This is more of a where NOT to fish report.
The good part was that it was a beautiful day in the 70’s and 80’s, relatively calm winds, and the beer was cold.
Now for the not-so-good part with a bittersweet ending.
To start with, like others, I had trouble finding herring Saturday morning. I should have known when none of the bait men were answering their phones that they weren’t selling bait. I assumed they were just busy helping customers. Wrong. I guess the right answer was that they didn’t have any. My favorite was when I pulled up to the store in front of the State Park (I forget the name of the place) just to hear “I just sold my last dozen 1 minute ago.” I ended up using large shiners obtained from Big Man’s- not a big deal other than all the wasted time running around in prime morning fishing hours!
Now- where to fish? Not wanting to burn up a 1/2 tank of boat gas to travel all the way down the lake (even though some buddies suggested I do so beforehand) we searched for fish in the Big Saluda from the power lines above Black’s Bridge all the way to the Elbow. Water conditions were not too bad- a little murky and not muddy at all, but it was really flowing. Water temp was 60*-65*. We never marked any significant fish but we pulled planers, corks, and freelines to help kill the time anyway. Well, that’s all it ended up being because just as the Humminbird predicted, we got zero bites. We covered miles of the Big and never saw any schooling, birds, or fish on the screen. Never saw anyone else catch anything either from the few fishing boats spotted in the area. We were tired of roasting in the sun with no luck and started back to the dock when we decided to give the Barstow area (L2) a try. Finally we got into some great pulldown action on planers and corks in 2- 20 ft. of water but no hookups. At least things were getting exciting… Brought 2 keeper Stripes to the boat only to have them get off before netting them. Finally put one 23 incher in the cooler and called it a day- glad to have some f