(Un)official Hoosiers Thread

[IndianaFinesse]

Does anyone have any recent crappie reports out of cagles mills?  I'm planning on going there despite the winds and cold front, does anyone have any advice on how to fish cold fronts for crappie? 

[Team9nine]

2 hours ago, IndianaFinesse said:

Does anyone have any recent crappie reports out of cagles mills?  I'm planning on going there despite the winds and cold front, does anyone have any advice on how to fish cold fronts for crappie? 

Cataract bite has been pretty good with decent keepers being caught. Much better than Raccoon at the  moment for size. Best bet after a cold front is live bait slow and in their face. Jig bite usually slows down a bunch right after a front.

-T9 

[IndianaFinesse]

35 minutes ago, Team9nine said:

Cataract bite has been pretty good with decent keepers being caught. Much better than Raccoon at the  moment for size. Best bet after a cold front is live bait slow and in their face. Jig bite usually slows down a bunch right after a front.

-T9 

Thanks!  I will try to remember to post a report tomorrow night or sunday.

[BigBassLoveSenkos]

Taking 2 buddies bass fishing tomorrow morning but haven't been on the water in a week. Any suggestions? 

[IndianaFinesse]

Got out crappie fishing yesterday for 13 hours, just before dawn to dusk.  Caught 54 keeper crappies, with lots more smaller fish.  Most of them were caught on minnows, some under floats and others while spider rigging.  Couldn't find a concentration of fish, they seemed to have scattered over a huge range of depths and areas from as deep as 20 feet and as shallow as five feet.  Ninety percent of the fish bit in the first two hours and the last half of the day when the wind was calm enough to keep our baits in the narrow strike zone, they wouldn't eat a bait that was bobbing up and down with the waves or the boats movement because of the cold front.  Not a great day, but better than I expected for the windy cold front conditons.

Went back to another lake today and fished for crapie for a little over an hour and a half.  Only caught five, i haven't figured out the crappie here yet.  They were schooled up over 20-22 feet of water suspended between 7 and 14 feet mostly, not tightly relating to cover but n the vicinity of scattered stumps.

[frosty]

Caught my first swimbait bass today using a Yamamoto heart tail shad, caught me a whopper, he had to be at least 10" long? That was a couple minutes after my wife told me that bait was to big and I wouldn't catch anything on it...

[IndianaFinesse]

Went fishing this afternoon for a few hours.  The entire lake is definitely turning right now, dead broken weeds floating are all over the place.  Water Temperature is a steady 69 degrees and hasn't changed much over the last week, and the water clarity is up to over three feet.  Went out today expecting a jerkbait bite with the moderate winds and clear water, but didn't get so much as a bump on a jerkbait.  Switched to a pop-r and caught a couple decent bass, but I wasn't catching as many as I would like so I switched to the ned rig.  Caught a fair amount on it, not sure how many but I would guess around 15-20, including another nice smallmouth.  The smallmouth was the best fish of the day measuring 19 inches long and 3.4 pounds, and when I got it in the boat I found out that she had apparently broke someone off, because about ten feet of line was hanging out of it's mouth and led down to a hook in it's stomach.  I didn't want to rip the stomach out, so I cut the line as close to the hook as I could and released her.  Does anyone know what to do to remove a hook from a fishes stomach?  Normally I would just keep a fish that has a hook in it's stomach, but there are so few smallmouth in this lake I wanted to give it a chance to survive. 

[OddChase]

13 hours ago, IndianaFinesse said:

Does anyone know what to do to remove a hook from a fishes stomach? 

Not sure if there is a real easy way to do it. But if you do attempt it - you'll know when you've killed the fish if you start to smell the gut rot smell that comes when you tear a stomach. If you don't smell it, the fish should live just fine. 

[BassOnKlinger]

Haven't been able to get out to fish in a while. Had my spirits renewed today while talking to a co-worker who fishes the same pond as me. He caught a stringer of 2 and 3 pounders in thirty minutes the other evening. Said they were just stacked on each other.  Hopefully I can get back out tomorrow.

