Post by mwardncsu on May 30, 2015 20:55:35 GMT -5
Weather: Mid 60's rising to upper 70's, maybe low 80's. Cloudy / foggy, burning off mid-morning
Water: mid to upper 70's, visibility of a few feet
Techniques: Live-bait spread. Freeline gizzards behind planers, lightline alewifes behind planers (1 or 2), lightline alewifes (4), alewifes on downlines (2)
Not to wish time away, but I am sort of glad to see May come to a close. May tends to be tough fishing for me ... perhaps it is how it goes from where we are catching big fish on big baits one week in April to trying to chasing schools of dinks the next weekend and I resist it kicking & fighting. It's the timeframe when the spawn occurs, which makes the fish that much more finicky, and they larger numbers move down lake where there is just so much water that finding them can be tough at times, when you do you're usually around a dozen other boats and those trips down-lake really put a dent in the wallet when stopping at the gas pump as well.
We've caught fish each trip out this May - barely - so I should not complain, but we never did get on the numbers that we should have. Luck of the draw I guess - zigging, when we should have zagged - made a few "bad" calls this May, often for the reasons of either avoiding the crowds or trying to find some larger fish - or just going with the wrong gut feeling. Keeping with that theme...... this weekend as we closed out May, we took a chance that some of the fish were already on their way back up the lake - knowing that it may still be a week or two early.... Made plans with Tyler to jump on with me, and I went out Friday night to load the tank for the morning.
Big gizzards are easy on the lights right now, as are the alewifes. Catching 8-12" alewife/blueback with a 3/4" mesh net - gilling a number of them but most of the time they will pull through the mesh and be OK to fish the next day. The 1/2" mesh net is a disaster still..... gilling way too many small baits.
Spent a couple of hours running around to a few lights, working to get larger alewifes - and ended up putting 16-20 gizzards in the tank as well for the heck of it... Good to see you out there Shadalliac!
Hit the sack at 1:30am, with a 5:00am wake-up call. Tyler met me at 5:30 and we headed down to the boat and out on the water into a foggy morning - and had lines out by 5:45 in a creek where I had been catching bait the night before and hearing stripers bust bait. We marked a few fish on the way into the creek, and had a few fish come up to look at baits, but no action - seemed to be a lot of carp in the area....
We did manage to pick up a 2 or 3 lb largemouth on a lightline alewife....
As we pulled out of that creek into the mouth of the lake channel we pulled our lines in and moved back down the lake a bit further - checking out a few creeks & channel points - but really did not see anything worth fishing on - though there was a lot of bait in the creeks....
So we went on further up the lake - running through the total white-out fog (thank goodness for the radar) looking for a big school that we know has to be up there somewhere. No luck today though... we idled for a very long stretch of channel, marking only a couple of fish... just don't know where these guys went.
We kept on keeping on and around 11am we were finally rewarded with proof that stripers do still exist in the lake..... though they were not really in an aggressive eating mode.... but we did get to see the alewives come flying out of the water a few times, and a blow-ups / chases / popped boards on the gizzards a couple of times..... Finally we had a light-line with a big alewife bury itself into the water to salvage the day.... a "monster" 27" striper.....
Will be very glad to see June roll in here - and the fish show back up on the mid-end of the lake in larger numbers - hopefully before the water warms too much more.....
Water: mid to upper 70's, visibility of a few feet
Techniques: Live-bait spread. Freeline gizzards behind planers, lightline alewifes behind planers (1 or 2), lightline alewifes (4), alewifes on downlines (2)
Not to wish time away, but I am sort of glad to see May come to a close. May tends to be tough fishing for me ... perhaps it is how it goes from where we are catching big fish on big baits one week in April to trying to chasing schools of dinks the next weekend and I resist it kicking & fighting. It's the timeframe when the spawn occurs, which makes the fish that much more finicky, and they larger numbers move down lake where there is just so much water that finding them can be tough at times, when you do you're usually around a dozen other boats and those trips down-lake really put a dent in the wallet when stopping at the gas pump as well.
We've caught fish each trip out this May - barely - so I should not complain, but we never did get on the numbers that we should have. Luck of the draw I guess - zigging, when we should have zagged - made a few "bad" calls this May, often for the reasons of either avoiding the crowds or trying to find some larger fish - or just going with the wrong gut feeling. Keeping with that theme...... this weekend as we closed out May, we took a chance that some of the fish were already on their way back up the lake - knowing that it may still be a week or two early.... Made plans with Tyler to jump on with me, and I went out Friday night to load the tank for the morning.
Big gizzards are easy on the lights right now, as are the alewifes. Catching 8-12" alewife/blueback with a 3/4" mesh net - gilling a number of them but most of the time they will pull through the mesh and be OK to fish the next day. The 1/2" mesh net is a disaster still..... gilling way too many small baits.
Spent a couple of hours running around to a few lights, working to get larger alewifes - and ended up putting 16-20 gizzards in the tank as well for the heck of it... Good to see you out there Shadalliac!
Hit the sack at 1:30am, with a 5:00am wake-up call. Tyler met me at 5:30 and we headed down to the boat and out on the water into a foggy morning - and had lines out by 5:45 in a creek where I had been catching bait the night before and hearing stripers bust bait. We marked a few fish on the way into the creek, and had a few fish come up to look at baits, but no action - seemed to be a lot of carp in the area....
We did manage to pick up a 2 or 3 lb largemouth on a lightline alewife....
As we pulled out of that creek into the mouth of the lake channel we pulled our lines in and moved back down the lake a bit further - checking out a few creeks & channel points - but really did not see anything worth fishing on - though there was a lot of bait in the creeks....
So we went on further up the lake - running through the total white-out fog (thank goodness for the radar) looking for a big school that we know has to be up there somewhere. No luck today though... we idled for a very long stretch of channel, marking only a couple of fish... just don't know where these guys went.
We kept on keeping on and around 11am we were finally rewarded with proof that stripers do still exist in the lake..... though they were not really in an aggressive eating mode.... but we did get to see the alewives come flying out of the water a few times, and a blow-ups / chases / popped boards on the gizzards a couple of times..... Finally we had a light-line with a big alewife bury itself into the water to salvage the day.... a "monster" 27" striper.....
Will be very glad to see June roll in here - and the fish show back up on the mid-end of the lake in larger numbers - hopefully before the water warms too much more.....
