Doelman

I was banging banks early Sunday morning when behind me I could hear what almost sounded like a downpour. I turned around and what I saw was a beautiful sight. Schools of bass had simultaneously attacked three separate shad schools that were about 50 feet apart in around 30 feet of water. It was pretty incredible, I've seen bass attack shad before but never three schools at once. I reeled in and paddled over there as quickly as possible. I don't know how many bass I saw coming out of the water but it had to be close to a hundred. By the time I got there, the feeding frenzy had already ended but I tied on a lipless crank to see if I could find one. Find one I did, and another, and another, these spots were mad and hitting my crank within seconds of it hitting the water on every cast. The 6th fish broke my line, probably got a kink, my fault for not checking the line because of the frenzy. Tied on a lucky craft pointer, caught close to ten more before the school moved off. Oh yeah, make sure to change the hooks on those pointers, I had two hook tips completely broken off and ALL the other ones were bent. I've caught a few spots in this lake, but I didn't realize until now there were so many! Fishing was pretty slow up until that point. Thank you giant spot school for a good morning on the water.

I agree, they probably died. Never put a fish on a stringer unless you intend to eat it. Why do you think they were on a bed? I don't think bass are spawning anywhere right now. Bigger fish will eventually return to that spot.

I can't take my dog fishing. He loves the water and will dive in after my bait.

Even good hooks can bend out, always good to check them. It is not normal to lose so many fish at the boat when your lure has 2-3 treble hooks, either there is some sort of tackle/technique issue or you have the worst luck in the world.

Make sure your hooks aren't bent out. I catch a lot of pike from a canoe with barbless hooks and I never have a problem landing them, getting the hooks out of a big one next to a canoe is a whole other story though. If your hooks are good, you just have to keep that line tight when they thrash.

Where are you and what are you fishing with? Need more info. If I go out for more than a few hours I usually get at least one at or over 2 lbs, one over 4lbs every 4 or 5 trips, I'll catch half a dozen around 5-6 every year, and I've only caught one that was 7 lbs.

Spool your reels tighter. Are you doing it yourself by hand? Machine does it the best, but if you're doing it yourself you have to make sure there are TONS of pressure. I remember when I was a kid I used to just toss a spool of mono into the sink with water in it and spool my reels up, never a problem, nightmare for braid though. Your arm should be seriously fatigued when you finish spooling a reel with braid by hand or you aren't doing it tight enough. Once finished, the line on your reel should be rock hard, virtually no "give" to it. I use J-braid now and love it, but I've used that cheap kastking stuff and it's fine and doesn't dig as long as you spool it correctly.

I had a spool of stren original 10lb test that I could easily break with my hands. It looked fine, was the right diameter, but the entire spool had the breaking strength of maybe 4lb test. I lost two fish and lures on hook sets before I realized the line was garbage, line was brand new.

Not spots, secret tips for getting those fish to bite. I've thrown all kinds of stuff at them, jigging spoons, jigging raps, all kinds of plastics, jigs, I've never gotten those deep ones to bite a single thing. I do the same thing to fish holding up around the thermocline and get bit. I troll around the same depth and get bit. I don't even mess with those deep ones anymore.

I have no problem with tournament fisherman, if they can make a career out of it good for them! I wish I could. All I'm saying is if a few recreational fisherman are keeping them from putting food on the table, they clearly aren't good enough to be career fisherman and need to find some other way to make money, especially if they have a family to take care of. Maybe everyone else is in a better location than me, but it's a couple hour drive for me to get to any big water. I'm not turning around and wasting an entire day of fishing because of a fishing tournament. We all try to make more money to be able to afford the things we want to do that make us happy right? If I'm out there doing what makes me happy, with the money I earned already, why should I not do that because people are on the water trying to make money for the exact same purpose? You can't get back a lost day of fishing.

I'm definitely not a seasoned lake trout fisherman, but from everything I've been taught about lake trout fishing in the summer by guides from Minnesota up to Caniapiscau Quebec, they may be below the thermocline but it isn't going to be much. The bait they're eating isn't going to go past it so the feeding lakers will be relatively close to it. I've personally tried jigging lakers marked deeper than that and haven't had a single bite, they just don't feed down there in the summer. If you have a secret to get lakers well below the thermocline to bite, please let me know. I'll be fishing for them this September in Ontario and would love to have a few new tricks for them.

It's a Humminbird 110 fishing buddy. It'll show me the thermocline, bait, fish, depth, etc. it just has terrible bottom detail. Unless there is something substantial on the bottom, it looks completely flat.

It's not a good one but yeah.

