09-04-2012, 03:54 PM
Hit the lake at 5 am with a buddy of mine in his pontoon, launched out of Callville and hopped around the coves for several hours. Overall not a bad day, only ended up keeping two stripers that came in at 3 lbs each. Caught several little SMB drop shotting and running flat bill cranks.
Took my cast net with us to see if we could net some of the bait fish we have been seeing but had no luck, its only a 3 foot net and it just doesnt have the weight to it to get on the bait fast enough. HOWEVER....in the process of trying to net the bait we managed to create about 10 man made boils by pushing the shad out of the shallows where the stripers were waiting to hammer them. Ultimately we spent a couple hrs "herding shad" and pushing them to the stripers for some good fishing....mostly small fish though but we were on the fish most of the time we were on the water.
Also, both the stripers we kept had crawdads in their belly. Taking the crawdad trap next week, seems to be one of the baits they are gorging themselves on. Anyone have an idea of what the bait balls are in the water this month? they are everywhere but the fish a pretty small. Someone had mentioned Gizzard shad but we couldn't tell.
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Took my cast net with us to see if we could net some of the bait fish we have been seeing but had no luck, its only a 3 foot net and it just doesnt have the weight to it to get on the bait fast enough. HOWEVER....in the process of trying to net the bait we managed to create about 10 man made boils by pushing the shad out of the shallows where the stripers were waiting to hammer them. Ultimately we spent a couple hrs "herding shad" and pushing them to the stripers for some good fishing....mostly small fish though but we were on the fish most of the time we were on the water.
Also, both the stripers we kept had crawdads in their belly. Taking the crawdad trap next week, seems to be one of the baits they are gorging themselves on. Anyone have an idea of what the bait balls are in the water this month? they are everywhere but the fish a pretty small. Someone had mentioned Gizzard shad but we couldn't tell.
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