Hit the bay today for a few hours. Nice day, no wind and best of all no jet skis. Caught 5 walleye and one catfish. Walleye were 17"-22". Had 4 or 5 “almost” fish that came unhooked halfway up. They were I’n the area I was catching the walleye so thats what I’ll pretend they were[;)]. Fish were eating lindy rigs today at about .4 mph. Also caught a couple with wiper hunter yesterday after getting a tooth yanked out, what better way to spend a sick leave day than at the lake! Maybe wiper hunter will post a pic. Sorry, no pics from today. Let em all go to enjoy mating season.[fishon]
[;)]Nice job on the eyes, you have my greatest respect for releasing all those fish to help produce for another day.
Feel the walleye rush! ><(((*>
Good job. How’s the water clarity?
Nice.
Fishing is always good therapy for what ails ya…tooth problems or whatever. Especially good for curing “fishin’ fever”.
Any hints on best depths?
What was the water temp at ? Thanks
Water clarity was about 2-3 ft where I was. Not great but not bad. Had to put it right I’n their face.
20-22 ft seemed to be it. The males are milting so I don’t think it was depth as much as location in relation to were they are preparing to spawn. I’m not seeing the amount of shad that I did last year. Might be good fishin till the next hatch. All the fish are way healthy for this time of year, must of had a buffet under the ice last winter. [fishon]
About 40deg in the main lake.
I don’t know for sure, but the real trick is the speed. Just fast enough to turn the blades. I did ok at about .5 to .6 miles per hour, color was not important. Bouncer in 1 and 3/4 ounces to 2. Silver blades or brass did not out perform one over the other. Plenty of small eyes right on the dike. The bigger fish were deeper.
I witnessed and reported on some massive dieoffs of young shad in November last year. Two or three weeks in a row the terns were flocking almost like on a boil…only all over the lake. The baby shad (1.5") were floating to the top and sinking to the bottom. The terns were snarfing the floaters and the cats were cleaning up the sinkers. The cats almost quit biting on minnows they were so full. And any hits were very tentative. The cats I did catch and fillet were absolutely stuffed with baby shad.
I think the late spring and late shad spawn last year resulted in the young not reaching a large enough size to survive the cold months…and/or they are just more susceptible to low temps when they are that small.
At any rate, the predators should have cleaned up the extra groceries by now and should be ready for some “special” offerings.
Here’s a pic taken on November 27 last year of one of the shadlets that floated up nearby…and escaped the terns…momentarily. Usually much larger by that time.
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Not jet skis - bet the bugs weren’t too bad either.
Nice going. Sure makes me itch to get the boat un-wintered! Probably warmed up pretty good yesterday. That’ll wake em up!
Do you think there was enough shad last year to maybe decimate the plankton they feed on and make them vulnerable to weather change?
There was SOMETHING missing in the food chain. As I understand it there are cycles with the different kinds of phytoplankton and zooplankton, depending on water fertility and temps. And the young fry of all species seem to rely on those different types and sizes being available as they grow to bigger sizes. If there is an abrubt change in the food supply then all the fry that depend upon that link in the chain will starve to death.
Last year was the first time I have seen it with shad. There have been big dieoffs of small crappies in years past…possibly caused by shad slurping up all the groceries needed by the baby crappies.
Since last year was unusual…with a longer spring and heavier sustained runoff…there was definitely a difference on most waters. Most years there is some winterkill in the shad population. If there wasn’t then they would REALLY fill up the lake, since there are fewer wipers and walleyes to keep them in balance. But this past year I noticed a huge drop in the clouds of small shad on sonar from October to December. During the late summer months…after the spawn…the lake was full of shad. By the end of November it was much harder to find shad at all. I heard similar comments from some of the other Willard warriors.
From what I have heard and seen so far this year the predators have wintered well and have fat reserves going into the new season. Hopefully they can make a living until the new food supplies hit the market shelves.
But as a testament to the adaptability of the predators, wipers will be living largely on crawdads and other invertebrates until about July. And with the wipers eating all the crawdads the catfish have to roam the mud flats eating midge larvae. This is all according to DWR surveys…and my own observations of stomach contents on fish kept for the table.
Walleyes? They eat anything that doesn’t eat them first. Interestingly they hunt down small perch, bluegills and crappies often enough to stay healthy. I guess they still have inate instincts that help them find the food during leaner times. After all, they can’t survive by nipping off the ends of night crawlers being dragged on Lindy rigs.
I had a slightly different take on last year. I think the shad over produced for a longer time then the norm. I think they ate them selves of of house and home. For a period of 2 months there were baby shadlets. There was quite a size range in the minnows as well as I have never seen that many minnoes at Willard ever.. I was duck hunting from October through ice up so I to noticed the die off as well. This Saturday there were plentiful shad from 1 am to sun up. But like typical the sun came up and they disappeared. In May we’ll have to see how the spawn goes to know if they took a hit. But last year I predicted a “mega” year this year for the walleyes and to start it has been superb. Last year I was into April before my first good bites and this year I already got into them pretty well. A couple more trips will see if they get the typical 2-3 week disappearance for the spawn.
I think the spawn last year was a "long" spawn hence the size differences. Maybe even a "double" spawn? We'll see.
You may be right. The temperatures flickered up and down at the spawning range so it is reasonable to expect an extended spawn…with resulting multi sizes. In truth, I also saw several size classes in the shadlets. It will be interesting to see how this year shapes up and see what we can blame it on.
**The crappies also had an extended spawn. They are usually done by about the end of May but I caught egg-laden females well into June. **
Hope Mama Nature gets back on her meds and settles down.
I took my boat to the North Marina this morning to see if everything was up to par with it.
Fished inside the marina for about an hour. No bites but I did see several very large clouds of what I would think were shad on the sonar. Water temps inside the Marina were 42*.
Saw fish at all depths but not in any large numbers, except the shad.
The wind picked up so bad that the electric motor had a hard time controlling the boat so we left.
You are probably right about the shad inside the harbor. On my last trip I also found a couple of fairly dense schools…that would not touch anything normally appealing to crappies. Then I saw a big old shad come up and roll on the surface close enough that I could verify with certainty that it was a shad.
Lots of excited tanglers work the heck out of those schools of shad…thinking/hoping that they might be crappies or wipers. Even funnier is to see a boat race into a school of thrashing carp along the shoreline and start throwing wiper lures at them. BOIL…BOIL.
Good to hear that the water temps are nudging up a bit. I suspect the surface temps in the breezy open lake were a bit lower than 42. Once the ambient temperatures creep toward 45 the wallies will start getting frisky. Bring it on.
Sounds like I should have gone to Willard instead of BL yesterday. Here are a few pics from Friday.
They are shad. We saw them on the side scan on Friday and stopped to throw crappie stuff at them, after about 10 minutes we got smart and put the camera down to see shad instead of crappie[crazy]