View Full Version : other fish question
Ok,..you guys are so knowledgeable about all things fishing (BTW anyone ever caught a Wahoo?) Perhaps someone has seen this and knows why it happens. On the lake I grew up on, in mid NY state,every fall the crappie and sometimes the white perch, sort off school up and come to the surface. They have their fins out of the water and move slowly in very close to each other. If it was in the spring I would suspect it was a spawning dance or something,...If the lake is very still you can see dozens of these groups and there are certainly more beyond your immediate sight,..there must be hundreds of crappie in each "pod". I'm always amazed that this number of one species of fish are in this lake,..(that is,.. with all these fish,..hard to realize there is room for ANYTHING else) The rest of the year you can always catch some,..but the lake doesn't seem to be teaming with them,..They don't seem to be feeding,..again moving very slowly,..but they ARE active,..you can't draw a spinner through these pods w/o catching one and they are scrappy when they hooked. no hatches seem to be occuring,.anyone ever see this,...I posed this to the Crappie board,...mostly southern fellas there,..I think they think I'm daft,...they have never seen this, any ideas?
If the water temp is around 50 degrees, it has to do with turn over. Probably the lake is deoxygenated due to decaying vegitation coming up to the surface. That would be my best guess.
groovymoe
11-07-2001, 05:27 PM
I have seen this same thing occure in an upground Resevoir in Northwest Ohio. The fish were Whitebass and they swam in the same massive school. We followed the school casting and catching just like you described. We also saw an interesting thing, this school seemed to split into 2 schools and then just turn the water into a frenzy with shiners jumping, Whitebass jumping, just a real big feeding buffet. I would guess what you saw may have been a similar occurence of the school looking to "herd" shiners together for a feeding ambush. Just a guess.
groovymoe
bigfish1965
11-07-2001, 07:05 PM
I would guess a combination of the previous two posts. The fall roll over at first tends to concentrate fish and baitfish. After a good wind, the oxygen and temperature becomes uniform across the lake and fish scatter.
Tracy
11-07-2001, 09:04 PM
Nope..... just fish being fish!
Tracy
hummmmm the o2 SEEMS to be OK as you can catch fish at this time at much deeper depths,..these guys don't seem to be looking for air,and again,... so many and so tight together,..looks like you can walk on em,..and so many of these pods...separated by 50-200 feet. they don't seem to be herding as far as I can tell because if these very tight pods,..I guess I'm surprised that no one sees this behavior in crappie in other lakes (I did get one E-mail from a guy in southern Il. that said they did the same on his lake) You can generally catch one with every cast. I'm not sure this lake gets much of a turn over,..fairly shallow,..I think the ave depth is about 12 feet,..some areas of 20-25,..the "deep spot" is 32',...
Our boat was fortunate to get into whitebass doing just what you were explaining yesterday morning - and we were fishing the Mississippi river where turnover is not a factor - the gulls keep telling us where they were 'ganging' up on the shade - when the gull left - the catching fish was over.