Chamberlain SD bite?

[Tiny_Guy_SD]

Any thing going on? Where and how, if you would please.

[Skis]

Fished Friday, Saturday, & Sunday. Weather changed every day, but we still managed to find fish. Thursday we fished the bluffs by White River and north by Crow Creek. Caught fish both places, though the size was better south. Saturday, just fished north and actually fished further north than Crow and caught a limit, releasing all of them, biggest was 21", I believe. Sunday, went north again and only managed 3 fish before the wind got wild!

The fishing wasn't hot and heavy (no huge numbers), but the sizes were good. I think the whole weekend, if we had kept all of our keepable fish, only one would have been under 15".

Skis,
Where do you think the river is at in terms of the spawn? Would you say its about over based on the fish you caught? What was the water temps? Heading out there soon and was curious about that.
Its great catching all these fish over 16, 17 inches but the scary part is we haven't been catching very many under that. They just don't seem to be there. Dropping water levels after the last couple years' spawn seems to be really hurting the river. Just my observation though.

[Skis]

Females we caught were not spawned out. Males are milking though. Temp was about 50 degrees.

[MapnSD]

Skis
The usace show the river at 1354 feet. Would this be considered low by folks that fish there alot like yourself, or is it about average?

It looks like Lake Sharpe ranges from 1420 to 1423 for an operating range, whereas Lake Francis Case ranges from 1350 to 1375.

Mike
Mike's Maps

[Skis]

Tell you what Mike. I go by the water that is in American Creek by the ramps there to tell me good, bad, or otherwise. The worst day, there was 18 inches of water in there about 2 years ago. Last weekend, there was 8 feet. I would consider it normal right now in looking at the last couple of years. I didn't fish there much when the water was considered "normal" by the locals!! You can see looking at the rip rap that the river is down considerably from its peak (12-15 feet).

I was there Thurs - Saturday. Water level looked around 5 feet or so below the water lines on the rip rap. It was about normal to us, we've only been going out there since 1998. Even though we caught limits of slot fish, we did catch more fish smaller than the slot. So hopefully this is a good indicator that there are good year classes coming in the future. We fished in the Crow area. My partner and I did catch some trolling with leadcore north of the I90 bridge. Alot of guys fishing in the wood. We only caught 1 in there. We caught 95% of our fish on lindy rigs, they were up and had little interest in jigs. Chartruse Green produced best.

It was the first time that we actually had good weather and OK winds for the entire 3 days. Hope this helps those of you heading out there.

Good Luck!!

The worst I seen it was this winter. There was no water(literally none) from the bridge towards the marina at American Creek. As the bite goes. I know the guys that won Scott Lewis' tournament on saturday and they were all the way up to the dam by the spillway. The one guy caught and released a nine pounder on friday. They pulled plugs in 11-15' of water. The smaller the bait the better. The bite was also on down at White River pulling #5 shad raps, best luck was on blue/white in deep water 18-22'. That's about all I have. Headed to platte this weekend see if we can find some fish down there.