Going Shocking Today

[Justin Spencer]

Getting ready to head out shocking with MDC today. Doing Kelly to Blair. If you are coming to the NFoW this week, tomorrow they are shocking Patrick to James, then back to Kelly to Blair on Wed. and Patrick to James again on Thurs. No shocking between Blair and Patrick (I guess me shooting at them the last few years as they went by led them to skip this section).

I'll let you know how we do.

[gotmuddy]

what kind of rig do they use to shock with in a river that small?

[Nortrad]

Will the current stun the stripers, and, will they be released back?

[Gavin]

Have a blast....They have a couple different shock rigs...the one they use on the Current is an old Lowe Paddlejon with a 5hp...There's a picture of it on the link below......Fishing will be slow for a couple days after...The shock rig kills tons of minnows and the fish gorge on them.

http://streamsideadventures.com/features/current-river-shocking.html

[Nortrad]

So the humungous stripers will not be affected?

[Brian Wise]

If the stripers are affected they will not do anything with them unless Justin takes it upon himself to stab them in the face with a bowie knife when they surface.

I had this conversation with AJ Pratt in 2008 when the stripers moved into the river after those floods and he said that basically MDC has a no kill policy and would be forced to move the fish and keep them alive and there is no good way to move fish that large in any numbers......BUT exactly like back then MDC shocked a certain part of the river VERY recently and didn't make it overly known, for some reason.

[Brian Wise]

I'm just wondering where all the stripers that were on the upper end ended up......they are ghosts, gone.

Justin, you going to be on all of the shocking floats?

[Justin Spencer]

Here's the report, shocked from Lamb Shoal to the hole above cave riffle. Biggest rainbow was in that first section and was just under 22", with several others pushing 20 in that sample. I was most surprised by the number of nice smallies, biggest was about 17" but lots of legal fish. Saw very few browns until below the falls although there were a few triploids that they stocked in March that made it up that far. The hole above cave riffle produced probably 4 browns over 20" with the biggest being a 26" monster. I have a few pics to download and then I'll post them. If you catch a fish with a clipped tail fin, that came from this sample (I was the tail clipper) they will be recapturing on Wed. to get their population estimates.

No stripers were seen and I only saw a few shad down toward Blair so I guess maybe they moved down with that rain we had 2 weeks ago. I know there are still some above the dam at dawt.

And no Brian, today was my only day, too much work for me!

When I said lots of legal fish I was thinking 15" was legal so I really meant lots of 15" fish.

[Gavin]

Nice...that is a ton of work! Back & hands were sore from picking up fish and clipping fins.

[Nortrad]

Good job man. Hopefully our group will get into some fish next week.