Dealing with high, cloudy water

[dnj21]

Headed down this weekend for Spring Break, looks like water will still be a little high and on the cloudy/murky side.  Any good tips for dealing with this in zone 1 & 2?  I don't mind standing there all day trying things, but I mostly want the seven year old to catch a few before she gets bored.  Spin or fly, doesn't matter.

Assuming we should probably go up a size or two and either white or black so it's visible, but would love some better advice.  I know Oneshot will be on here shortly telling me to get some crawlers and head down to the river, but we'll save that for plan B  

Thank you!   

[JestersHK]

1/8th oz white white/grey or yellow and Black have always been my go too with high stained water down there on the spinning rod.  Fish them off the bottom, you are gonna lose jigs, but you will get bit.  Almost fishing them like you would a hair jig for bass worked well for me.  I'd imagine you could go up a size with a bigger rooster tail and get some action too for the kiddo. Might be easier and a bit less boring than slow jigging for the kiddo.  

If you are fly fishing, big bead headed woolly buggers in olive or red are also worth throwing with a medium to slow strip back.  

I've had some great days there with the water up... Hope you guys can get into them.

[dnj21]

I have had luck with spinners right at the whistle in years past, great idea to start.  Then switch to some deep jigging.  Might take some Crappie jigs along, need something heavy enough to get down far enough in that current.    

Good stuff, thank you for the suggestions!

[brittsnbirds]

Don't expect to catch any size of fish.  I barely found some to take home.  The ones we did keep would have been on the smaller side normally.

 

Rumor has it that Roaring River brought a bunch of small units up and threw them in the river because they were doing work on their hatchery system leaving them with no where to put the fish.  I was down there last Thursday to Monday.  Caught several fish but most were little, 6 - 8".  The water was starting to clear up by the time I left.

FWIW

[NoLuck]

If you’re gonna catch fish you gotta be bouncing the bottom. Try to fish out of the strong current flow if you can. There’s plenty of fish in there. Just find something that works and weed through the small ones. I caught enough fish over the weekend to keep some decent fish if I would’ve wanted too.  1 of about 6-8 fish was a decent fish.  Most were skinny small fish. Not sure why they were as skinny as they were, but they were.  

 

A couple thing to keep keep in mind if you’re fly fishing. Fish enough weight to get your fly down quick. Mend your line as quick as you can and let the fly lead your strike indicator. That’ll get your fly down faster. 

 

As as long as they don’t get another drencher storm the stream should be in decent shape this weekend.  Quite possibly, you’ll be able to use some smaller fly’s and might even see some top water action around 3-4 in the afternoon.  I know I’ll be watching for it. Hopefully I’ll be down Friday night. Maybe Saturday morning. 

[dnj21]

Okay, all spooled up with new line now.   Don’t have as many single hooks spinners as I thought, but that’s easily remedied when we get down there.  

[Old plug]

Invite is high and cloudy maybe you need to tip your lure with a salmon egg or crappie candy if that is league. Or a smell spray of some sort. 

[tjm]

On 3/20/2019 at 2:49 PM, brittsnbirds said:

Rumor has it that Roaring River brought a bunch of small units up and threw them in the river because they were doing work on their hatchery system leaving them with no where to put the fish. 

Really? are you talking new hatched fry? 'cause it's been months and months since they had fish in the raceways... wonder why they would haul them all the way up there instead of the local rivers, hmm

[laker67]

14 minutes ago, tjm said:

Really? are you talking new hatched fry? 'cause it's been months and months since they had fish in the raceways... wonder why they would haul them all the way up there instead of the local rivers, hmm

I think most were 8 to 10 inches that they brought to bssp. Not sure if they stocked their own creek below the park. I heard the number was 30 thousand dropped at bennett. Not sure most creeks could handle those numbers.

[tjm]

I heard they were hauling fish in from other hatcheries all winter to stock the three streams here that they normally cover, I think rumor may be myth. I haven't seen any fish (or water) in raceways at RR since early fall, they might have disposed of some six months ago. well I haven't been over there for about a month, I'll ask a bio when I see one. Crazy if they haul fish from here to BSSP and then haul fish from Taney to Neosho, but anything is possible I guess.

Yes they stocked the RR and Capps and Hickory every month according to info I got, and according to what I was told once a week or so in the Park during C&R to keep the numbers up.