Fishing Forum

Well, the last time I fished Condie was two weeks ago today. It was also the best trip I ever had there. I guess it's fitting that things ended that way. Anyway, I wasn't going to post it because it was just too darned good and there wasn't a lot of productive water there, but there's absolutely none now, so why not?

It took me a while to find the fish, I only caught one 12" the first 45 minutes. Then I noticed the perfect spot. Where the lake angled sharply and narrowed, there was a deeper channel that was about 8 feet deep, with weedy, shallow flats on either side. This natural bottle neck had the fish herding small panfish and bass against the sides of the channel, and they were gorging. Many of the fish had tails jutting out of their gullets. It makes me wonder how the lake would have done had they gotten more water into it anyway as so much of the forage had been consumed. During the next two hours, I caught 63 more bass burning lipless cranks and squarebills through the channel. Almost all of them were in the 16-18" range. I got tired of taking their pics, and a couple of nicer ones were bleeding a little bit, so I put them back as quickly as possible (not that it mattered). Anyway, here are some pics of that final day.
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[inline "bass 22 smal.jpg"]
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Well ya sold ME bud! At least I can say I had one fun trip up there. Didn't find your masses of basses, but a couple big winners, and loads of frisky panfish.

Guess I blasted by that narrow channel heading up the the dam end.

At least we can hope the plant it up with a bunch of fresh little rainbows to enjoy that shallow warm-water lake before the dry it up again.

Now I'm really worrying for those trophy Musky in Newton!


Meanwhile they've got 8 inches of rain in a day in New Awleans... humph

It's not quite fair is it? It's always too much or too little with the weather. I do see a nasty wall of storms approaching on the radar. I hope they dump a torrent.
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Well, we can hope... though I won't be holding my breath.

I was chucking a KVD 1.5 out into the puddle and it was hitting bottom almost immediately upon retrieval. Maybe there's a deep channel creek out there in the middle, but based on the casts I was making, there's scarcely 2' of water out there right now... which would seem to mean that there are no fish safe from that gang of pelicans...
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By the way, you DO know that we see right through your little take-a-picture-of-the-same-bass-thirty-times-as-you-spin-your-float-tube-around-to-change-the-backdrop... right? []
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Hey don't be a fish racist, they all have their subtle differences that make them individuals [:p]

I marked quite a bit of water at 8 feet two weeks ago, and it was likely a little deeper down by the dam. It just shows how much water they let out in a week and a half.
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If someone went out there with a 12 ga no one here would tell. Ron
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I've been thinking about those .22 shells that are quieter than popcorn popping a lot lately [angelic]
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Couldn't some locals go dove hunting or clay pigeon shooting close by and keep the pelicans stirred up a little?
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I don't know how good hazing them works, or if they have learned to ignore stuff like that. But it still sounds good to me!!
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It's worth a shot. Maybe some people could go paintballing up there and accidentally shoot a couple dozen of them. That might scare them off.
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I may know someone with a suppressed .22 that I could possibly get ahold of! Wish they would run around to a few of the places I fish that get loaded up with pelicans.
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