BigFishTackle.Com Forum

I thought I saw your truck there when I left at 10.30 just fishing for rainbows had 5 kids 2.5 to 8 yrs. old. )great grand kids). they had fun all reeled fish in. the 2 yr old set in the driver seat turned the wheel and touched all the buttons if some one tried to get him out he would fight them . I was seeing a lot of fish on the bottom when I was in 40 feet of water. We were catching rainbows on top some down 25 feet

Get 8 or 9 new every year but the problem is have is they are involved is so many things that they have a hard time getting to our trips. I probably have 30 ish in the club and get 5-9 available that can go when we plan a trip

That is what we were thinking at Willard yesterday, find that deeper water and there might be some active fish there. Years ago when we fished DC, we found them in that deeper water and were able to jig them up. Hard to BB in water that deep, where you were fishing.

The depths near the island were 19 to 29’. I trolled south and found the biggest concentration of fish in 35 to 40’. I went back today and fished the deeper water, out to 43’. I had to go pretty slow, 1.0 to 1.2 mph to be able to keep in touch with the bottom. I got two more and quite a few perch. I kept 2 perch today about 10", along with the 2 walters. The other perch were smaller.

Yes, worm harness on 2.5 oz bb.

Agreed, but that is likely why they are so tight lipped, way too much food in the water, they could just swim around with their mouths open and get all they need.

Your pictures on the graph is what I saw as well didn’t seem to matter on the depth either 6 ft - 10 ft. Lots of shad this year hopefully the fish will be fat and happy for the winter months.

I just edited my post and added a shad we saw as well and a couple of pics of my FFer.

I was out Monday evening for a couple hours noticed the same thing dead shad and lots of living shad on the graph and popping on the top of the water got a few small mouths but overall slow fishing. I picked one up to compare to my shad colored lures size and shape.

Ira and I hit Willard yesterday. Started fishing at 7:30 am and we decided to call it quits at 1:30 pm. Water was coming down the baffles full force when we arrived and it was up about half a foot in the South marina. Water temps were lower than our last trip there, starting off at 65 but quickly rising to 69 when we got out into the bay and 74 before we left. Nice day on the water, we started off at the North dike, in the deepest water we could find 15 to 16 FOW and started marking a ton of fish, right away, mostly shad. Here is a pic of what we were seeing. We trolled cranks for almost 2 hours, getting a few hits but no fish to the boat but the water was murky so we started slow trolling fligs. We noticed another boat out there fishing, close to the dike, and it turned out to be Burley, good chatting with you Hue. Within minutes we had our first fish on and before we left we had brought in 9 cats up to 23". We also notice a fair amount of dead or dying shad. Not sure why they were dying, unless it had something to do with the dropping water temp. Here is a pic of one of the shad we saw.

Way to go John, glad to hear you are still catching some eyes. When you say you probed deeper water, how deep was that? Any size to the perch?

very cool, were you bottom bouncing for these?