Perfect Water Temp at Lincoln Beach 5/4/2024

[Piscophilic]

Jon and I fish out of Lincoln on Saturday, May 7, 2024, from daylight until about 3 P.M. We averaged a little over 1 cat per hour, which is pretty slow for May, but the quality was good.

It was another cool weekend, but Jon was going to be out of commission for a couple weeks and we both have to work most weekdays, so away we went full of optimism. Just before we got to the harbor the car filled with that unmistakable stench of a stripped kitty. I looked over at Jon and said: “At least this should be the only skunk we smell today. It looks like a beautiful morning.”

We got to Lincoln about 6:15 A.M. to an empty parking lot, little or no wind and 55-degree water in the harbor. The shallowest part of the channel was over 6’ deep.



When we hit the main lake main lake the water temp dropped to just under 52 degrees. “That is perfect water,” I thought, “except I’m not on the Southern Oregon Coast chasing chinook salmon!”

We probed the harbor and on over to the slough mouth looking for white bass but got no love. We anchored for a while off the slough and dunked cat baits and again no love.

Next, we headed north until the water was 6 feet deep and then started dragging thawed WB chunks along the bottom for cats and tiny SnG’s with worms a couple feet below the surface for whites.

Almost 2 hours into the morning a tiny white tried to steal my worm and failed. We quickly cut it up and divided it between the cat rods. Another 5” white came 30 minutes later and then Jon got an adult about 11” and I got one 11.5. The one we cut for bait was a male, still pre-spawn.




Well after 9, Jon had a hard take down and we thought we were going to see a good kitty. After three or 4 good tugs, it let go of the bait and laughed at us.

By this time, we were in water well over 10’ deep. 15 minutes later I got a 29" cat on one of my smaller baits. The water was again looking like chocolate milk and we had started with larger baits and attractors, so we thought this one might be a fluke. Then Jon went bendo again only to see the line go slack just as the drag started to give line. I inspected the bait that had now been hit twice without a hook up and found that only the very edge had been touched.




It was starting to look like cold water and general lethargy were trumping low visibility and the fish were looking for smaller baits and attractors. We also got most of our hits at or below 0.5 MPH.

We thought the fish would be moving shallower as the day warmed and we lost almost 2 hours before we realized that they were heading deeper. The SW breeze had changed to a NW breeze and that may have changed their mood.
 
Once we got back out to 10 to 12 FOW, we picked up cats with some regularity, but it was still slow. The highlight of the trip came when I got a call from Dave saying he was bringing his big black pontoon out to do a shakedown before his Powell trip in a week or so.
When he got close enough for us to see him, he called back on the phone wondering where we were. While I explained which boat was us, I hooked a cat about 7 pounds. Just before he pulled up within talking range (and before I had gotten the first one out of the net) I hooked another and Jon hooked up as well. Those 2 cats were both over 10 pounds. Dave was convinced we had them all figured out, but things slowed again right after he left. As we released the cats, I thanked them for making us look like we knew what we were doing[font="Segoe UI Emoji", sans-serif]?[/font]
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We left about 3 P.M, just before the promised SW wind really started up.

For the morning, we ended up with 11 cats and 4 white bass. Not bad for salmon fishing water temps, but seriously this is May!

It can only get better from here, if it ever warms up!