Dec 5-9 Stockton

[Oberst]

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

[Dutch]

That lake can be tough.  The crappie I have been catching are from 25-33' deep.

[Ham]

Come back next Spring when all is right with the world. It will change your opinion that the lake is difficult to pattern.

It seems like you had to work for what you got, but you had some success. Sounds like fun to me. I enjoyed Stockton the one (extended) trip I made there.

[dan hufferd]

Cut the front hook off of the rap it will help. Great post very close to my experience this time of year. At least you have a December walleye !