Sasquatch

I’ve come to the conclusion color matters less to the fish than to the angler. I’ve consolidated my plastics to having a natural and dark color to each. Rarely do I get a situation where a specific color makes a difference. Dark water dark plastic clear water more natural.

I see the thermocline issue first hand local to me every year. We have some 70-80 acre state managed public lakes very close to my house. They really don’t have much inflow of water especially if it’s been dry for a couple weeks like right now. You end up getting a thermocline at around 7 ft and every fish in the lake suspends about 5 ft under the surface and they are near impossible to catch.

Have fished the 3.5 a couple times and caught fish when it’s tough. Forgot I had them until a buddy started throwing them the other day and started whacking them. Dug through the box found them and caught more in an hour than I had all morning.

One of the lakes I fish right down from the house is around 70 acres and the thermocline has pushed up to about 8-9ft. I thought the jig head minnow would be great here this time of year because it really forces the fish to suspend just randomly it seem. Can’t hardly get anything to react here lately though other than the crappie.

I’ve been using nako tungsten for a couple of years now. Can’t beat the price anywhere I have found.

Watch the Miliken video on modifying some of the cheaper glides, been doing that for a while.

Forest Gump I usually just run blindly until something good happens.

I’m 6’4 and 290 and can walk up and down on my kayak it’s a nucanoe unlimited. Part of the fun is the competition and kayak tournaments are the simplest and cheapest point of entry. If that’s what you’re after then I’d say sell the boat and buy a premium kayak. There are a ton of them out there I’m partial to nucanoe. These days I trailer it back in and wet launch it with an xi3 and hit anchor and go park the truck and it waits on me. It doesn’t get much simpler than that.

Not sure how to actually test oxygen levels under the thermocline but my guess is there isn’t. Very rarely do you mark fish under it and the ones that occasionally are I believe are hybrid chasing wounded baitfish down and coming right back up. I’ve used some weightless wacky rig stuff and it works marginally. Top water bite is scarce for some strange reason, my guess is due to the huge amount of pressure the lake gets. Everybody and their brother is throwing a popper right off the rip. Just sets up very odd when it gets hot out, they don’t school and are very hard to pinpoint almost as if they are just cruising the entire lake constantly. Left my flukes at home last time they will be going back next time to see how that goes. They also seem to really key on the very small baitfish over the bigger shad when it’s hot as well so may try some smaller fluke style deals.

Fish some lakes near the house quite a bit, water was at 84 degrees and there was a very defined thermocline around 5ft. Lake is around 55 acres and not much structure to speak of max depth around 25ft. Been super slow and fish seem to stay suspended no matter the weather conditions. Any ideas?

Wait, since when does Decatur have gators?

Lyme disease is no joke, my grandfather was one of the 1st recordable cases in the southeast in the late 70s and they had been trying to figure out what was wrong for years. Did a ton of nerve damage in his leg and hands. He would get to where he was feeling bad every couple years and they would give him another round of doxycycline and knock it back out.

I want to say a good day is a number but that’s not really fair. So to me a good day is being able to pattern and catch quality fish. Sometimes that’s 50 sometimes that’s 8-10. But being able to figure it out even when the bite is tough and find a repeatable pattern is what I’m after.

We have a group of small lakes similar to this. These were old tailing ponds so a lot of the bottom is very muddy and doesn’t appear to be much structure. Best bet if you want to go offshore is find something different. There will mostly always be something that’s just a little bit different that the fish prefer at different stages of the year you just have to search for it.

Just got my 1st order from nako and I’m impressed.