Plan was to drive up Friday, meet up with some good friends, camp out 2 nights fishing Saturday /Sunday and make the drive back Sunday evening. Everything went great except for two things; we skunked out Saturday and got rained out Saturday night. We decided to cut and run Saturday midnight getting back home early Sunday morning.
Conditions, the shad are spawning, there are billions of baby shad less the ¼ inch in size around the launch ramps, give them another 6 weeks and the shad should be just the right size for striper candy. Seen very few adult shad most were still deep along with the stripers in 110 to 140 feet of water. Surface water temps averaged 68-70 degrees all over most of the lake. The water visibility is very good at least 15 feet and gin clear.
Talked to a few locals who said so far the striper bite is still sketchy at best, they were targeting small mouth bass and that bite is red hot.
Techniques used, we tried everything, last year we made this trip twice getting 3-4 DD fish with several lost fish each time. This trip trolled the points with u-rigs around the same locations around the dam with no pickups. Tried bait and wait with fresh dead my buddy picked up alive and put them on ice straight from the bait receiver in MDR on Friday and just could not get them to go. I suspect it’s still little early for the stripers to move up and with the pressure change with the rain my timing may have been off.
For all you carp lovers out there, they are rolling and ready to go