Alumacraft190

Well after much debate it looks like mother nature is going to hold us off at least for now. Pushed trip back 2 weeks with the weekend forecast showing solid storms, wind, and rain. Hopefully they dont shut off or get to main lake between now and 1st weekend of April. With all this rain in the forecast it will be interesting.

Good deal, thanks for the info Dan.

Coming in Wednesday night, staying down near Horseshoe. Looking forward to hitting it hard for the striper. Has the mud line settled already or has there been just enough rain to keep it moving through? Weather for next week looks breezy and like a roller coaster or temps...hoping for the best!

I know water temps were pushing 60 prior to the rains. Anyone think these rains will work one way or another towards pushing the striper down into the main lake or towards the bridge/prairie creek areas? Last year was probably the extreme, but end of March we limited at Blackburn area so I'm wondering if thats going to be the ticket for us again in 2 weeks when we come. Without the rains I was anticipating point 12 area, but maybe the rain wont impact it either way.

We fish 8-10 rods from our boat. I use 6 7' power plus rods 2 9' rods, and 2 8'6" rods along with plainer boards to get the 9th and 10th rods out. I actually haven't had any problems with the setup unless I am trying to turn too tight. The key is weighting your lines appropriately along with the longer rods in my limited experience.

Dont even start talking about the fish going north already! Im due in towards end of March. Had a succesful trip a year ago same time in horseahoe bend area with the high water/mudline, would like to think we will do the same only a bit further south this go round. This comes after a November trip that saw me anticipating a mid lake bite but in reality my most successful day was at point 5, lol. So I suppose its par for the course.

I left the lake on Sunday around 11 AM. I was fishing point 5 area and had traveled the water everywhere between ford creek and point 5. The most activity on sonar I saw was toward point 5, with water temperature around 68.5-69 degrees. If you guys have had the weather we've had since Sunday I'm sure those fish have got to be starting to head south as Jack alluded to with his comments.

J-doc that how-to is fantastic! As a newb to the board I hadnt seen that, thanks for sharing I love reading those type of threads. Dan- next time be sure and show the gps screenshot as well :). Jk

The one that kept me scratching my head was around points 6 and 7, you can see in the first image what would appear to be fish and I'm just not buying it unless they were gar. That didnt have me jumping up and down until I got into the activity you see up above it, sadly we were the first boat through and then 3 other joined and of the 4 boats only 1 fish was pulled. J-Doc- I'm a bit of a lowrance nerd having worked for a local wichita dealership for years and selling the lowrance products up until a few years ago. If you have questions I love talking electronics, dont hesitate.

Nice report Dan, thanks for making me go back to feeling like I went wrong somewhere along the way!! Lol I wish I hadn't had to leave at 11 on Sunday to head home. Just felt like things were improving or I had finally found more active fish. First image- saturday and didnt catch a thing out of that, gone after 3 passes. 2nd image- had 3 hits (boated 1, had 1 to the boat, missed 1).

The weather was insanely beautiful start to finish, my only regret is I had to come back to Kansas and reality, one thing is for sure though, I'll be checking in with you guys and continuing to try to learn, would love to hook up with one of you guys when I come back in March just to see the lake through the eyes of someone who fishes it more than 2x a year. I feel a lot more comfortable in March since we all know its HB and below, but there is something about this Fall thing that makes me want to come back and fogure it out, lol. I know from previous years to not bother in Oct due to turnover, but I hope to return next November with March being a sure thing.

Day 3 of 3... scouted across between point 6, point 7, and ford creek with very little fish marked. From there we went north towards point 5. Appears there were several boats on point 5 so I stopped short of 5 and fished the rock pile and island area. Fish were in there for sure. Pulled one out, missed one, and lost one at the boat between 830 and 11. Fish seemed to be holding tight spacial-wise with 2 of the 3 on planer board and the one missed fish on down line. All in all it was a tough weekend for the out of stater, but there isnt a place id rather be. I look forward to hitting it again in March when Im not having to search through nearly as much water when I only have 2.5 days to get a program together. Thanks to each of you that provided input, I know I really appreciate the value and passion you guys bring to fishing what is my favorite place in the world.

Glad to hear you found some shad Jack. We have certainly seen them but down deeper (10-20) and we dont have a heavy net so weve tried making due with brooders to zero avail, and it isnt because we havent found fish. Stump Bumper- we are seeing the same thing on water temps. I ran to coppermine yesterday and it was the same temp as point 5 today at 70 degrees. When we put in at Larue this morning I saw a 6 as the first digit and nearly jumped for joy, it didnt last though.

Well new day, found new fish, same result. We started in at 6am this morning and found loads of fish that appeared active feeding on bait just below rocky branch marina. Fish were between 20 and 35 fow, but much like yesterday they never came up to topwater. Had down lines all around them but they werent interested in brooders this morning. There was us and 3 other boats fishing a small area so I was making longer passes than I would have preferred, and the fish had cleared out within an hour of finding them. I must say, I'm stumped and running out of time.

Tough go today... but incredible weather this evening, nothing beats the sunset over this lake in my eyes. So thats the good, now for the bad: went north and mysteriously marking loads of fish in 40-60 fow around 6:00, as the evening wore on they seemed to come up in the water column to the 20-30 we had seen most the rest of the day. We marked them consistently but still didnt get any on downlines and never saw anything topwater.

Glad to hear I'm not crazy Dan, that is a lot like I was seeing out there around Ford Creek...fish in 20-40 FOW and very little higher in the water column than that. Unfortunately I couldnt come up with shad so we are brooders all the way. Had probably 2 or 3 times we saw fish come up and take a look just to drop back down on the locator.

Kansas guy here for the weekend- staying at rocky branch, started out ford creek this morning just before sunrise without anything to show for it. Marked a few out in front so we gave it a shot. From there went to point 8 and marked nada so we moved to point 9 where we marked a loy of bait and some fish so we gave it a shot for 45 mins or so in front of coppermine to point 9 with nothing. Im presuming they just havent gotten that far south yet, will focus more north from ford creek this evening/tomorrow.

Nice job Dan, hope your bro enjoyed that. Im heading that way tomorrow, hoping to get in a couple hours in the evening. Prolly get some brooders at hls and dump the boat at prairie creek to try for bait and scout some for Fridays fishing. Based on reports I'm not expecting much to be found but I want to try and get shad and eliminate some water prior to a full day Friday and Saturday. Hope to see you guys out there...

Heres another question for you guys....this time of year are balloons effective with a shorter leader from the balloon to the bait? I've used balloons some in spring but I dont feel like theyve ever been too productive for me.

The guns will be home, but someone might find an eggweight laying in their boat they didn't bring with them!

For topwater do you guys drive around trying to spot them or are you marking fish and setting up on them with free lines and down lines with topwater lures on standby? Ive fished this lake many times in March, so I'm accustomed to pulling live bait and 6-10 rods. I'm anticipating doing about the same with more free lines/planers and hoping to catch them busting surface at some point.

Well coming from a guy who hasnt burned 50 gallons of fuel this year (due to lack of use not efficiency) I look forward to it! Thanks for the report, thats about all I can do is read and ask questions for now.

Wow thanks Dan, I've gone from being concerned the timing was going to be bad to counting down the minutes again since you posted your reports. Come on Thursday! Dan- would you guess starting out at PC and moving north toward RB a week from today to be a good general strategy?

Nice fish, thanks for the report Dan! Looks like I need to make a trip to cabelas for some topwater plugs before coming next week.

Thanks Mike that makes me feel a little better. Having mostly fished it in early spring topwater bite isnt something I have experienced, might be interesting