TNBronzeback
07-07-2014, 01:20 PM
Hit the water with bro early morning. With plans of fishing JPP at night for crappie we didnt want to be up early and baking all day.
We got into a good mixed bag of fish. Marked alot of fish and bait in the 16-21ft range in the first place and got into some passing schools of pretty nice crappies, they were crushing 3/4oz jigging blades, but nothing would touch the live shiners. In dirty water like that, its hard to beat the hard thump and vibration of the jigging blades. after the crappies moved on, there was some popping in the shallows behind the islands, we figured skipjacks so we tied on small jerkbaits....the water was about 3ft deep and you could see decent size flashes here and there...so we got to casting and right off the bat he hooked a nice fish, fought it, got it in and was a nice1-1/2-2lb largemouth, i looked down and a massive school of minnows of some kind were surrounding the boat, about 2-3" long...i mean THOUSANDS of them, they just kept passing around the shallows near the boat and you would see the flash as a bass would cut thru and nail a few of them. for the next 2 hours or so, we chased those bass in that shallow, 83-85+ degree water landing a bunch of fish. No big fish though but no "small" fish either which i found odd, all fish were in that 1-1/2-2lb size, like they all came out of the same mold. Not complaining, that was a riot. i was throwing my 2-bait A-Rig with pearl twisters. never got a double, but when you cast right into the school, you got hit, only other time i experienced that fishing was always with white bass, either on JPP or the Great Lakes. alot of fun. Just got lucky to see them fish busting the surface the way we did.
Marked alot of fish, seen quite a few busting the surface, but in the main river, aside from the cappies we couldnt really get into the fish aside from a few drums here and there in the general area of the steam plant.
from there we went further upriver in search of some frying pan fish.
with spinner rigs on hand we scanned the river for some possible walleye/sauger habitat, the water was cooler further up river with the generation kicked on low and the stones dumping further up, we found water as cold as the high 70's. we focused on 16-25 ft. of water with any kind of structure, humps, rocks, wood, ect. it was slow, but we did land 5 walleyes, with one being in the 4lb range, and 4 saugers, 16-21.5", lost 1 big sauger right at the boat, before i could get the net under it, that was a bigger sauger, that would have went 4lbs, if not a little more, i was bummed!. once we found some good structure, we worked it and worked it and worked it until we got bit with a combo of spinner rigs, blade baits and some home made combo bro came up with and it worked very well in the winter. if the current was stronger earlier in the day, i think we would have gotten better results, but by the time the heavier flow kicked in, we were ready to head back and gear up for JPP night crappies.
Got some pics, but bro has them on his phone, i will see if i can get them from him.
No fishing for me for a few weeks again...lousy work and adult responsibilities! LMAO
We got into a good mixed bag of fish. Marked alot of fish and bait in the 16-21ft range in the first place and got into some passing schools of pretty nice crappies, they were crushing 3/4oz jigging blades, but nothing would touch the live shiners. In dirty water like that, its hard to beat the hard thump and vibration of the jigging blades. after the crappies moved on, there was some popping in the shallows behind the islands, we figured skipjacks so we tied on small jerkbaits....the water was about 3ft deep and you could see decent size flashes here and there...so we got to casting and right off the bat he hooked a nice fish, fought it, got it in and was a nice1-1/2-2lb largemouth, i looked down and a massive school of minnows of some kind were surrounding the boat, about 2-3" long...i mean THOUSANDS of them, they just kept passing around the shallows near the boat and you would see the flash as a bass would cut thru and nail a few of them. for the next 2 hours or so, we chased those bass in that shallow, 83-85+ degree water landing a bunch of fish. No big fish though but no "small" fish either which i found odd, all fish were in that 1-1/2-2lb size, like they all came out of the same mold. Not complaining, that was a riot. i was throwing my 2-bait A-Rig with pearl twisters. never got a double, but when you cast right into the school, you got hit, only other time i experienced that fishing was always with white bass, either on JPP or the Great Lakes. alot of fun. Just got lucky to see them fish busting the surface the way we did.
Marked alot of fish, seen quite a few busting the surface, but in the main river, aside from the cappies we couldnt really get into the fish aside from a few drums here and there in the general area of the steam plant.
from there we went further upriver in search of some frying pan fish.
with spinner rigs on hand we scanned the river for some possible walleye/sauger habitat, the water was cooler further up river with the generation kicked on low and the stones dumping further up, we found water as cold as the high 70's. we focused on 16-25 ft. of water with any kind of structure, humps, rocks, wood, ect. it was slow, but we did land 5 walleyes, with one being in the 4lb range, and 4 saugers, 16-21.5", lost 1 big sauger right at the boat, before i could get the net under it, that was a bigger sauger, that would have went 4lbs, if not a little more, i was bummed!. once we found some good structure, we worked it and worked it and worked it until we got bit with a combo of spinner rigs, blade baits and some home made combo bro came up with and it worked very well in the winter. if the current was stronger earlier in the day, i think we would have gotten better results, but by the time the heavier flow kicked in, we were ready to head back and gear up for JPP night crappies.
Got some pics, but bro has them on his phone, i will see if i can get them from him.
No fishing for me for a few weeks again...lousy work and adult responsibilities! LMAO