Oberst

Fished 4 days thru the second, and while I brought enough fish home for a couple nice fish fries, it was decidedly spotty. The high water always throws me, but figured my best bet was trolling, since I can have four lines running constantly; that has to be several hundred percent more active bait in the water than casting! Just doesn't work out that way a lot of times. Ran two bottom bouncers behind the boat in 20-35 fow with crawler harnesses most of the time and a plug occasionally. Ran a dipsy diver off one side of the boat with a plug or jig, and ran another rod off the other side with a clip on 4 ounce weight and a plug. First day I got a 20+ inch walleye on one of the crawler harnesses within 5 minutes. You know I was thinking "the next few days are going to be awesome!" Boy is that the kiss of death! Here's what boat looked like with 4 rods running: I was targeting walleye and crappie, and fished from about State Park marina up past Cedar Ridge campground to the bridge. Later that first evening I caught two other walleyes and a couple nice crappie and was thinking i was in the ball park anyway. Next two days were tough. I trolled for hours at a time without anything. Trolled around points and back in big bays. I ran the crawler harnesses off the bottom a foot and a half and the plugs off the side of the boat from 10 to 20 feet down. Then I ran some long lines off planer boards and took the whole rig shallower, around 20 feet. A fish here, and there. Most crappie success was on florescent red jointed Rapala and jig with bright orange swim bait about 4 inches long. Got two bass trolling, 13 + 15 inches. Also, I tried my old reliable jigging with a jigging Rap and small spoons in otherwise reliable points and sunken structure, but saw nothing on the graph and caught nothing that way. That stumped me, especially after floating crawlers over nice structure in 20-30 fow. Dang, not even a catfish! Not a single bluegill! A couple days I dodged continuous thunderstorms and had less fishing time. Taking out Friday a.m. a I talked to a fellow was just docking, and he had two walleye that am casting jigs and crawlers to points. That got me thinking that my approach was maybe too preordained, and I should have switched and tried casting more. Looking at the other recent posts I think some of the other techniques mentioned were more effective, given the amount of lure time in the water. Stockton is always a challenge for me, but man I like the scenic peacefulness of the lake! Water was going down pretty quick as I left, so conditions will be altogether different next time I suspect.

There is a setting on my Humminbird to lower interference; can't remember what it is but it helped a lot when I upped it.

Spent several days at Stockton in the Cedar Creek area, given the weather forecast. I was camping out, and the first morning started with a chill; yikes! Thursday for a last hour and a half of the day I started with minnows in 15-30 feet on a couple points and caught nothing. Figured I might find crappies or a walleye. Friday I cast along flooded brush as I could see other boats doing that. One small smallmouth. Clouds of shad and fish deeper so I trolled down to 50 feet with shad raps, spinner baits, etc. Trolling a spinner bait at 30 feet can't be a usual tactic and I figured fish chasing shad might go for that; they didn't Then did minnows and crawlers on structure with a few bites but nothing. Water temps everywhere around 50. Decided to jig deep; put on a jigging rap and got one walleye in 35 feet. From then on - Sat thru Tues - I decided to stick with jigging, figuring that it's the only way to really fish methodically in deep water, and my live bait wasn't turning up much. Used mostly jigging raps and was in 25 to 35 feet on points and underwater structure. Got some crappie, though I wasn't targeting deep brush piles. Partly because they are a nightmare for exposed hooks. Plus, I wanted some walleye. It worked pretty good; not a ton of fish but every morning and evening I got some; 15-17" size exclusively, plus smaller ones. Just about no bass, which surprised me as I figured there would be some deeper looking for shad. You can see the jigging rap here easily. Note: I tipped the back of the rap with a minnow head or tail. It's slow fishing jigging that deep, but it's all I could figure out. (Snags can kill you; my lure retriever saved a lot of lures but not all.) I tried trolling again after one troller said he got 18 walleye on flicker shads one day, with several keepers. Man, my Alumacraft is set up for trolling better than his boat was but it did me no good running multiple lines all the way down deep. Other days I talked to trollers who had zip. At least thought I'd have fun with white bass, etc going through the huge shad schools but nope. My jigging rap seemed to play itself out by my last day and I couldn't find fish, so I switched to a spoon. Plus I lost most of my raps by then and the wind picked up so I needed something heavy to keep bottom contact. Got a few walleye, a bass and a couple crappie that way. By then I had to go and my trolling batteries were dead as can be. Jigging best works straight up and down; a bow in the line makes that presentation hard and not very effective. I have fished Stockton multiple times over the last couple years and found it a hard lake to figurer a pattern for anything. This was one of my more successful trips, but I really had to put in the hours and only by going to the bottom and sticking with it did my luck change. I never really fished for bass, and a lot of boats were; tossing Alabama rigs along brush and shoreline. Saw some fish caught not a lot. Wish I could have figured out the crappie as I know they are down there but that will be for another time. And there should be a way to get some fish off those shad schools, but beats me. tom boat