Friday, March 30, 2007

3-29-07. Moon+Sun=fish

Here's a tip for ya: When you can see the moon rise and the sun set at the same time, GO FISHING!

That was the case yesterday late afternoon 6:30pm-7:30pm. With only an hour to run & gun a half mile of shoreline I went with...you guessed it...the Rattle Trap. This time I concentrated on main lake points next to the spawning areas. As you can see from the photos, most of the smallmouth bass yesterday are in the 'pre-spawn' stage where they are set on doing a little bulking up before they do their thing. Catch and release is critical at this time. During the spawn we stop fishing for smallies and target largemouth instead or go to another river where the spawn is done.

In these next pictures please note the bottom content. THIS is what you're looking for. All these fish came from depths of 3-7' at the very extreme edge of the spawning areas.

Again, I'll remind you that you can NOT reel in a rattle trap fast enough right now. Even with a massive cold front that was parked over us tuesday and wednesday with temps in the low 40's, it only took one day of temps in the 60's to get these fish back on a serious bite. Plus, the moon and sun were visible in the same sky...and THAT, my friends, is like gold. Fish were exploding everywhere.
All the smallies caught were hooked on the trailing hook of the bait, which means they'll chase it down and hit it but they wont crush it like they were doing last week. 1 or 2 more days of nice weather and they'll be trying to nail the baits harder than a loan shark collecting a 90 day debt.
Now, for the honest park. I missed more than I caught due to the fish hitting that last treble hook. But again, that's all part of the game. Still...not bad for an hour huh?


IN other news: Mike is fishing in Florida. He's doing good on largemouth bass. On the saltwater side of things I hear the redfish & snook is a little slow right now. He'll have a full report when he gets back next wednesday.

And finally a note on the pictures. I had to go with the cameraphone again. Rechargable batteries apparently can only be recharged several times before they lose their power holding ability. Lesson learned. I had to use some artistic license on a couple shots due to quality issues. It was alot darker out there than the last photos indicate. I have night vision on my camera phone but it still looks pretty grainy.