Tues. Mar 22 Report.

[Stan Wright]

Water temperature was 76 - 77 degrees and the fish activity level was way down. Saw a few big peacock bass make a run at the flys, but no takers.

Dougie figures that the eggs have all hatches from the spawn last week and the parents have moved the little ones into a nest... Since the water is up another foot, and not too clear... we just couldn't see the spawners.

I'm guessing when the water temperature hits 80 degrees, we'll see more eggs.

Caught a new state record bluegill today... It's still out there. On the BogaGrip scale it registered 1/2 way between 1/2 and 3/4 pound marks.
(state record is 8 oz) It hit the little white 2" Senko. Amazing.





We also caught some small Peacock Bass, and Nick also caught this LMB.

[marcusn]

nice penn! what is that a 4400? or a 4300? pound test? cool rod too, what brand is it? so many questions haha

[Ca_Bass]

I was thinking about your report a little and here's my analysis, so Sunday the fishing was amazing. Don't know about Monday but you said Tuesday it was not so good would be curious to see how it was today being it was still pretty cold I would say not great.. I don't watch the weather much, but it seemed as if a front has came through begining Sunday. The past few days have been abnormally cold and Sunday was the first day in awhile that it had been chilly. So we are either in the middle or end of the front. The first day a front comes through suprisingly really increases fish activity, I guess it's natures way of preparing cold blooded creatures for periods of cold temperature where they will be lethargic. Ever since I can remember first analyzing bass fishing the first day of a front the fishing is well above average. Then it drops of drastically. It also seems like it takes 1 to 2 days after the front passes for the fishing to stabalize.

Not sure what tucs do during front probably similar to bass but harder to fish for because they don't usually eat plastic worms and similar items. Once a front rolls through you need to slow down and usually go deep. Sometimes you can key in on shallow flats that warm up more quickly but from my experience bass will usually go deep and find more stable water temps. Use slow moving lure like plastic worms, jigs and suspending/soft jerkbaits fished with really long pauses sometimes upwards of a minute if you can handle it. I can't count how many times I've been picking a backlash and as soon as I get it squared away I reel in my slack and there's a fish on, even caught some big tucs on a jerbait while picking backlashes...I should call this "technique" something. They're not gonna be flying around at full speed when they're cold, I know I don't.

Just my 2 cents.

Dougie sounds like he's on to something as well! I know I've noticed a lot of tucs in some of the grassy coves down towards the south fork guarding fry in past years. Not sure if they move there of if they just happend have spawned there. Maybe it's easier for them to guard their babies in shallower water..plus it's warmer so I bet they have a better survival rate.