Saturday Report

Made it out Saturday a.m. (8:00 til around noon). Pulled some Lindy rigs. Ended up having a great multi-species day! There were three of us in the boat and we caught: a 31+” sturgeon (definitely the best fight of the day!), a huge bluegill, two channel-cats, a couple of sheepies, a 10lbs carp (darn thing really slimed up my carpet), a 22″ eye, a 20″ eye, two 17+” eyes, a 18″ sauger, and three 14″ eyes. All fish were caught in 15-30 fow (most on the ‘downslope’ – pulling from shallow toward deeper water. Had better luck doing this than going parallel to the slope).

The big-boat traffic and the temperature finally increased to a point where I couldn’t take it anymore (and my honey-do list was calling) and we called it a day (or morning). Tried the same spot again last night and only managed to hook up a bunch of sheepies. I think the weekend traffic just pushed the ‘good’ fish out of the area.

Man, was it hot out there this weekend or what???

Hey King185 – Were you seeing a lot of bait fish in your area? I fished the Bayport / Stillwater area and marked some pretty good schools of shad. Was curious if you saw any south of Hudson?

Didn’t really see much on the surface but the sonar indicated large ‘clouds’. I presume these were large schools of some sort of either bait fish or bug hatches.

How was the bite up there? I haven’t gone north of Hudson yet this year… Seems my boat just wants to head south all the time?!?

Those clouds are baitfish – usually shad. Every year about this time the baitfish show up in these big clouds and that signals the start of a pretty good all around bite. I usually follow the gulls and then troll in and around the schools for white bass and just about every other kind of fish. Shad imitating lures will be the go to bait. I’ve had the best luck fishing the windy shore when the shad show up, it seems to move the bait tighter to the shore and into shallower water. I expect the crappie bite to improve once the bait shows up.

sounds like it’s time to crack out the three-ways and shad-raps then, huh? I was going to give ’em a try last night but stayed with pulling lindy’s and crawlers. I must say, though, that I didn’t see the bait clouds last night like they were on Saturday morning. Maybe the boat traffic chases away the bait fish and, hence, the game fish follow??