Thursday, May 29, 2014

Fishing a Major cold front

Bill, Joy and Marcus
Cloudy and Cool, Water temperature 76* and Clear
Yesterday it was well into the 90's and today it stayed in the 60's. Felt good to me but the lake rose about 5 inches and the water temperature dropped 4*. I caught bait early then picked the guys up at 5:30. I looked for schools for about 30 minutes till I found some fish. This was a good place to teach the guys how to put the baits out and how to reel in the fish. They were in for a difficult day, not because of the cold front but there was no way 3 anglers could begin to handle the action that we are experiencing. Summer fishing is fast and furious, it takes a minimum of 4 anglers to deal with even a slow day. They found out real quick what they were in for. After about 20 fish they were ready as they could be to hit a real school, or so I thought. I set them up on another school and they suffered for 45 minutes running from rod to rod. Panic had set in and they forgot what I had said about how you have to reel a fish in with circle hooks. If something wrong could happen, it did. I pulled them off of the school so they could get a well deserved break, then filled my tanks back up with bait. We hit more schools till we ran out of bait then I caught yet another tank full of bait and set out for our last set up. 150 baits later we finally ran out of bait, what a relief to me. Today was no fun for me and way too much work. I am going to make sure my clients show up with enough anglers to handle the day. We took well over 300 hits today, way too much action for this crew. They deserve credit for what they were able to catch considering the awesome bite we are going through now.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Why not just run less rods in a situation like that? Doesn't make much sense that you ran a full spread even though the guys were struggling

Jim Hemby said...

Great Question Nolan. For some reason showing the fish only a few baits results in catching punks only. If I can imitate a school of bait at the same exact depth [8 to 10 baits]the larger fish bite better and our ratios go way up.Could be all the baits in the lake are schooling baits and that is what feels natural to the more mature fish, or maybe when you have numerous fish hooked up it may turn the bigger ones on, not sure but that is the way it is.

Jim said...

good answer...George trained..

Joy T Brew said...

Well Jim and watchers,

I understand Jim's philosophy and it works, otherwise he would't be the best. I'm also new to LKA and have a narrow Window to learn the striper fishery. Yes, being handicaped in body, age, and mind slows me and complicates Jim's regime. Thanks Jim for putting up with . . . Reel before us pick up the rod!