Wednesday, April 9th:
Wednesday Russ, Jake, and I loaded the yaks up and drove over to Rocky Fork Lake to do some crappie fishing. We stopped at Bayview Bait and Tackle and grabbed a few dozen minnows. From there we had a decision to make....where to fish? The lake had received 3" of rain 3 days earlier which had raised the lake 8-10" and reduced visibility/clarity to less than 2" in parts.....which is pretty uncommon for Rocky Fork Lake (The lakes dam is fixed and is not used for flood control.) I knew the crappie had already started moving shallow since the water temperatures were starting to climb into the mid 50's. However, since the shallow areas of the lake had less than 3" of visibility we decided to head over to the deep end and fish shallow structure in the clear water. We spent 3 hours fishing the banks on the deep end of the lake with only a small bluegill to show for our efforts. At about 3pm we decided to load the yaks up and head over to a few shallow creek arms to see if we could find crappie in the warmer muddy water.
We made our way to the next boat ramp and started to inspect the water. The water clarity was pretty poor, less than 6". At this point Russ decided to cut his losses and head home, he was pretty certain that we wouldn't find fish and even if we did it wouldn't be enough to salvage our trip. Jake and I unloaded the gear and made our way out into the lake, and as we paddled out toward the main lake we noticed the water getting much clearer. At this point we noticed that we had overlooked one key issue....the wind. It was blowing steadily at 10 miles per hour with gusts upward of 20 miles per hour, gusts so strong that it was taking our hats off our heads. We had already unloaded the yaks and paddled for 5 minutes so we were going to give this spot a shot, at least for an hour or so. We found a submerged tree that extended from the bank to 12 feet of water. 90 percent of the tree was under the water and it appeared that the fish were hanging out just above the tree in 4-6 feet of water. I ran over the tree 3 times with my Hummingbird 346cdi just to make sure I was reading fish and not just a weird part of the tree. After three passes I was sure that the clouds above the tree were fish hanging out just above the tree, the question now was could we catch them in this wind? Jake and I anchored 30 feet apart up wind of the tree and began tossing floats out. The wind was so bad at times that we actually started dropping floats set at 3.5 feet -4 feet deep off the side of our kayak and only giving them a few feet of line. This way the wind could only blow them so far before the line would stop our float from drifting. Less than five minutes after anchoring we found our first crappie....and I was quick to send Russ a picture message of it.
At this point I started dropping one float off the side of my kayak, and with my second rod I was throwing a ice jig tipped with a wax work under a float set at 2' deep. I was working the jig and wax worm along the banks and jigging it back to me. A few minutes later I hooked a small fish on the ice jig and wax worm and as I was fighting it my other float with a minnow disappeared. I set the rod with the small fish down and set the hook on the other rod....after a little skillful maneuvering I got both fish into the yak. (And again, I was quick to send Russ a picture to let him know what he was missing.)
Soon the wind started to die down and we began making drifts with our minnow floats. Jake quickly discovered that the fish had moved shallow and were feeding on the banks. He started catching fish after fish right off of the bank. He quickly landed 10 crappie to my 1, and at that point I made the switch from fishing 20 foot off of the bank in 4-8 feet of water to fishing 5 feet off of the bank in 1 foot of water. The action was pretty steady on the banks, one of us seemed to get a bite every other minute for the next hour. We didn't catch any crappie with size, I'd say that 95 percent of them were between 9.5-10.5". We started to run out of bait about an half hour before dark, Jake was actually down to extremely large minnows and extremely small minnows. (We started the day with 3 dozen bass minnows and 3 dozen crappie minnows each.) He opted to use the large minnows and see if he could stay away from the small crappie long enough to find one with size.
A few minutes later he sets the hook on a fish that takes his minnow mere inches off of the bank. The fish makes a quick run into the tree and starts to work his way into the submerged branches. I have to admit I was surprised that he had hooked a decent fish, crappie on Rocky Fork Lake don't typically get large. I've fished it for almost a decade and have only seen a handful of crappie break 13". I probably asked him three times if it was a good crappie, and each time he'd just look over and smile. Once he got it in the yak he pulled in his anchor and paddled over to me. He had landed a chunky 16.5" largemouth.
The rest of the evening was spent running through our minnows and slaying 9-10" crappie. I'd say we caught around 50 crappie combined (and had at least twice that many bites), 15 bluegill, and 2 largemouth....which wasn't bad for fishing in 20 mile per hour gusts for 4 hours.
