Hot & Cold
The recent weather has been very unstable lately here at Lake Fayette and for that matter across all of Texas!! As a consequence, the pre-spawn fishing has been slow to take hold, that was until yesterday following several days of stable weather. Even with that, the fishing is a bit tricky and I have found that the following sight fishing technique works for me as they are still “scattered single targets”. The unstable weather, IMO; has played havoc on the water body. Warmer surface water has been getting blasted with very cold and sometimes freezing evening temperatures, causing the warmer surface water to cool and sink into the deeper water. This is disruptive to the plankton, shad and the bass. As a consequence, the shad have been holding deep and have been reluctant to migrate shallow. That changed recently due to several days of warm stable temperatures. We quickly graphed several pods of shad in depths from 12 to 20′ and I had high hopes of a better day on the lake!
SIGHT FISHING!
I found the shad finally moved up yesterday 1/24/19 and we smoked um, relatively speaking. But we had to (continue to) find scattered targets and go site fishing for them, all be it in deep water!! At any event I have never had to do this, this late into the “pre-spawn” season, so I am still learning. I have a sight fishing system I am using, where I count them within and area or along a boat path. Basically if I can count 3 – 4 relatively close its game on. If not, I have been mapping them out, marking each fish I see in an area and then put the boat in the middle of them and fan cast. I have had to move a lot, catching one or two, but it got a bit better yesterday. At one spot we were catching one here and there and then the bite dried up, except that my client missed one at the end of a long cast. So we made a big circle and came over the area where he missed the fish and graphed the “mother load” which for now consisted of 4 fish within say a 30 yard stretch!
CAST TO THE BUBBLES!
We are “Casting to the Bubbles”, by which I mean the trail of bubbles left from the boat’s path. If you use a GPS locking trolling motor it can get tricky casting to the bubbles (ie where you just graphed the 4 fish) as the boat path or bubbles dissipate quickly due to wave action. But the real issue is that the self anchoring trolling motors rotate the bow of the boat into the wind. So if you are not quick with your first cast, you can get turned around and end up fishing an area with no fish. The best way is to have your trolling motor deployed with wand in hand. As soon as you hit the anchor button you pick up your rod (which is ready to go) and launch a cast directly into the path of the boat (Bubbles) and let it sink. Don’t move it till your trolling motor finalizes the boat position to compensate for the wind. At this point pick out a marker either on the water or land to line up your cast. If you have two anglers, all the better. Make your cast side by side and if you get bit, let the fish swim around and excite the others.
SONAR CONE ANGLE!
You are trying to call the “outboard fish” to the party. By outboard I am referring to the fish that were outside the sonar transmittal cone of your fish-finder. You have to remember that those 4 fish you saw were only a “sample” representation of what could be down there. The important thing is that, lets say, the path you took was in 12′ so you are only seeing a limited area. A 20 degree transducer emits a sonar imaging cone with a diameter of 4.25′ in 12′ of water. Your sonar image on the fish-finder is one dimensional, meaning that the 4 fish could be anywhere within that cone, not necessarily “under the boat” but within around 2′ feet left, right, in front or in back of the boats path. That translates to a 4.25′ swath behind the boat, not all that big really!! So casting to the bubbles is is important so that your bait is near the fish you graphed. If you don’t get bit cast a few feet either right or left. But you can see that if those fish were all located right of the boat’s path then it could be possible that the sonar scanned the flank of a larger school of fish. It is more likely that you found an area holding fish and there are more just outside of the 4.25′ “Bubble” path. We did this all day yesterday and when we saw the 4 fish, I was feeling pretty good. We caught around seven fairly quickly before it slowed, which is good for how the lake has been fishing. We had to move around and hunt them down but at the end of the day my client, who had been keeping count most of the day, lost count by the end of the day!! If I had to guess, I would say we had +/-30 up to 5 pounds between the two of us for a half day trip.
So hopefully this stable weather will last for a while, or at least until the next big Arctic blast!
Good Luck!!
