Got bait from David at about 7:00 AM, picked up the last of my guests at 7:30 and started at the mouth of Yacht cove, where I caught the 28.5 lb’er last week. Marked a lot of fish in 50 to 70’ but bait would not live below 45’. Only had one pull down and no fish.
Wind was pretty strong out of the west and it was “white-capping” on the main lake.
Moved to Jake’s Cove, just inside Providence Pt. and it took quite a while to find fish. Found fish in 40 - 60’ of water suspended over 80 - 85’. Chummed, drummed, and the bait was staying alive down to 50’. We caught 11 fish with a 10, 9, and 2 - 8’s,and a couple of 14 - 15"ers.
Went back to the mouth of Yacht cove and did manage 3 more fish. But the bait would still not stay alive below 45 feet. Ended up one fish shy of a limit, but better than I expected based on recent reports.
I am not sure why bait will live longer and deeper on the South side of the lake, but they do.
Water temperature was 82 to 84. We only saw 3 floaters, and no schooling surface fish. We fished from 0730 to 1400.
No perch, but my bass fishing buddy has been prefishing a tx. He caught 4 stripers on a fluke two days in a row in 16 feet of water at area 8. Six were keepers and two almost so. He didn’t want them in his boat. Maybe they are starting to move.
I caught some schooling unusually shallow last week too. Caught 8 on one trip and 15 on another off 2 seperate shallow points. Almost all were in 18’ or less. At one point late in the evening they were on the inside of a marker on a long shallow point. I went over to where we were casting afterwards and saw they were only in 4 - 6’ of water at that time. Really thought that was odd. Water temp was about 82. Went back Friday am and nothing.
These were all real small fish from about 16-21", but still always fun catching them on top.
Good report, Rick. Thanks for posting. Makes perfect sense considering what I saw yesterday.
I went out yesterday mid-afternoon for a couple hours with Bryan and his sons just to run my boat a little since its been on the trailer a while and only marked a handful of fish in deep water between the towers and Spence…wind was constant and the water was chewed up and rough. Water temp showed 82.3 degrees. We did pick up some herring (just in case) on the way out…we sank a few baits to try and find a fish or two, but the deep water just wasn’t showing us anything. I marked a few fish between 80 and 90 feet, but I mean only a few! All the bait died at that depth. Tried the river channel along Spence and Bomb and just wasn’t much there either.
No patience for it yesterday and we had two different boats run way too close to us while we were drifting, so we called it quits and just around and burned some fuel off. Had to get back and put some ribs on the grill.
One positive note…I didn’t see any floating fish at all.
As Lee told me once…if you’re not seeing fish deep, they are shallow! That would have been Plan B but I ran out of time to really look for them.
I’m betting the fish have already moved above the thermocline. They normally hang out through September but with the Bottom(85’) Dissolved Oxygen reading at 0.0 MPL, they can’t stay down there. Hopefully the water temp stays low enough for them to survive up top. My guess is the lack of O2 down deep is killing any bait that gets dropped down there.
Or have yall not started yet?