02-05-2004, 12:09 AM
Yo Guys,
A buddy and I are heading to the gorge this next Monday. He's fished it before, I haven't. Any help or hints would be greatly appreciated!
We fished Fish Lake on Sunday before all the hoopla boopla on the superbowl. Had a pretty good morning. Caught one of the biggest splake -over 20 inches- out north of Lakeside marina near the Schubachs park bench, that I've seen for a while on a salt and pepper glow tube and perch. Had to move in quite a bit shallower -around 20 feet deep this time- than last trip and caught quite a few perch in the process, but no rainbows at all. Had Chuck Chamberlain, the southern region fisheries bio, come and do a creel check on us. He'd only checked one other group that had caught fish with any consistency. He also said that Fish Lake is in real trouble. There isn't any forage for the smaller or "pup" mackinaw and that the mortality rate due to starvation is very high. Apparently they wont eat perch. -can't imagine why the spiny buggers!- Guess that explains why I haven't seen a small mack for a long time. (We used to catch several every trip) He said that the larger macks won't eat them either but feed almost exclusively on other trout due to the lack of chubs in the lake now. Don't know what they're going to do and apparently neither do they.... Almost seems everything's doom and gloom around this end of the state lately.
A buddy and I are heading to the gorge this next Monday. He's fished it before, I haven't. Any help or hints would be greatly appreciated!
We fished Fish Lake on Sunday before all the hoopla boopla on the superbowl. Had a pretty good morning. Caught one of the biggest splake -over 20 inches- out north of Lakeside marina near the Schubachs park bench, that I've seen for a while on a salt and pepper glow tube and perch. Had to move in quite a bit shallower -around 20 feet deep this time- than last trip and caught quite a few perch in the process, but no rainbows at all. Had Chuck Chamberlain, the southern region fisheries bio, come and do a creel check on us. He'd only checked one other group that had caught fish with any consistency. He also said that Fish Lake is in real trouble. There isn't any forage for the smaller or "pup" mackinaw and that the mortality rate due to starvation is very high. Apparently they wont eat perch. -can't imagine why the spiny buggers!- Guess that explains why I haven't seen a small mack for a long time. (We used to catch several every trip) He said that the larger macks won't eat them either but feed almost exclusively on other trout due to the lack of chubs in the lake now. Don't know what they're going to do and apparently neither do they.... Almost seems everything's doom and gloom around this end of the state lately.
