Post by Brian on Oct 12, 2014 9:08:43 GMT -5
We put in just about 30 mins after daylight. Scored a lucky cast net hit on some very nice dollar bill sized ales, which is tough to do in daylight.
Had a screwup with the livewell though... Ron Vest still hasn't shipped the SBT I ordered in March, so I'm using my built-in 30 gallon livewell with a Walmart aerator plus cheap venturi. I carry my salt in a gallon ziplock bag, but it had a tear in it so I had stashed it in the livewell rather than get salt in one of my storage compartments. I forgot that my high speed pickups will put some water into the livewells when I am running. All of the salt was dissolved out of the bag and I just filled up the livewell anyway rather than drain off some of the salt water... Well, those ales hit that pickle juice and rolled over immediately. We drained most of it and added fresh water and they turned right side up and looked very frisky. They made it until about 2pm.
We fished/scouted pretty much the whole Roanoke side from the dam up. We never did find a big school. There was a fleet of boats downstream of the state park that looked like there must have been be a school around, but nothing was happening when we showed up and a couple of the boats in the fleet picked up and left.
Every creek had plenty of bait and plenty of what looked on sonar like scattered stripers to me, but they wouldn't eat. I had a spread of peanut shad, mongo shad and dollar bill sized ales, plus some tries at jigging.
We finally caught 2 (30" and 32") in the afternoon in a creek that was loaded with bait, but nothing after that. Both were on peanuts. One a downline and one a freeline. Also caught a few white bass, including one little rascal that must have been on for a long time while we were drifting... He wove the line through everything we had out (even short planer boards!) and forced us to cut and retie everything.
I also got to observe mward's landing net technique which was very entertaining. He took forever to land his catch and missed it with the net quite a few times before succeeding... Then he didn't even bother to measure it, just tossed it back.
Had a screwup with the livewell though... Ron Vest still hasn't shipped the SBT I ordered in March, so I'm using my built-in 30 gallon livewell with a Walmart aerator plus cheap venturi. I carry my salt in a gallon ziplock bag, but it had a tear in it so I had stashed it in the livewell rather than get salt in one of my storage compartments. I forgot that my high speed pickups will put some water into the livewells when I am running. All of the salt was dissolved out of the bag and I just filled up the livewell anyway rather than drain off some of the salt water... Well, those ales hit that pickle juice and rolled over immediately. We drained most of it and added fresh water and they turned right side up and looked very frisky. They made it until about 2pm.
We fished/scouted pretty much the whole Roanoke side from the dam up. We never did find a big school. There was a fleet of boats downstream of the state park that looked like there must have been be a school around, but nothing was happening when we showed up and a couple of the boats in the fleet picked up and left.
Every creek had plenty of bait and plenty of what looked on sonar like scattered stripers to me, but they wouldn't eat. I had a spread of peanut shad, mongo shad and dollar bill sized ales, plus some tries at jigging.
We finally caught 2 (30" and 32") in the afternoon in a creek that was loaded with bait, but nothing after that. Both were on peanuts. One a downline and one a freeline. Also caught a few white bass, including one little rascal that must have been on for a long time while we were drifting... He wove the line through everything we had out (even short planer boards!) and forced us to cut and retie everything.
I also got to observe mward's landing net technique which was very entertaining. He took forever to land his catch and missed it with the net quite a few times before succeeding... Then he didn't even bother to measure it, just tossed it back.
