Oahe

Hi folks does anyone know what happened to the wall eyes on Oahe? Overfished, dieoff, etc. Really a shame this has happened!

[WallyWarrior]

I don't know the answer to the problem, but overfishing doesn't seem like it would be the issue. I have been up there a lot over the last 6 years and you really see very few boats for the amount of water up there. If I was worried about overfishing, in the sd regions anyway, it would be about sharpe.


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[minkman]

I asked the SD Fisheries professionals about that. They are having a tough time assessing why the walleye fishing was bad this year on Oahe. They suggest at this point they think numbers are down some and maybe most walleyes are feeding on herring very deep. Like 80 feet down. +++If thats the case , when they come back up and are more fishable, they could be dandy fish. One more thing ,to me it seemed like before the 4th of July fishing was pretty good but after the 4th they were gone .That kind of indicates they went someplace like very deep. Sure agree with you that I hope nothing happened to them. Beautiful place to fish !

Although I have found no one to confirm, I'm pretty sure it's mt lions.

[mjayn]

How bad was the fishing? I went to MN for my spring trip this year but was considering a walleye trip to the Dakotas(Bitter Lake, Oahe, a few others). Haven't started planning next years yet, sounds like Oahe should be off my short list.

[mgrandick]

I didn't fish Oahe this year but fished Francis Case and Sharpe. Both were terrible on my trips there. I've been fishing the system since 1995 and it was the first time it was even close to this bad...for me. I heard the down deep theory also but how do they really know?
Mike Grandick

[goosechaser]

I made a 4 day trip up there the 3rd week of May. Our average fish was probably in the 16-17 inch range. We did not limit everyday but caught a fair amount of fish. I heard that by the 4th of July most of the fish were deep. By looking at some of the tournament results there are fish there just not a lot of big one like in the past. I still wonder if keeping all those minus 15 inch fish a few years ago was the thing to do. If the fish are staying deep they are safe from me. I'm not the best at fishing water deeper than 35 feet.

[clawman]

Originally Posted by sd guest

Although I have found no one to confirm, I'm pretty sure it's mt lions.

No way!!
Wolves, lots of wolves! It is always the wolves

[minkman]

Bumping this post to the top of the list with the hope of someone having new information at this time .

[Fisher-man]

This is a tough one to figure out. I have only been fishing Oahe for the past 6-7 years, and have had a really mixed bag.

But, last year was really strange. I was there for 8 days in early June, and for the first 4-5 days we had trouble putting any fish in the boat. We would catch a nice 17 incher, maybe two, and they would shut down. Couldn't find them again. We went all up and down the lake from Spring Creek, but the wind kept us out of the Cheyenne.

We did run into a couple days of really good SMB fishing, which was a hoot. But the eyes were hard to find. The good news was that the fish we did catch were all over 15, with a few in the 20" range.

The SDGFP folks are naturally a year behind in their study. 2016 should come out soon...here is the 2015 report:

https://gfp.sd.gov/fishing-boating/t...eys/lake-oahe/

I ran into a couple tournament guys last year, and they did really well. But they were fishing the windy shores, in 5' of water. We tried, but it was just no fun getting hammered like that. Hoping for a better year this year.

I am planning on parking my trailer and boat there for a couple months and just running back and forth from Denver as much as I can.