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Don't forget to check out the fishing and stalking reports
- Thread starter WestTexasHusker
- Start date
if the fish ain't biting, New Mexico provides some wonderful stalking opportunities.
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Good luck on the water today @ksuhusker.!
Hope you max out on fishing
Hope you max out on fishing
Are those yours, @ksuhusker? How deep were they? What's your water's surface temp? Our lakes just got the ice off a week and a half ago, which is earlier than normal, but then it snowed and dropped below freezing again. I'm going for crappies sometime yet this week.
Yeah we've been on them pretty solid for a couple of weeks now. Water temp is mid 40's so they are still holding good. If we fish the main lake we catching them in 20-25' of water. Some days they are 20'-18', other days 14'-18' just depends. In the boat slips which is still 22' where it's deep 15' where it's shallow, almost all are stacked between 10'-14'. Color doesn't seem to matter a whole lot, water clarity is about 2', bellies are full of shad. Pink heads, gold heads, chartreuse. Black and red skirts, purple and chartreuse, sparkly silver and stripper pink, blue and white. Bobby Garland slab Slayer grey/black (resemblance of a shad) are most of what we've been using. Oh and a sparkly blueish purple with super bright chartreuse as well.
Gizzard shad? How big are those now? I don't know how their life cycle works where you are, but up here, they're already 5+" by fall, and they don't reproduce again until about another month from now, so I'm trying to picture how it works on your reservoir if crappies are able to eat shad. Different species? Do they spawn multiple times where you're at? I'm just curious. You're too far north to have threadfin shad, aren't you?
I'd love to fish with you sometime.
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They spawn all throughout the summer, most of these shad are about 2". Once all this clears c'mon down, I need to catch a northern Pike so there is that as well.
Are they gizzard shad?
American Shad
Did you check ID?
I didn't know that they had introduced those inland. I knew that they transplanted some to the West Coast, but it's usually the East Coast that is talking about them. The only shad that can survive where I'm at is the gizzard shad, and even they die off every winter by the truckload like powder puff snowflakes who can't handle a chill.
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Honestly I'm not sure, they're shad to me lol.Did you check ID?
I didn't know that they had introduced those inland. I knew that they transplanted some to the West Coast, but it's usually the East Coast that is talking about them. The only shad that can survive where I'm at is the gizzard shad, and even they die off every winter by the truckload like powder puff snowflakes who can't handle a chill.
Fair enough. If you wouldn't mind, next time you're cleaning them, if you find one that's still fresh enough to ID, take a picture and post it. I'm curious what they look like where you are. They're the dominant forage species on 2 of the 4 huge Missouri River reservoirs in SD (Lake Sharpe and Lake Francis Case), yet I'm pretty sure that the vast majority of the guys who fish there couldn't tell you what they look like. The main forage farther north in Lake Oahe is rainbow smelt, and I don't know that I could identify them because I don't fish there. The shad can't survive the winters any farther north, and the smelt have to have colder, oxygenated water, so they barely survive in the middle. I've lived in SD for almost all of my life, and I never knew that until a few weeks ago, so now I'm curious about other folks' resident forage fish.
On a related note, do you ever fish with a walleye spinner rig or a death roll hook with a pinched crawler? They're probably the most popular way to troll where I live, and folks have been debating for years why the heck walleyes eat them. Now I think I know. The shad die off every year in the winter in monumentally large numbers. Although only a small percentage survives the winter, they reproduce at unbelievable rates, grow like crazy all spring (while being eaten by everything in the water as well as the birds above), then die off in the next winter. The cycle keeps repeating itself. Apparently the bottom of the reservoirs are just loaded with dead shad, which decompose very slowly in the depths. Every big push of water shoves their dead bodies farther downstream, so fish are used to hanging out by the main current and eating rolling, dead shad that drift along the bottom ... looking a lot like a walleye spinner rig or a death roll hook with a pinched crawler.
This stuff interests me as much or more than Nebraska football, if that's believable. I invest a lot of time, money, and energy in trying to outsmart animals with brains the size of peanuts.
