Author Topic: Alamo 5/13 - 5/14  (Read 3825 times)

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Offline OneBlade

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Alamo 5/13 - 5/14
« on: May 15, 2011, 09:06 PM »
Well, never thought I'd send an Alamo fishing report.  I always thought it was too far of a drive since I'm in the east valley and plenty of lakes closer for me.  But, some of the AZCrappie members were heading up there so I figured it sounded better than house/yard chores at home.  Nothing real new or earth shattering in this report and if you're looking just for the fishing details, sorry, I'm giving the full report so you'll have to weed through the rest.

Friday, 5/13 - I had heard it was a long drive, but ended up only being 2 1/2 hours.  I'm used to the Apache 2 hour trip so 1/2 hour more wasn't bad.  I took I-10 to Salome Rd exit through Wenden and then 38 miles on Alamo Dam road.  I actually enjoyed the drive the moment I got off I-10.  I was on the road by 4:45am so by the time I hit some of the rural roads out there there was no one at all.  I saw lots of wildlife on or near the road.  The road was kinda crazy - hills to bottom out on or fly over plus it's open pasture there and signs everywhere to be careful for cows on the road.  I saw two on the side of the road and had to slow down. I'm glad I didn't do that drive at night 'cause you can really do some damage to you and your car if you hit one of them. Anyway, I got there and most campsites were empty and park store didn't open until 8. So, I stopped by the fish cleaning station and 3 old guys were cleaning a cooler full of crappie and a catfish or two.  The guys were nice but not ready to give up their fishing location for that night.  They did catch them at night and seems like that's the way to go to really bring in the motherload.  I don't know if they were going to eat all of them themselves or give some away but the fish here have mercury so something to consider I guess before taking every fish you catch.  So, now I just read online that children under 16 shouldn't have any of the crappie at all and I can have 4 8oz fish meals per month.  Hmmmm, anyone want some crappie?  Ah, I'll still eat what I caught but I guess limit the amount and hide those fillets from my kids.  I think sitting in front of the computer is killing my brain so I really don't need mercury doing it too.

Anyway, back to the report.  I waited until the store opened, got minnows, put up a tent, and headed out onto the lake. The park store lady who didn't seem too confident in her fishing experience said to go to the north end (opposite the dam) and fish on the east and west sides trolling for crappie.  She also said try in the middle on that north end as there are lots of trees and stuff in the middle.  I headed that direction and ended up first by the trees in the middle.  For the next several hours, I caught 10-15 bass, all but 1 or 2 under 16" using a jig with minnow.  I should have tried out some of my other less-used bass fishing gear to at least gain some confidence in those other lures. That lake is chuck full of bass and a good one to practice out on if your'e into that.  I wonder what someone could do there if they were really trying for bass!  I finally made it to the west side and caught 2 barely keeper crappie and then 2pm and time to go in.  Later that night, I tried night fishing by the dam and had no luck at all.  Moon was 3/4 full at least.  We had 2 21" tube green lights out and another headlight type floating white light out and I'm not sure we saw really any shad at all.  We moved to another spot also near the dam and after 1 hour or so, left it as there were no shad or fish.  We obviously didn't hit the right spot - bummer. 

Saturday, 5/14 - We headed out early and went back to the north end of the lake on the west side and caught 3 keeper crappie.  We fished in the middle two and caught another 10-15 bass I'm guessing.  No big ones but I think if we changed to some larger lures or swimbaits, maybe we could have found the larger ones.  But we were more interested in crappie so didn't work too hard for the bass.  I had to leave around 1pm on Saturday so really just a day and a half of fishing but even with small crappie counts, it was worth it for me.

During day fishing, I mainly used roadrunner jigs with john deere green grub and a minnow.  I also used blue and white grub and it mainly caught the bass.

For the whole weekend, I probably had 20+ other fish on my line and lost them on the way to the boat.  Not sure if I was bullying them in or what.  Some of those bass got free when they jumped out of the water and don't know what I can do about that except don't pull too hard and tempt them to come up to the top and jump I guess.

Offline timbo

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Re: Alamo 5/13 - 5/14
« Reply #1 on: May 16, 2011, 12:55 PM »
Great report.
It's alway better to catch anything(green carp) then nothing.

Offline silver48

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Re: Alamo 5/13 - 5/14
« Reply #2 on: May 16, 2011, 08:31 PM »
Nice report Matt.  I see you left out about horsing that one nice crappie out of the water Friday night, only to end up with a pair of lips on a hook!  Just kidding, I've done it too.

Matt's correct in that we had no minnows or shad, show up to the lights.  I think I only saw one shad swim by all night, when I looked down at the lights.  Very tough Friday night. 

Matt, I think our problem was, that we should have bought 6 dozen minnows instaed of just 5!  We weren't optimistic enough.

Next time though, it's slab slayin time!!  I'll give you a call.

 

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