Went to Lake World for herring and Pete fixed us up with 2 dozen really nice ones. Due to the westerly flow, decided on Ballentine Creek again pulling planers and big floats. It was a good day!
Water temp was 63.4 at LHM but dropped off to 60.4 at the creek. Basically we just fished up and down the sides of the shallow hump (18 ft) so water depth varied anywhere 20 to 55 feet. Fish didn’t really seem to care. Things were active enough that in three hours of time, I only had time to light two cigarettes (I know I should quit.) Water temp up to 66.8 when we ran out of bait at one o’clock.
So our tally was two shorts, one 21, two 22, two 23, three 24, two 25, and the 30 incher which weighted out at 10 pounds 12 ounces. That meets Patti’s criteria for a wall mounter, but she made a spot decision to wait until we make our Trophy Trip to Tennessee the last week of April.
Congrats Patricia. Think your trophy fish is in Lake Murray, but hope you have a good Trophy Trip to Tennessee. Nice Day and a Nice Day fishing. Doesn’t get any better.
Way to go! I’m with Steely. I thought it was alot bigger when I first looked at the pic. Nonetheless, though we do get occasional monsters, 10+ is high quality for our lake. Congratulations on a mule!!
Nice fish!! Sounds like you are really on them now. Give yourself a little more time to catch the “monster”, unless you have plenty of wall hanger space. Maybe you can start a collection of big mounted fish (just kidding). Seems like the way you’re catching them there has to be a monster fish in your area, just waiting for your bait to come by. Good luck.
Thanks to you all. I don’t think anybody has benefited from this forum and the Midland Stripers Club more than us, and we appreciate the posts of others and have learned a lot. That’s why we post what we see and do. So now we know it’s not quite rocket science, but it sure helps to have a reasonable concept.
I didn’t mean to make it sound like 10# isn’t a nice fish, its a very nice fish. Especially for Murray. Steeverino has been fishing for 2 or 3 years now and hasn’t caught a 10#er. I haven’t caught one since last winter/spring. Just noticed the water temps above 60, that always seems to be the magic number for me. I can start pulling bait to the light and fish. Plus I think the fresh bait pulled from the lake is better. Although the bait lake world and David have had lately is hard to beat. Hope they keep getting them like that.
A friend of mine has been leaving the lights out at their dock the last couple of weeks. The herring showed up Tues am for the first time in large numbers. Water temp was 64. This was at mid lake and the herring were big fatties. Water is cooler down by the dam, but would guess they should be down off the rocks with just a little bit more warming.