Saturday, April 12th:
Saturday I met up with Brad Beals at Rocky Fork Lake. Jake and I had figured the crappie out so I knew exactly where Brad and I were going to fish. We grabbed a few dozen minnows and hit the water. This time around the water had dropped back down to normal pool and was nearly at normal visibility. (12-18" where we were fishing.) Brad and I unloaded the yaks and made our way down the creek arm and out into the main lake, where we discovered that we weren't the only ones who had figured the crappie out. There was a boat that was set up exactly where Jake and I had fished on Wednesday and there were several boats within sight of him. Brad and I paddled along the bank and looked for structure near the spot Jake and I had fished Wednesday, we eventually settled on fishing a spot 30-40 yards away from the boat This was just close enough to watch when he was going to leave, but far enough away that I couldn't cast to any spot that he could cast to even if we both tried. I had told Brad that once that boat moved that we would slip in and get that spot for the hot evening bite. The day started out slow, but we did manage a few fish. The guy in the boat seemed to be doing much better than us but his all seemed to be under 9". At one point I heard him tell another boat that he had 24 keepers and was looking for 6 more to end his day. (He would be looking for those for the rest of the evening.) Brad soon found a hot spot about 20 yards away from me. He was getting crappie 20 foot off of the bank in 3 feet of water near a fallen tree. The bite was never as hot as it was Wednesday when Jake and I fished, but we did start to pick up a crappie here and there. It seemed like we'd catch one every 10 minutes or so. Brad did significantly better than I did, catching 2 to my every 1. He soon filled up his stringer and began working on his second stringer.
We fished until 6:30pm and decided to call it an evening. We both had more fish to clean than we really wanted to clean, and Brad had an hour and fifteen minute drive. We paddled back to the boat ramp and loaded our gear up. I took a picture of my basket of fish......which was no where near as impressive as Brads stringer.
Brand quickly tallied his catch up.....23 crappie. I didn't know what I had until I got home, it turns out I had only kept 13 crappie.
Sunday, April 13th:
Sunday I met up with Jetson, a dedicated carp fisherman that I met off of a fishing forum. He told me earlier in the week that he was going to be carp fishing pretty close to where I lived so I made plans to head out and meet up with him.
On a side note:
I've done my fair share of carp fishing in the past and for the most part I enjoy it as much as any other species of fish. I have often told people that if size, power, and numbers of sizable fish are what they are after then they should strictly carp fish. I've spent enough time fishing to know that I can't go out and catch over 100 pounds of any other species of fish, but on occasions I have been on trips where we have (collectively as a group) landed 200 pounds or more of carp. (Jetson actually showed me a trip in his log book where he had personally gotten over 200lbs in one trip last year as well.) Catfishing, specifically fishing for blue cats, is a close second but I'm not sure that here locally the catfish can compete with carp. I've spent many summers sitting on the banks of Rocky Fork Lake with a box of Wheaties, can of corn, etc. waiting for carp to find my bait, but recently I have been in a carp "Funk". I have witnessed everyone around me catch monster carp.......Jake set his personal best in 2011 with a 35lb monster, Amanda broke her personal best the following year three times in 2 consecutive days with the largest at 28 pounds, and Rylan with his personal best 32 pound carp. While I'm netting everyone's giant carp and taking their pictures I only manage to bump my personal best around from 12lbs. to 15lbs. Since then I have thrown carp aside and focused on other fish.
Back to the report:
I met up with Jetson around 12pm talked for about an hour before I managed to get bait in the water. Jetson had only landed one small fish since sunrise, a small bullhead catfish. I quickly chummed up an area with corn 20 feet off of the bank and tossed my rods out. (I'll not get into rigging now because carp fishing rigging and techniques would take a blog or two of their own........which might materialize this summer but we'll have to see how that goes.) I sat around for the next two hours without the slightest bite....well actually I cant be certain of that because the wind was brutal once again. After a couple hours I checked my rods and re baited. I also threw out a handful of corn where I had casted just in case catfish or carp had already found my other bait. Before I could walk off I noticed one of my rods start to bend. It made a few more bounces and then I grabbed my rod out of the rod holder. I waited patiently for the line to pick up and then I set the hook. I had hooked into something small, but it didn't feel quite right. And then all of a sudden a silver rocket launched out of the water....it was a rainbow trout.
I then proceeded to land an additional 5 trout in the last remaining hours of daylight. I left at about 7pm and drove back home. Jetson, the dedicated carp angler that he is, decided to stay the night and wait for the carp to move in. At 10am the next morning I received a message from Jetson saying that he was giving up and heading home to, he had failed to find a carp.
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