Bob Babcock
11-14-2001, 10:43 AM
I just got back from Presque Isle on monday and was a bit disapointed in the number of Ciscos we found on the lake. The water temps were around 42 and the full moon had occured the week before. I heard that John Gillespie caught a 52" fish on Trout the previous monday while fishing with Rob Manthei. I also heard that they were fishing shallow bouncing the rocks and the ciscos were spawning there. I don't know what the water temps were on Trout, but I would have to guess that they were 42 or even warmer since trout is a little bigger that Presque Isle. My guess is that the spawn occured on Presque Isle the week before as well. I assume the full moon played a larger role than the actual water temps. The only baitfish we encountered on our trip was an area just outside of where Ciscos may have spawned. The area has a creek that runs into the lake. We only saw three small clouds of bait in this area. The rest of the lake seemed devoid of bait. Obviously the lake is large enough that we could have missed something, but other fishermen we talked to didn't even see what we saw. I thought Presque Isle had a reputation for huge schools of Cisco. Where we searching in the wrong spots or has the lake gone sterile?
On a side note regarding fishing suckers on Cisco based lakes. We only had one follow the entire weekend, but had three pick-ups on suckers. None of the suckers got eaten though. All of them were in good enough shape to be reused the next day. We did manage to boat a small 32"er that didn't let go of the sucker until it was in our net. One other fish, about 44", didn't let go until she was boatside. After the third fish did this we changed from circle hooks to quick strikes and didn't get bit again. While casting we used mostly bulldawgs, countdown and original straight model depthraiders. All of the fish came from steep breaks that went from 20' to 32' of water. All of the fish were about 15' down suspended on the break in about 28' of water.
On a side note regarding fishing suckers on Cisco based lakes. We only had one follow the entire weekend, but had three pick-ups on suckers. None of the suckers got eaten though. All of them were in good enough shape to be reused the next day. We did manage to boat a small 32"er that didn't let go of the sucker until it was in our net. One other fish, about 44", didn't let go until she was boatside. After the third fish did this we changed from circle hooks to quick strikes and didn't get bit again. While casting we used mostly bulldawgs, countdown and original straight model depthraiders. All of the fish came from steep breaks that went from 20' to 32' of water. All of the fish were about 15' down suspended on the break in about 28' of water.