May 11 fishing report

[vonreed]

I was up there on the warm water side 3 times with the flood gates.  I saw lots of little baitfish swimming around a couple times.  I bet everything has been eating good this last week. Fishing wasn't real great but the variety was wonderful.  I fished the middle of the day during not so great hours.  Caught lots of smallmouth, kentuckys, a couple largemouth, white bass, rainbows, 1 brown trout, goggle eye, and 1 nice walleye. 

[Phil Lilley]

Babler said he saw smallmouth busting on shad this morning between Fall and Short Creek... big smallies.

May be time to swim a swimming minnow up there.

[Ham]

Phil, I would if I was there. I’m handcuffed to a weed eater today. The Warden took me off the mower once I had the grass cut and put me on weed eating detail. 

[Phil Lilley]

Just got back in.  Working a variety of jigs from well below FC to Trout Hollow and only landed 6 rainbows, had 4 more on.  No best colors - sculpin/ginger and sculpin/peach I guess got more bites.  White - 0

High sun though... Babler said 6-8 am was best bite.

[Bill Babler]

Very light boat traffic for a Saturday and only a couple of guide boats, Lisek and I.  He started at Short Creek with a Power Worm and I started at Fall Creek drifting minnows.  All along the way from FC to SC brown bass were chasing shad and also busting some small trout.  Several times we saw trout being chased on the surface by nice SM.

I was just amazed that these trout did not want a minnow we had one fish from FC to SC ramp and I switched to a power worm 7' under an indicator.  Immediately we had a double.  Why in heck with the water holding shad did they want that stupid pink worm?

We started at 6 and from 6:30 to 8:30 we wacked them really good.  At that time on that stretch the sun hits the water pretty hard and it was over.  Early and late had been the key up top with the gates open on the shad fly for me too.

Threw a spoon at the brown bass for a while but no takes, but I bet a jerk bait or a swim bait would have caught them.  At that time we were to busy catching trout to change.

Had one pretty nice male rainbow but could not get it to post.  I sent it to Phil so he might be able to post it.  Most all the fish were just completely full of scuds and midge larva.  They fought hard and were really thick across the back.  We were catch and release today but we could have put a very respectable string of 12 to 15 inch fish together.  Lisek said he thought they were restricted area fish that had come down when the water shut off.  Regardless, they need to scurry back up there or someone will be eating petty well.

[Bill Babler]

5-15-18  Follow up;

With two units and a level of 706.5 fishing is just about as good as it gets.  There is enough water movement and depth to get just about anywhere you want to fish.  We are currently working a corporate retreat out of Lilleys'  I believe this morning we had 6 guides each taking from 4 to 6 clients per boat.

I fished the restricted zone from Andy's into the keep zone to just above Short creek dragging a tandem fly set with an egg and scud combo, using a 1/8 oz weight.  We made 4 passes in 4 hrs. catching 12 fish per pass with the best a couple of chrome bright 15 inchers that jumped several times.  The size 12 grey scud caught I'm guessing about 90%

Surface temp was 48 degree and the smallmouth are still chasing shad especially from Fall Creek to Short Creek on the Channel side.  We caught several trout that spit up shad, with some of the shad being 4 inches in length.  You can also see single and very small groups of shad skimming right under the surface.  Never a big school like TR but for sure enough to keep our fresh stocking of SM interested.

And NO MDC did not stock any smallmouth, they stocked themselves with a 200 ft. plunge thru the flood gates the last couple of weeks.

Chuck from Anglers said he was the only guide in the upper restricted zone this morning.  Fishing the same tandem I was dragging he fished them on a fly rod on 10 foot of 6X under an indicator and said they had several trout up to 17" and a constant bite.