Lake thermocline ?

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Glocktogo

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Never thought about the moon! I'll be fishing 72 hours straight, so when would the fishing be best, day or night?
Usually late evening or early morning for cats is best. I also refer to the In Fisherman solunar calendar for additional times. You can select species and zip code for accurate times. I've found them to be fairly accurate in most cases except when weather patterns interrupt things.

http://www.in-fisherman.com/solunar-calendar/
 

dennishoddy

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Watch for the thermocline and set your jugs above it. Blues will go below to feed, but there is little oxygen there, and you will be bringing in dead fish.
 

Master Carper

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Well, the fishing was great, made myself sick from the heat, and nothing went as expected, except for catching fish. Three day total was as follows:

Blue cats -

10 lbs.
16 lbs.
23 lbs.
42 lbs.
59 lbs.
62 lbs.
64 lbs.

Channel cats -

Nine fish 7 to 9 lbs.

14 lbs.
16 lbs.

Flatheads -

29 lbs.
42 lbs.
47 lbs.
49 lbs.

The thermocline made absolutely NO difference in catching these fish! A lot of fish were caught at 7 feet and the bigger fish over 30 lbs. we're caught in holes as deep as 82 ft.. Game Wardens checked me twice and said they were NOT surprised by the bigger fish being in much deeper water. They said they will hole up for long stretches at a time, when the water gets warm and that if you put bait close to them, they are more than willing to eat...

With all my prep time on the jugs and getting them ready, I caught "0" fish on them! The fun part though, they were all caught on rod and reel. My fish finder was the most valuable piece item taken on this trip, and we'll worth the high price tag. Fish that were located less than 3 ft. off the bottom, more often than not were the ones caught, once they were located. My bait was set to float 10-15 inches off the bottom, and probably 80% of the time when I set up on a catfish, I caught it. The other time, I figure is must have been a spoonbill, but that was just speculation between me and Game and Fish...

The smaller catfish, being consistently caught right at the 7 ft. mark, was under a float and out over deep water...

No idea why the jugs did not produce any fish, other than maybe because my leaders were too big, which was 120 lb. tarred nylon line...

Bait used was spoonbill liver and chunks of fresh frozen spoonbill...

I think I'm done fishing for a while. At least until the weather starts to turn cold!
 

Master Carper

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Thank you!

It's been many years since I have fished 72 straight hours, and these old bones can tell it! I bet I won't never do that again!

Once I got my fish finder figured out and learned exactly where the fish were, and how to locate them on the graph, that made all the difference in the world. This being so fun and fascinating is why I had to make myself stay after it. Locate a big fish just off the bottom and drop a bait down to it, and within 30 minutes you either had a fish or you started searching for another one...
 

dennishoddy

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Agree, hell a a haul of fish.
Can't under stand why the fish didn't work on the jugs, or if there was actually a thermocline.
We just got back from the Beaver Lake area and spent a day boating, but keeping an eye on the locator. They are dumping water below the dam, so there was no thermocline because of the current that didn't allow it to develop. I suspect that is the case.
The ODW has been cautioning against fishing too deep during the summer periods, because of fish kill due to low Oxygen content in the water below the thermocline.
 

dennishoddy

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Thank you!

It's been many years since I have fished 72 straight hours, and these old bones can tell it! I bet I won't never do that again!

Once I got my fish finder figured out and learned exactly where the fish were, and how to locate them on the graph, that made all the difference in the world. This being so fun and fascinating is why I had to make myself stay after it. Locate a big fish just off the bottom and drop a bait down to it, and within 30 minutes you either had a fish or you started searching for another one...
Lowrance or Garmin?
 

Master Carper

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I had asked you about this one before. It is a Lowrance HDS-12 Gen 3 and it is an amazing piece of equipment.

I don't know about the low oxygen content at the deeper holes, but I will have to say that those bigger fish that were caught in 60+ feet of water were very fat and healthy! I also rembered to bring them up s-l-o-w and it was still fascinating to watch all those bubbles come to the surface when they burped...

One story from my trip. I'm fishing out of my little 10 ft. Pelican boat Sunday morning at around 5 am.. I have three large fish that are just a couple of feet off the bottom, which was 92 feet deep, so the fish were at around 88 feet deep. I drop a line off each side of the boat, and put the rod's in the boat's rod holders. Both baits are one to two feet off the bottom. I'm watching and studying the fish finder, and a few minutes later, the rod on the right side doubles over. I wait a good ten seconds and figure the fish has hooked itself. What felt like a cement block coming to the surface, was one of the 59 lb. blue cats. After getting it in the boat and taking measurements of it, I slipped it back into the water. While I was resting from that battle, SOMETHING hit the rod in the other holder! I stood up to grab the rod and I thought my boat was going to tip over! My 9 ft. rod tip was touching the water and I could not get it out of the holder. The rod started cracking and instead of taking a chance of losing both the fish and rod, I used my fillet knife to cut the line and as soon as I did, the rod snapped back and busted in three pieces. After recovering from the shock of everything that happened so fast, I could only speculate on what I was hooked into! A giant catfish? A very large spoonbill that somehow got hooked in the tail? Or what???

Regardless, this was the fishing trip of a lifetime, and after getting caught up on some much needed rest, I'm thinking October would be a good time to go fishing again. Only this time, I won't push my self to the limit and take things not quite so seriously...

Maybe I can try Lake Keystone and see what happens there...

On the jugs, I still don't know why I didn't catch a single fish off them, and I was very disapointed because of that. I was really looking forward to chasing those jugs down and seeing just what may be attached to the other end of the line. Oh well....... maybe next time!
 

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