Post by Deleted on Apr 18, 2013 7:01:33 GMT -5
Posted: Tuesday, April 16, 2013 3:33 pm
By Captain Travis Patsell Cats N’ Stripers Guide Service
Editor’s note: Smith Mountain Lake fishing guide Travis Patsell provided this week’s SML fishing report.
I believe spring is finally here to stay, with the water warming into the 60’s. Heres what to look for!
Striped bass- This is planer board season at its finest. Anglers are stretching their boards bankside this time of the year. Running freelines and light lines behind boards and floats. (Freelines consist of simply no weight at all attached to your line, as with light lines, you add 1/4-3/8 weight). Gizzard shad of all sizes, and alewives are baits of choice. This time of the year, you can’t have a bait that’s too big. Look for the stripers to show themselves at times while chasing your bait. Also bottom fishing for stripers in April-June can be highly productive. Fish with live and/or cutbait on the bottom, roughly in the same areas you would pull bait over in 5-25 ft. deep water.
Artificial lures for stripers can be just as or more productive this time of year. They’re best at daylight and sunset. Anglers are casting towards points and shallow shoreline in hopes of a striper hooking up. Most any baitfish imitation lure should work. Swamp monkeys, flukes on 1/4, 3/8, and 1/2n ounce heads as well as bucktails, swimbaits and a-rigs. Hardbaits such as cyrstal minnows, solid redfins, bombers long a’s, f18’s and magnum x-raps just to name a few. Updating the stock hooks to a gamakatsu or vmc 2x-4x is usually necessary for stripers. Also throwing artificials while trolling bait is also my prefered method to target fish.
Also there is a strong night bite going on and only getting better. Try using the same lures as above but a slower retrieve.
Look for stripers in the mid to upper reaches of the lake’s both river arms as well in most major creeks. Also start looking for fish to start really showing up in Craddock Creek and around the dam area as we move towards May. I’m already hearing of fish being caught in these areas..
Catfish- With the water warming up into the 60 degree mark, look for flatheads to be active during morning and evening hours as well as lowlight conditions. Fish livebait or fresh cutbait in water 5-20 ft. deep. Also look for channel cats in these same areas. For channels, down-size your bait offerings and don’t be surprised to catch stripers while bottom fishing!
Crappie- Crappie are in love and a lot of them have been, or are spawning! Some fish are still 8 to 12 foot deep, but a lot of fish have moved up onto wood in 2 to 5 ft. of water. Tubes and twister tails as well as minnows on slip corks are top producers.
LT Burnette of the SML Bassmasters says April has been a roller coaster month of fishing, with blue bird skies and warm weather one day to snow, sleet and freezing rain the next. It seems, though, that a warming trend has finally set in and with that, the water temperatures mean bass are moving up to where they normally should be for this time of year. With the water temperatures on the rise, the bass are starting to make their annual move to the shallows to complete their spawning rituals. The main lake has risen to the high 50s to low 60s and the creeks are hanging around the mid-60s as of April 11, quite a jump from the mid 50s that I saw the previous weekend.
You will begin to see a lot of buck bass with the occasional large females cruising the banks in the mid-back part of the creeks as well as the main lake cuts. Senkos and other wacky rigged worms will work well at getting these fish to bite, as well as weightless flukes and trick worms. The dock bite is also beginning to heat up and shaky heads and jigs with crawfish-style trailers worked around the edges of docks and skipped underneath in the shade during sunny days will also be a good pattern. Normal colors for this time of year will be watermelon and green pumpkin, but the merthiolate, pink and chartruese will often times get fish to react when nothing else will.
If you’re fishing in a lot of wind, it is hard to beat a spinnerbait or chatterbait style bait on the points and banks where the wind is blowing directly into them. Also, as Skeet Reese proved a few years ago, the Jerry Rago SKT pro swimbait in clear hitch pattern has become a very popular and productive bait for this time of year. I look for the swimbait bite to be excellent the rest of the month. Alabama rigs and jerkbaits were working well early this month, but that bite will fade as the fish continue to pull up into the shallows. However, if you locate a lot of shad I would definitely keep one tied on because where there are shad, there are bass, and nothing imitates a school of bait better than an A-Rig.
Tip of the month: Not all bass will spawn at the same time. If you pull into a particular area and see a lot of small fish up shallow then focus on fishing deeper areas near those smaller fish and sometimes you will begin to find the bigger females that are still staging to spawn.
Remember to practice selective harvest on large fish, especially flatheads and stripers. With stripers over the slot limit and flatheads over 12 pounds are best released.
Not just for your health due to PCB’S and Mercury levels
in the fish. But to help preserve the future. There is far far less trophy
fish than smaller eating fish. You can receive citations and fish mounts
with still being able to release the fish, which is a pride and trophy in
itself to me.
Good luck, tightlines, and be safe!