[frosty]

Got out for a couple hours before the weather moved in. Decided to try Big Walnut for some smallmouth. I caught all these on the Ned Rig, using the big TRD. The third one weighed in at 1 1/2 pounds. 

Can anybody estimate the weight of this one? I dropped my scales and didn't realize until I caught him. I'm guessing he'll go for over 2, but I'm not sure, regardless, this is definitely my pb smallmouth!

[IndianaFinesse]

I fished yesterday afternoon for about four hours, and this afternoon for about two and a half hours.  The jerkbait bite was on fire yesterday, caught 37 bass with eleven over fifteen inches.  Started out catching them on the vision 110, but about an hour into fishing the line tangled around one of the micro guides mid-cast, and I watched my $25 jerkbait sail away.  I looked for almost an hour in the area it landed, but unfortuanately it must have slowly sunk.  After that I switched to a two and a half inch husky jerk and finished off the day with that, but it was not near as effective as the 110.  The fish were suspended and schooled up over shallow grass in three to eight feet of water.  Water temperature was down to 62, and the visibility was almost three feet.

Today the bass bite evaporated, I only caught one dink on the ned rig.  Switched to white bass and caught eight nice ones in the last hour, all while trolling a 1/8 ounce blue fox flash spinner.  It sure is annoying how the fishing changes so much and is so unpredictable in the fall.

[OddChase]

Visited a very nice park in Anderson, IN on Friday called Shadyside - this place is definitely on the radar for any local fisherman and unknown to anyone else. Spent an hour walking around the beautiful area and even caught a few nice bass with my S/O. Definitely kayak water - will be visiting again in the Spring. We found the bass stacked at the mouth of a canal and feeding on small minnows. Ned rigs and small crappie-sized swimbaits were the ticket.  

[OddChase]

Sorry for double post - but wanted you all to know it's lipless crank season! 

[frosty]

8 hours ago, OddChase said:

Sorry for double post - but wanted you all to know it's lipless crank season! 

Pirate pose? Very nice bass!

[IndianaFinesse]

Went fishing yesterday afternoon for two and a half hours.  Water's dropping fast, it dropped nearly two feet in just a day and a half.  Jerkbait bite was gone (or maybe they just didn't want the rcstx, husky jerk, or the staysee that i tried) and the fish had moved out fro the shoreline into 8-14 foot depths, schooled up just above the bottom.  Caught seventeen largemouth bass, two big bluegill, and fifteen white bass.  Fourteen of the largemouth bass hit on a Canada craw colored trd tube-z and the other three bass and the two bluegill ate half of a pb&j zinker-z.  The white bass were caught trolling an 1/8 ounce blue fox flash spinner in-between spots. All of the largemouth bass were caught utilizing the swim glide and shake retrieve.  Good to see the fall white bass bite starting, I might have to spend the next trip or two targeting them exclusively.

[frosty]

The smallmouth bite is still on, locating them took awhile but once we found them it was a good time. My daughter caught her first smallmouth today, but I didn't get a picture unfortunately. 

[Amoore9900]

We went out for about 2 hours on Friday we got 4 fish and one nice one but they were not as active as a few days earlier. 

[Kevinator1]

43 minutes ago, Amoore9900 said:

We went out for about 2 hours on Friday we got 4 fish and one nice one but they were not as active as a few days earlier. 

Nice fish! I usually fish Geist and Morse....are you fishing a private lake or is it public? If public mind saying which lake that is?

[Amoore9900]

Most of these are on a 100 acre private lake...we also started fishing the Barbee chain this year and it is good for a public lake...we have got some 3.5 pound fish on the Barbee chain and saw a 5.5 this year...doesn't have the top end size 7-10 pounds the private lake does but seems to have a good amount of 3-5 pounders...

