Author Topic: Bartlett 5-16  (Read 4300 times)

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Offline AZfisherdude

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Bartlett 5-16
« on: May 17, 2010, 07:53 PM »
We launched at SB Cove around 3:30 pm and fished the Yellow Cliffs area until about 12:30 am. Water temp was 72 from what I remember at night. We trolled for a while and found a huge school of what I assume were crappie but we couldn't get a bite. We trolled through 3 times and moved on. I caught 1 crappie by trolling a grub on a leader tied to the tail end of a crank bait and that was cool. We were mostly fishing using shad and minnows but also used some grubs/tubes in various colors. We caught some bass including the one in the pic. We anchored up near a point at the mouth of a cove near Yellow Cliffs and put out the lights. The depth was about 35 ft with it transitioning to 20ft within 20ft of where we were. We managed to keep 16 crappie but no real size to them. Not like the ones I caught at San Carlos. I'd call them barely keepers. They tasted great BTW ;D They were all about 10-11 inches but not fat. Kind of skinny. We had a great time but I feel like we could have done better. I am pretty new to night fishing and have not had much success at it until now (which was still not so great). I'd love to improve so any tips are welcome.

Piscolli

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Re: Bartlett 5-16
« Reply #1 on: May 18, 2010, 07:36 AM »
Heck, that's not a bad night at night. I would love to catch 16 keepers. Nice job!

Offline AZfisherdude

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Re: Bartlett 5-16
« Reply #2 on: May 18, 2010, 08:50 AM »
Thanks, we caught at least 4 during the afternoon (mostly caught bass) so at night it was really like 12 between two of us with 8 hooks in the water. I was pretty happy with it. My half of the fish made two meals worth for me, my wife, and 4 kids. I guess I just thought it would be better when you are graphing fish all over the place. I mean I understand there is a lot of bait but ours was injured and easy :sign0151:

Speaking of shad, I have never seen anything like this. The school was ginormous! Two interesting things were happening too. One was that we had minnows come to the light? I had two 12" fluorescent lights stacked on one side and a nuclei aurora on the other. The minnows were all over that aurora. What's with that? What kind of fish were they? They looked real similar to the fatheads we were using. Well the big ones did. The small ones you couldn't tell but they seemed to be glowing in the light.

The other interesting thing was that the shad were jumping out of the water constantly. At first I thought they may be running from predators and then I thought they were eating those little tiny minnows. Not sure though. You guys seen this before?

Offline PhishingPhreek

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Re: Bartlett 5-16
« Reply #3 on: May 18, 2010, 12:04 PM »
Sounds similar to what we had at Alamo (Which is normal). The fish are attracted to the brighter lights and the Aurora does put out a lot more light than the 12" green tube. I built a 4' green tube that illuminated the whole back of my boat and had minnows around it, once I took that out they moved over to my Aurora. It was funny to watch them just go.

As for the little things you saw, it's possible that it was minnows or just fry. What we had at Alamo this weekend were the microorganisms showing up first, then the tiny fry and then minnows and then shad popped up eating the fry. the shad, and most of the minnows, were hanging out right at the edge of the lights as opposed to just around the light like usual. Not sure what happened there.

anyway, congrats! Sounds like you had a better night than I did. Only managed 1 crappie under the lights and that was just before we packed up when the sun came up. I also caught a nice little channel cat from a slab daddy under a bobber. That was kind of funny. I was bored and playing solitaire on my iPod and looked up and my glowing bobber was missing. Started to real it in and there was the cat. :)

Offline AZfisherdude

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Re: Bartlett 5-16
« Reply #4 on: May 18, 2010, 01:33 PM »
Wow, ok. This was my first time fishing at night near spawn so I didn't think about the fry and I just haven't seen the minnows before. Must be like you said and my light wasn't bright enough before.
Catfish never cease to amaze me with what they will hit. Put up a nice fight too. Especially on light tackle.

Offline silver48

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Re: Bartlett 5-16
« Reply #5 on: May 18, 2010, 08:27 PM »
Sounds like you did about the same as me on Saturday night.  Ended up with 8 crappie about 7" to 10" long :dink:, but let em go.  Good luck next time.

Offline AZfisherdude

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Re: Bartlett 5-16
« Reply #6 on: May 19, 2010, 12:18 AM »
Yeah? Were you out by Yellow Cliffs? I saw two other boats out there fishing at night?

EDIT: Nevermind, I just read your report :)
« Last Edit: May 19, 2010, 12:20 AM by AZfisherdude »

 

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