Roller Coaster Report.......
Well the last week has had some days of greatness all the way down to hours of nothing but doldrums. Last week was much the same. We have had an awful lot of rain and the drainage has kept the water level really high. It looks to be close to three feet high as of today, and with a pretty heavy downpour expected Thursday, I don't think we are going to have much of a chance to draw the lake down anytime soon. The water temperature seems to have held between 63 and 66 for the last week (today was around 64 all day). The good news in that is that the bite will be pretty strong going into November. Sometimes in the Fall we cool down really quick and we have some great fishing, but it doesn't last long. Then there is usually a month or so that the fishing gets kinda tough till the Winter patterns really set in. This kinda weather may let the Fall Frenzy really linger on
Yesterday was wet, windy and miserable until about noon. So we called the morning off until about noon when the rain subsided. Got on the water and fished some nasty, breezy, spitting rain weather. As soon as we hit the South end of the lake it was a tough tough decision.......Which pile of birds do you hit first
A limit of hybrid and striper could be caught by just about anyone in 5 casts! It was absolutely as good as it gets! The fish never stopped schooling and we headed in at 5:30 with birds still slamming the water and a shad halocaust being administered! It was a big mix of mostly keeper hybrid and striper and a few big sand bass.
The only strategy I can say for big schooling this time of year is to throw the Smack baits or a 5"Sassy Shad on a 1oz jighead. You wont hookup every cast like with a slab or trap bait, but the size of the fish will be a lot better. Most of the time, I will throw into a school and let it sink for about 15-20 seconds then slow real back and don't set the hook when you get hit. If a goodun' takes it - they will get the hook! Just keep the line tight. That will take care of keeping most of the sand bass off the line.
Today we got out about 9am. Lots of clouds and wind this morning, but not too bad out. Lots of birds were circling the water on the South end again, but not too much happened until about 10:30. Then it was bird mayhem for about an hour. We got a good limit of hybrid pretty quick and moved around to different schools looking for a striper or two without much luck, but the hybrid and sandies were going strong for about an hour all over the lake. I guess a little before noon the sun popped out and it was like a light switch was turned off. The birds headed in and the fish scattered. After that, we ran the whole lake looking for anything and maybe boated a dozen sand bass between then and 4pm. The sun pretty much killed it. Couldn't find much of anything on the points or humps. We did mark some decent sand bass on a few points, but they did not want to eat.....
Took a couple pics today of Sarah and Jose with some good hybrid. We had a pretty good little run on them. Wish the bite had stayed with us today, but Sarah really put it on us while they were hungry! I think she caught about 3 fish to our every 1
Nice job Matt those are some big O'l good'ns!
The good news is that the sand bass have bunched back up and seem eager to bite. They are in about 28-30 right now.
Previous Topic
Index