1/17/13 - No Love in the Snow

[mwardncsu]

Came up to the lake early to get in ahead of the "snow event" as I'm supposed to have a delivery in the morning - we'll see if that happens now.

Got here as the rain turned into a wintry mix and then as it turned over into snow about 4pm I could not sit in the house any longer.... down to the boat and into the lake.


It's snowing in this pic - honest....


Stayed close to home as it was hard to see much with the snow sticking on the t-top curtains and I was a little concerned for what may be floating around out there. I found some scattered fish, and a couple of times enough worth jigging on, but it was hard to hold the boat over them with the wind and it just seems they don't want to eat in the evenings any more....







Sidescan was showing something odd - the water column in the middle had all kinds of lines in it - I'm guessing it is turbid water from all the rain, mud, etc...



Called it a night about 5:30/5:45 - of well - let's hope Saturday AM Meet & Greet fishing is better

[leeb]

I would say the noise is exactly what you called it. Looking at your 2d the thermocline is about 10ft shallower than when I was on the water last weekend. I am sure all the water is getting mixed up since we have not had any count of rain until now. I feel that I will need to adjust my sonar settings a little this weekend as well and change colors on my lures.

[BentRod]

I don't like that auto sensitivity on those HDS units. Look at all those fish you're missing in that first shot. Gotta be a way to dial that in better. I tried on mine and the screen went black. I don't like it.

I've seen similar on my side scan when its raining hard.

By the way Mward, where were you fishing?!!

[catsnstripers]

Alot of fish like that this morning. ButI had a crap day. Broke a rod, broke the shaft pin in my trolling motor, braid dug down in the spool on my A-rig rod. And I couldnt catch half the fish i was hooking.

OH and The A-rig was paying the bills, until i had to set it down, b/c you could reel it!! Lemon shad colored flukes was the only other way i could catch fish.

I wasnt doing worth a crap. LT was waxing there ass tho. Creig did to. Benthammer hit a bunch jigging i belive... I went home at 11, had to run some errons before work. Frustrating when you have these type of days...

Im going to take up drinking.

[leeb]

Drinking is easy fishing in the rain with your face to the sky cussing the whole time

[BentRod]

Get that new boat Travis and all will be right!

[ledgejumper]

Possibly coming to SML tomorrow and just was wondering if I could get an update from anyone what the water clarity and water temps were from the State Park to the dam. Thanks for your help.

[Brian]

Jan 17, 2013 19:13:02 GMT -5 mwardncsu said:

I found some scattered fish, and a couple of times enough worth jigging on, but it was hard to hold the boat over them with the wind

Don't you have spot lock? When I'm in that situation I always blame my gear and say if I had one of them fancy GPS trolling motors I'd be catching fish on every cast...

[mwardncsu]

Yeah, I did turn that on - but it's not like those stripers just sit still ;D

I have heard folks talk about how great the SpotLock is, but I've not found it to be all that useful for me - perhaps if you are on a real big pile of fish. Or, the other thing I realized, I was marking these fish over a drop off in around 30-40' of water. The sonar was reading them on the transducer on the rear of the boat. The iPilot is up on the front of the boat, 24' away. The iPilot SpotLock would keep bringing the bow of the boat back to the spot it was in when I turned on SpotLock, but with the wind blowing, it may do so with the rear of the boat 48' away from when I originally turned on SpotLock (if the wind pushed the boat around the other way). Guess I should have used the bow transducer, and jigged from the bow...... but it was raining and who wants to get all wet

I think the best way to use it is in current when you can point the boat into the current (which we don't have in the lake) and 2nd best is if you can position the boat into the wind. It also seems that with the 80 lb thrust TM on my boat, with the "sail" that the t-top, curtains, etc become - that it just reacts a little too slowly to changes and is hard to "keep up". Always wondered of the 101 would make it perform better in that respect.

So, see - I can blame my gear as well ;D

[HokieChad]

that radar pic clearly shows the "hole" in the snow storm. Just east of Roanoke and almost identical to the shape of the lake. Interesting.