I pay for a fishing license and I pay taxes, I have every right to be on that public body of water fishing. With that said, if I know there's going to be a tournament I'll avoid that lake, but if I get there and there happens to be a tournament, I'm going to fish. I'm not going to follow anyone or try to fish their spots, but I'm not going to move if they want to fish the spot I'm already at. I work 5 days out of the week, someone who fishes for a living is not going to get any pity from me if I catch one of their fish. Dealing with other fisherman is part of fishing, if me fishing my spots is going to stop someone from putting food on the table, they should probably do the responsible thing and find another career.

Minnesota. The lakes I fish up there are often up to 130' feet deep, I don't think you'll find anything below the thermocline.

Not sure if it's all the same type of grass, but it's all emergent stuff on the shoreline. There's an area of submerged grass in the shallow area where the creek runs into the lake. I don't fish in there much because it's 1.25 miles away from where I put in and solo paddling a canoe is slow business, while the lake is only 100 acres it's about 2 miles long. Unfortunately this is the only part of the lake that has any kind of current and probably has the best summer time fishing. I'm currently fishing every dock, weedline, overhang, drop off, and underwater structure I can find.

I've caught some nice lakers in late August trolling deep diving cranks 30 feet down, they seem to bite best when the sun is bright.

From what I understand about the thermocline from my college days is that it is simply an area in the water column where the temperature rapidly changes, it has nothing to do with dissolved oxygen content in itself. Colder water actually has higher dissolved oxygen (DO) levels compared to warmer water if all other factors are equal. In most lakes, there's going to be a layer of detritus and other organics on the bottom that are being digested by aerobic bacteria which will be using up available DO. When the thermocline sets up, it stratifies the water and causes the area of water above the thermocline to mix with itself and the water below the thermocline to mix with itself, but not with each other. Because there is virtually no plant life down there, very little algae, a lot of bacteria digesting organic matter, and no air-water interface, this causes the water column below the thermocline to have very little DO. I know all about the thing, I just don't know how to fish it lmao. So it sounds like I should just avoid it all together while fishing.

For the most part. They dammed up a creek in a little valley back in the 60s to make this lake so the banks are pretty steep. I know a few sunken brush piles in the 5'-15' depth range, I just haven't found anything in that magical thermocline range.

The water is pretty dark green, I would say no more than 2-2.5 feet of visibility normally. Plenty of grass on the banks, usually stops once the water hits 4-5 feet which happens in most areas just a few feet off the bank. At least 95% of the lake is open water. So I know to avoid fishing below the thermocline because of the lack of O2, so if I can't find structure that comes up to the thermocline I should bottom fish the areas of the lake where the thermocline is the same depth as the bottom itself? I've done contour trolling for eyes up north, could contour trolling where the thermocline and bottom meet be productive with a 18'-20' diving crank?

It's summer time and it's hot down here, water temps are in the upper 80s and will likely hit 90 before the end of the month. I've never tried using the thermocline to locate fish, so I'm looking for some advice. The lake is 100 acres, is very long so there is a lot of bank to fish (350' wide on average), max depth is 30 feet but 25 foot water can be found on most of the lake in the middle, the thermocline is at around 20 feet. I've been unable to find any good structure that pokes up into or close to the thermocline, so what can I do with it to catch fish? Should I fish the sides of the lake where the depth transitions from 22 to 18? Should I troll with a crank at 20 feet? Should I just forget about the thermocline? lol

We often get isolated thunderstorms down here in the south in the summer. Often times they're small and only last 20 or so minutes, it doesn't make sense to come back in sometimes especially if you're offshore. So yeah, I've been out many times off the coast and rode out lightning and thunderstorms, even saw a waterspout a mile or two away once. The closest I've ever been to getting struck by lightning though was when I was paddling the Suwannee River on a 3 day trip. Had a severe thunderstorm pop up right on us, branches were getting ripped off trees and landing in the river, it was crazy. Since we had no shelter and the river is the lowest point in the area by far, we decided to stay in the aluminum canoe and just hold onto the bank until the storm was over. Lightning hit a tree on the bank right next to us and we got shocked by the canoe, fun times. While scary, I'll admit it was very memorable.

I've caught a hundred pike on moving baits like Mepps using fluoro leader and have never lost a lure on one, I usually use 40 lb blue label seaguar. I even caught this 40" pike on a wacky rigged worm with a fluorocarbon leader. If you're dead set on a metal leader, use 7 strand titanium. It's what we use down here in the south for kingfish, awesome stuff.

I've never noticed a bit of FC leader causing any of my topwaters to sink. My hooks are always get snagged on treble hooks without it when I use braid.

I've tried, nothing they can do about it since it's private property. The county health department actually are the ones that suggested I throw stuff over the fence into the pool to kill the mosquitoes. Throwing fish over was my idea though....