No problem getting 'em this morning. I was headed to last week’s hump but marked suspended fish over the channel. Water was 170 ft. and the fish were stacked 40 to 100. I put my downrod(singular) at 70 to 100 and got it in several times to play with spoons to stretch the outing out. Last fish would inspect the bait over and over until I decided to end it with a power reel . I had the bait at 80, dropped it 10 feet, cranked hard 3-4 times, and he (a 24 incher) nailed it! Tally was 4 legits between 21 and 24 inches and 1 squealer, all released to hopefully get bigger. They swam off fine with torpedo shots:sunglasses:…:…:…
Spoonmaster, when you read this post, I want you to know I got your voicemail. I’m so glad the doctors gave you permission to fish. After I get back from Florida and do the Fishing with the Troops, we’ll wet some hooks together. Praise be to God for your continued recovery!!
Good to hear they are biting again.
I’m going to give it a shot tomorrow morning. I’m planning to put in at dam around sunrise in hopes of getting in a few hours before it gets too hot.
I’ll let y’all know how I do.
They were stacked up so well today that I could have limited in 15 minutes or less if I put out 2 downrods. However, I like to enjoy the lake for at least a couple hours.
Nice catch and I appreciate your effort to release those fish, but chances they never made back down to the highly oxygenated water . Better off keeping and giving them away. Coming up from 80 ft. just causes to much stress through pressure change. I would say if you can pick one up on the free line it would be a different story but 60-80 feet they will probably float up later.
OK, it’s time for another of my “dumb” questions. Are you guys fizzing the stripers that come from deeper water? We fizz every largemouth caught in deeper water. This involves deflating the air bladder, giving the fish a much better chance to get back to deeper water. Does this only work for largies or is it common practice for the summertime stripers? I understand about the need for cold oxygenated water. Just I am curious if there had been any documentation done on fizzing results on striper survival rates.
Fogman, I don’t want to mess up your fishing. I will need a fairly calm day when we fish. Don’t want to hit too many big waves until the stitches and staples have all healed up really well. Let’s play the fishing trip by ear. I’m planning to try off of the dock tomorrow for some white perch, or anything else that might bite. I need to wind something in, it will atleast give me something to do for a while. And if the perch will cooperate I will have some pretty good eating. At this point I can’t have beef or pork yet and there are only so many ways to fix chicken. Some fresh perch would be awfully good.
I hung around a while and never had one come back up floating. Who knows? None had protruding air bladders; so maybe they made it. I usually keep them, but I released today due to my impending trip. Besides, this is the first night in 3 that I didn’t eat some form of striper due to all we kept at the Hill on Friday.
Anyone else think it seems kind of early for the fish to be so deep in mid July? I never really keep any records, but I’m thinking it’s normally later in the summer that they hold so deep. I would have thought with as cool as this summer has been that they wouldn’t have gone so deep so early. There obviously must be other factors that drive them deep other than hot weather?
I thought the same thing a month ago when I was catching them 60’ deep and had other marks even deeper. For some reason the most oxygenated water must be deeper this yr. If it were up to stripers they would stay in the top 20’ of the water column, but the oxygen just won’t allow it.
Look at lakes like the hill, Hartwell, and Russell. They pull boards year around. The party fish and some larger fish go deeper but a lot of big fish stay in the water that’s in the high 70’s yr round. They just can’t do that on Murray.
For what it’s worth. A lot of the boats that I talked to the past week that weren’t catching anything were either pulling umbrella rigs without lead line or riggers. Or they were fishing live bait with a float. Kind of hard to catch fish that aren’t there.
I have tried venting stripers early in the summer and it was successful. Right now I would imagine the water is too warm and the stress so great that they might not make it even then. If I catch a short fish, it gets released. There isn’t much meat on a small fish and the chance it will survive out weighs the need for a small amount of table fare. The smaller fish tolerate the warmer water much better than larger ones. To be clear, the problem with the water at the surface is the temperature. There is plenty of oxygen at the surface as that’s where additional oxygen gets introduced into the lake.(wind, boat wake, waves etc.)
Lol. Thanks Shawn. I always thought there should be oxygen up there bwcause of the boats,wind waves, etc…guess that’s what I get for listening to other people versus common sense…
Wellcraft V20, 175 Yamaha
Formula 25 SC Express, Mercruiser 260
Note: I am not an expert but am very well read and have a nack for remembering things, especially things that interest me FISH. However that doesn?t mean I can catch fish. haha
Im not sure if you have ever dived but when you go down you can feel that pressure in your body and it helps by clearing your ears and when you return from a deep dive you have to come up slowly 1 ft a 1 minute, for your body to stabilize. The pressure causes your body chemistry…cortisol, glucose, lactate, and osmolaltity levels to drop or spike, same thing in fish, except we are ripping the fish up from 60-80 in a minute or less and their bodies become to stressed to recover. When the DNR did a study with the striper tubes I believe it took 150 minutes for a fishes body chemistry to return to normal. The next issue for summer months on Murray are the oxygen levels in the upper half of the water column are not high enough. Warmer water equals less oxygen, cold water equals more oxygen hence fish being down at 80 feet. I would love to see an oxygen profile from Murray to see how much it changes at different depths this time of year. Even with striper tubes in the summer months most fish cannot recover properly and get down into the oxygen rich water once they are released into the lake. Hence the 5 and done rule in the summer. Lastly fish have swim bladders, humans have lungs, but swim bladders are gas filled chambers that help the fish help buoyancy. As fish are pulled up quickly the change in pressure causes the swim bladder to expand due to a build up of gases and protrudes out of its mouth. and if not decompressed by a venting needle they most certainly die. Sometimes if you pull a fish up from say so
To be clear, the problem with the water at the surface is the temperature. There is plenty of oxygen at the surface as that’s where additional oxygen gets introduced into the lake.(wind, boat wake, waves etc.)
Yes i agree there is more oxygen at the surface, the upper couple feet, then it plumets drastically. so the upper 5 feet of water isnt going to help these fish.
Last year I was catching them on topwater in July when the surface temp was in the 80’s. I would bet that the water cools really quickly below the surface. Give it till mid August with record heat days and I bet the water feels like a bath tub for probably 15’-20’ down.
I guess I should have asked " Do the stripers have a better chance of surviving if they are fizzed?". The answer seems to be yes if there is cooler water very near the surface. One of my questions on a recent test was which holds more oxygen warm or cold water. The answer is cold water.
On another tack, I tried for the perch off of the dock this morning, planning on catching my supper. Thank goodness for the channel cat and shell crackers. Got enough for supper before it got too hot. Maybe I’ll try the perch just before dark tonight. They sure pull good on my little micro light rod with 4 lbs. test.
I agree. It is stressful to the fish to be brought up from the depths. I usually keep fish but am going out of town tomorrow. That 10% chance was computed after after catching stripers, drawing blood, weighing, measuring, and storing in tubes for a couple hours before release. Talk about additional stress on fish! The way I immediately release them, I would give the fish a better than 60-40 chance of survival. However, there is no way to know for sure. JMO.