the skunk from the day before, we decided to be stubborn and go with our plan from the day before, with a small twist to start. Tyler had marked a decent number of scattered fish in an area on Friday afternoon when he was out chasing gizzards, so we decided to give it a look. Sure enough we found fish in 25-30' of water off a main-channel point fairly schooled up, but very inactive. At first we were not sure if it was striper, gizzards, perch or what - we did have a couple of "pecking" strikes (and one ale with its eyes pecked out), so there must have been some perch mixed in. With the very inactive fish with some choice alewifes being pulled right by them, we wondered if it would have helped to have some juvenile gizzards out in the spread as well.....
We deployed down-lines and light-lines and pulled the area a while - should have put out some planers but we were too lazy to re-rig some rods that were setup for pulling big gizzards. If these fish had been active we would should have had a dozen in short order - but we picked up 4 in the area in around an hour. Should have dropped a few jigs on these fish holding the bottom - but again, too lazy to re-rig the casting rods to take off the top-water plugs. These fish were nothing huge, but went 26"-30" with the biggest around 10 lbs - all released to grow and be caught again.
Around 8:30 we decided to leave fish to find fish..... and give our Saturday plan another go. Perhaps we should have stayed on those fish, but we wanted a little redemption. We got to our target area and put out a spread of planers - 4, with gizzards and 2 with jumbo alewifes. Pulled this area until around 11 am and we had a few blow-ups, I had a planer with an alewife get blown-up on and tugged back and when I set the hook I felt the snap of the line getting cut right at the hook...
Finally a blow-up happened on Tyler's side of the boat and the board took off and he set the hook solidly and brought a 32", 12 lber to the boat to be released - not a citation, not a monster, and just one, but it was a little bit of vindication from the day before 
We wrapped it up around 11 and called it a decent morning of fishing
