shinbob
09-26-2015, 12:19 PM
Been able to go to Pyramid every Friday the whole month of September. Anyone who’s been out there knows how great the fishing has been. But I’ve noticed a gradual shift in the pattern, from crazy topwater boil action earlier in the month, to more sporadic boils, but still great subsurface fishing yesterday. Surprisingly the water temp hasn’t dropped that much, it was 75 in the AM, and went up to 77 mid-day. Air temp was a hot 99 degrees.
Got to the lake a little late on Friday. Found out that starting next week, the lake will open at 7am, bummer, eats into the early AM topwater bite a little. (I’m more annoyed that the re-tagging station closes at boats-off time, why can’t they wait 30 more minutes?) Motored out to my first favorite spot, to find the weed banks have not abated that much at all. In fact, the green pea soup seems to have gotten worse:
http://i.imgur.com/rCQbiyk.jpg
No matter, although the boils weren’t widespread and long-lasting, there was plenty of surface and just sub-surface activity to be had. I would set up right at the edge of a weedbank, and cast my fluke along either side, working it back parallel to the weedline. Panicked shad jumping out of the water was a sure sign of feeding activity, and nearly always resulted in a hookup.
There was a TON of shad all over the lake. Every weedbank had schools of them running all over. One LMB I caught was only about 1lb or so, but had a nearly round belly, almost like a spawner. I’m guessing that was from eating so much shad. It’s kind of amazing that they would eat lures at all with all that food all over the place.
They were also feeding very heavily in the gap between the weed bank and the shoreline. That was a bit tricker to fish, with all the weeds just under the surface. Best results were had with a super fluke rigged weedless and weighless. The only problem is when I got a hookup (which was often), the fish would run straight into the weeds and was a chore to pull out. Got lots of weed-covered fish like this:
http://i.imgur.com/BXdXbt5.jpg
Had a blast, caught lots of fish before that action died out at around 10am. Took a break to have lunch, and to see if they would come back up. Previous weeks I would see that the striper would come up to the weeds to feed, then sink back down to 20-30 feet for a while, then come back up again 10 or 15 minutes later, but that wasn’t the pattern yesterday. Maybe due to the full moon? Cruised around the lake for a while looking for activity, but saw none. Was able to troll up a few while crusing, and it did seem like the troll fish were larger than the surface fish. Not exactly huge, but still decent schoolies.
http://i.imgur.com/4JwsREy.jpg
Got bored with trolling, and broke out the shad net around noon. Problem was by that time the winds were really starting to pick up, making it difficult to see the schools and to maneuver the boat to get a good line on them. But was able to get about 12-15 decent shad after about 3-4 passes. Results after the first pass:
http://i.imgur.com/g73g60y.jpg
That was more than enough to go looking for smallies. Got this really good one right off the bat:
http://i.imgur.com/zglWUzP.jpg
But that was the last SMB of the day, unfortunately. The dink stripers kept eating all my shad, and I kept having to move around to avoid them. Was able to get a decent largie to complete the trifecta for the day (along with some dink LMB).
http://i.imgur.com/WsA3TMu.jpg
Overall, got maybe 25 or so striper (at least 2/3 dinks though), 12 LMB (10 dinks), and 1 nice SMB. Freezer is full of striper filets already, so all were C&Red. Lure of the day (and of the whole month) was flukes. I could have fished nothing but a white ice regular fluke with chartreuse tail on a darter head, or super flukes weedless/weightless, all day long. But smoking shad and albino were working as well. . I think the color matters less than the action. Also a killer rig for open water is a fluke on a keitech tungsten ball head. Pop-and-slack retrieve makes it walk the dog underwater, which drives the stripers crazy. That one got me over 45 stripers last Friday. Thanks to Tackle Express for that tip. Added benefit of flukes is the single hook – much easier to unhook them and flip them back into the water, and no risk of sinking a treble into my hand on a head-shake.
Got to the lake a little late on Friday. Found out that starting next week, the lake will open at 7am, bummer, eats into the early AM topwater bite a little. (I’m more annoyed that the re-tagging station closes at boats-off time, why can’t they wait 30 more minutes?) Motored out to my first favorite spot, to find the weed banks have not abated that much at all. In fact, the green pea soup seems to have gotten worse:
http://i.imgur.com/rCQbiyk.jpg
No matter, although the boils weren’t widespread and long-lasting, there was plenty of surface and just sub-surface activity to be had. I would set up right at the edge of a weedbank, and cast my fluke along either side, working it back parallel to the weedline. Panicked shad jumping out of the water was a sure sign of feeding activity, and nearly always resulted in a hookup.
There was a TON of shad all over the lake. Every weedbank had schools of them running all over. One LMB I caught was only about 1lb or so, but had a nearly round belly, almost like a spawner. I’m guessing that was from eating so much shad. It’s kind of amazing that they would eat lures at all with all that food all over the place.
They were also feeding very heavily in the gap between the weed bank and the shoreline. That was a bit tricker to fish, with all the weeds just under the surface. Best results were had with a super fluke rigged weedless and weighless. The only problem is when I got a hookup (which was often), the fish would run straight into the weeds and was a chore to pull out. Got lots of weed-covered fish like this:
http://i.imgur.com/BXdXbt5.jpg
Had a blast, caught lots of fish before that action died out at around 10am. Took a break to have lunch, and to see if they would come back up. Previous weeks I would see that the striper would come up to the weeds to feed, then sink back down to 20-30 feet for a while, then come back up again 10 or 15 minutes later, but that wasn’t the pattern yesterday. Maybe due to the full moon? Cruised around the lake for a while looking for activity, but saw none. Was able to troll up a few while crusing, and it did seem like the troll fish were larger than the surface fish. Not exactly huge, but still decent schoolies.
http://i.imgur.com/4JwsREy.jpg
Got bored with trolling, and broke out the shad net around noon. Problem was by that time the winds were really starting to pick up, making it difficult to see the schools and to maneuver the boat to get a good line on them. But was able to get about 12-15 decent shad after about 3-4 passes. Results after the first pass:
http://i.imgur.com/g73g60y.jpg
That was more than enough to go looking for smallies. Got this really good one right off the bat:
http://i.imgur.com/zglWUzP.jpg
But that was the last SMB of the day, unfortunately. The dink stripers kept eating all my shad, and I kept having to move around to avoid them. Was able to get a decent largie to complete the trifecta for the day (along with some dink LMB).
http://i.imgur.com/WsA3TMu.jpg
Overall, got maybe 25 or so striper (at least 2/3 dinks though), 12 LMB (10 dinks), and 1 nice SMB. Freezer is full of striper filets already, so all were C&Red. Lure of the day (and of the whole month) was flukes. I could have fished nothing but a white ice regular fluke with chartreuse tail on a darter head, or super flukes weedless/weightless, all day long. But smoking shad and albino were working as well. . I think the color matters less than the action. Also a killer rig for open water is a fluke on a keitech tungsten ball head. Pop-and-slack retrieve makes it walk the dog underwater, which drives the stripers crazy. That one got me over 45 stripers last Friday. Thanks to Tackle Express for that tip. Added benefit of flukes is the single hook – much easier to unhook them and flip them back into the water, and no risk of sinking a treble into my hand on a head-shake.