[IndianaFinesse]

Started fishing at 3:30 and finished at 6:00 for a total of 27 bass (edit, at first I accidently typed in 26 instead of 27) and 9 big white bass, all on either the vison 110 or the pointer 78.  Those two jerkbaits made a good team, the vison for deeper open water and the pointer for fishing closer to shore.  The fish were off of secondary points and at the opening of coves over 4-14 feet of water.  The fish were very active, wanting a two fast twitches followed by barely a second or two short pause.  Water temperature is 62 degrees with roughly 3-4 feet of water clarity, and is one foot low.

[Alan Reed]

Got out late yesterday afternoon before the rain. The bass were biting but they had to dead stick a worm. Every fish that took it I couldn't feel it take the bait nor did it try to move until I would feel some resistance when I went to move it and set the hook. 

[OddChase]

Lipless crankbait was still hot this weekend. Caught 6 out of a pond that was less than an acre as well as a 22.5" walleye on a chartreuse squarebill... I have pictures if you can't believe it, I didn't even believe it myself. Sunday caught several more in a different pond on the same sexy shad colored lipless as well as snagged a 10lb carp. My father was throwing the original Rat-L-Trap and didn't get a hit. 

On 11/2/2016 at 7:02 PM, IndianaFinesse said:

The action on the slim swim-z is pretty good, it's got a nice rolling action even on slow retrieves. 

Are you pairing the swim-z with the finesse mushroom heads? 

 

[IndianaFinesse]

11 hours ago, OddChase said:

Lipless crankbait was still hot this weekend. Caught 6 out of a pond that was less than an acre as well as a 22.5" walleye on a chartreuse squarebill... I have pictures if you can't believe it, I didn't even believe it myself. Sunday caught several more in a different pond on the same sexy shad colored lipless as well as snagged a 10lb carp. My father was throwing the original Rat-L-Trap and didn't get a hit. 

Are you pairing the swim-z with the finesse mushroom heads? 

 

Nice walleye!  Yep, I glued the slim swim-z onto a 1/16 ounce mushroom jig that I pour.  Although I didn't catch anything on it, I do believe that it will be effective under the right conditions.

[OddChase]

About time for me to put away my gear until the Spring! Does anyone here fish for white bass (also wanting to catch a wiper) when they run up rivers during their spawn? I'm wondering if there are any rivers within a 2 hour drive of Muncie, IN. I usually go to Brookville. I'm thinking Mississinewa? Never fished further North than Muncie. 

Also if anyone wants to get together for the white bass slam PM me. 

[IndianaFinesse]

16 minutes ago, OddChase said:

About time for me to put away my gear until the Spring! Does anyone here fish for white bass (also wanting to catch a wiper) when they run up rivers during their spawn? I'm wondering if there are any rivers within a 2 hour drive of Muncie, IN. I usually go to Brookville. I'm thinking Mississinewa? Never fished further North than Muncie. 

Also if anyone wants to get together for the white bass slam PM me. 

I fish for white bass a lot during the spring and fall, the lake I live on has two feeder creeks, but both of them have an overflow type dam preventing the fish to go upstream.  Some of the white bass go right up next to the dams to spawn, but the majority actually seemed to spawn on steep dropping rip-rap banks so that is something you might want to try next spring.  I have not personally fished it, but I have heard that raccoon lake has a good white bass bite that go upstream there.  They aren't to picky when it comes to lures, almost anything small and whiteish will get eaten.  My favorite is an 1/8 ounce white inline spinner from blue fox or a roostertail, but another popular choice is a two inch curly tail grub. 

If you don't want to wait till spring to get on some white bass, they are hitting pretty good right now on small spinners.  The conditions to look for right now is a few days in a row with steady wind going toward points, especially points with rip-rap on them.  They feed close to the shore where the shad are getting blown into, so it's a good time to target them from shore if you don't have a boat.  If they aren't on wind blown points and you have a boat, a good fall back is trolling spinners around, and if you find an area where you are consistently getting fish you can go back and cast at the school if the school is somewhat stationary. White bass often move around quickly following shad schools, so move around often and don't give any area long if it doesn't produce fish within a few minutes.