Pyramid Friday 4/10 - LMB and surprised by stripers
After a long off-season of doing a ton of stuff on the boat, trailer, and tow vehicle, the warming weather meant that it's time again for some springtime bassin'. It felt good to finally get a chance to do all the deferred maintenance and upgrade items I've been meaning to do, tasks including:
Install new fishfinder, Install Airlift-1000 system on the tow vehicle, Replace a bunch of rusty u-bolts on the trailer, Move trailer axle to reduce tongue weight, Repack bearings and replace seals (thanks to Cutbait for the great instructions, though I skipped the Coors light), New trailer tires and tow vehicle tires, Change outboard oil, gearcase lube, impeller, had carbs cleaned and sync'ed, misc other stuff...
I actually took it out on the lake last week for a systems check, but it was just a half-day so didn't get to fish much, plus the 25mph wind blew me off my spots. But today the weather report looked great, particularly the lack of wind, so it was time to do a full day. Brought all the LMB gear, hoping that the bass were getting active for Spring.
Morning was chilly, but no wind to speak of. Water temps were 60-61 all day, which was actually a drop from last week when it was nearly 62. Love it when the main lake is calm and glassy:
Headed to my favorite spot. Literally the first cast resulted in this guy, 3.5lbs on the scale and heaviest fish for the day:
After hooking up so quickly, was hoping for a WFO day, but the rest of the morning was just decent. Picked up a few LMB here and there, all less than 2lbs. No smallies today, unfortunately. Saw lots of empty beds, and not a single occupied one. Either those fish already spawned and left, or perhaps the potential spawners were swimming around the marina area wondering how the heck they got there...
But what surprised me was the shad were up and relatively shallow, which I haven't really seen this time of the year before.
Side and down imaging:
Traditional sonar image:
Sure enough, these shad schools were followed by big schools of stripers as shallow as 20 feet, again something I don't recall seeing this time of year (but maybe my old fishfinder just wasn't picking them up?):
I really had only expected to fish for LMB/SMB, and didn't have my usual trolling setups to go after these guys. Tried sending down a "Little George" into one of those schools, but they wouldn't have any of it. Decided to just stick with the LMB for the rest of the day.
But it was driving me crazy to keep seeing those huge wolfpacks roaming around, and the LMB action wasn't working for me as well as I thought it would.
Finally around 2pm I took some super flukes, put them on the heaviest shakyhead jigs I had, and trolled them as deep as I could get them. Sure enough, managed to boat a nice schoolie on my first pass:
Picked up two more after a few more passes, including a decent 3.2lber, before it was time to go.
It was a bit interesting that the fish I managed to hook up on weren't out of one of those huge schools, but were loners or in small groups.
So the stripers are definitely out there, and you don't need a downrigger to get to them (at least that was the case today). Great conditions out there, with no major weed blooms. However, the jetskis and water tubers are starting to make an appearance, and that will only get worse as the weather warms up.
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Originally Posted by Bassfan
