FishDeepCreek Message Board

Last year at this time.

Icenutter — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 22:24:33 GMT

I thought I would reminisce of what last year at this time looked like. I went back and found a picture from November 27th. Compliments of Getthenet.

Farmers' Almanac Fishing Predictions?

fishing4u2 — Thur, 19 Nov 2009 19:55:39 GMT

Someone here recently shared that they'd put up their open-water gear for the season and were just hibernating while waiting for first ice to arrive. With all the milder weather of late, it looks like it'll be a spell.

While in that sort of hibernating mood, I came across the Farmers' Almanac and of course took a look at the tables purporting to predict (with the usual qualifiers including storms, strong winds, etc) the best and worst fishing days for 2010. Naturally I began to wonder what if any merit these predictions might have for the upcoming ice season. While fish under ice are not completely insulated from the vagaries of weather of course, they are as insulated as they ever get. And fishing through the ice kind of equalizes the degree of difficulty in making a potentially productive presentation; there are no issues with boat control for example, and with modern, lightweight shelters we can still fish in relative comfort even when it would be miserable to be in an open boat.

Then it occured to me that it might be interesting to review how well / accurately predictions were made for just a subset of the dates (specifically, our known best dates ONLY). Why a subset? Well, simplicity for one. Then too, it is entirely possible to have 'false-negatives' by fishing badly (whether using wrong methods, time of day, and/or spending too much time in depths or locations with poor prospects) and catch very little even on days when the fish WERE biting quite well under the ice.

Then I got to thinking that since many of us now carry digital cameras or cell phones, which record the dates of ice fishing trips that went especially well, that collectively we at FDC.com have some as-yet unassembled data to potentially kick around, just for fun.

So here's what I have in mind:  If you'd like to participate, UNDER THIS THREAD post one or more pic(s) from the very best day(s) you enjoyed icefishing at DCL during the winter of '08/'09 - dates you considered to be clearly exceptional in terms of catching fish. Make sure the date(s) are listed, so that they can be compiled. It is NOT necessary that your great day meet some minimum standard. You might have gone out for a short time and done well whether an eye-popping stringer was collected, or not. A pic of a single fish (released or not) will do just fine, so long as it was part of what you considered a particularly productive day.  I guess as long as you are sure of the date, you don't need to post a picture at all (maybe you couldn't or just didn't take any).

Then, we can take a look back at what the Almanac's prediction was for those dates and see how well or poorly they lined up. If the predictions have real merit, we'd at least expect the Almanac ratings (for what turned out to be banner days) to be favorable, right?   I don't think of this casual exercise as being capable of conclusively supporting or de-bunking Almanac predictions, btw. Its just for fun, and to put us all in an ice state of mind.

The only snag I see is that when I briefly searched the net for the 2009 Almanac, I didn't find it (maybe they don't want these predictions tested?). But I figure somebody reading this must have an old copy that can be consulted.   If that's you, please take a clear pic of the fishing predictions table, and post it here as well.

Here's a start on the sample data. My better ice-fishing catches occured on ...
1-26-09
2-09-09
2-22-09
3-05-09

Pictures from last year

shanedoe — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 01:24:48 GMT

Some of the fish me, icematt, and little matt caught. To get you guys in the mood...

Boy were you guys right...Yum

Jared — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:01:40 GMT

I am pretty much exclusively a catch and release fisherman and had previously never kept a fish caught from the lake. However, after hearing all of the fine ice-fisherman on this board talk about how good yellow perch taste I set out in my canoe this weekend to do a little harvesting.
I managed to take a few fat ones out of the lake, brought them home, filleted them and cooked them up Sunday night for my wife and I.

Those things were goo-ood. We really enjoyed them. Looks like I may have to take a few once or twice a year.

I fried them in an egg-wash and a searing flour and panko (Asian breadcrumb) mixture. Thanks for the heads up. Anybody have other ways to prepare them that you swear buy.

Yum Yum.

spoons

bigfish12 — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 01:36:26 GMT

got a good statigy for spoons. sometimes i have trouble with the light for the spoon flash. But what i just found out was rhat is you take one of the glow stick put it on a line and hag it about 1 foot above your lure and then the problem is do you have the prefect light for your spoon.Another advantage is that the light atrachts the fish to your lure.(if you have anty coments please responed)

Daily Laugh

Getthenet — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 05:51:37 GMT

My wife sat down at my laptop when I got up to get a cup of coffee (I was on the Bobbersdown site) and she said "You don't need any more jigs" HA HA HA HA that was a good one, as if you could have too many jigs.

Caught one nice perch on a minnow Sunday which was great because I had been skunked the previous two times out. Thought I'd forgotten how.

Emerald Shiners at DCL?

fishing4u2 — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 05:05:06 GMT

Been thinkin' about all those young-of-year bluegills I found in stomachs during the scorching hot perch fishing I enjoyed last week. No minnows, just sunfish. Hmmm...

Does anyone know if there was any consideration of introducing emerald shiners to DCL in the past? I brought this up with some friends, one of whom seemed to recall there once being some sort of attempt at a forage fish introduction here, but he wasn't really sure. Something about there being some floating nets over by the State Park boat ramp years ago.

I ask about this because it would appear that once they reach a certain size, the top-end predators of DCL seem to lack for a sufficient year-round source of forage. Except for the few that somehow attain jumbo status, so many of the walleye appear comparatively lean. Likewise the largemouth, after reaching perhaps four pounds the one's I see are all head and not much body. Smallmouth from nearby Yock River Reservoir are often described as 'footballs', whereas those from DCL exhibit a perfectly ordinary condition factor. As good as the fishing can be for the various gamefish, am I alone in thinking it might be better still?

There's little doubt that DCL supports plenty of crawfish, but these burrow and go dormant for a significant part of each year. We have golden shiners of course, and I'm only guessing here about their living habits, but they may well seek (and find) refuge in the abundant weedbeds, and thereby become less vulnerable to predators. Baby yellow perch make reasonable forage, but once thinned out they grow rather rapidly to a good size here and certainly outpace the average predator year-class. Its likely that the same scenario applies to bluegill sunfish - useful to a point as forage, but then less than ideal to take the gamefish to the next level as the window of opportunity eventually closes.

Why do I think emerald shiners are worthy of consideration? There's what appears to be a very healthy plankton population for them, so perhaps there's also an opportunity for an ever-present, schooling, open-water baitfish that could fill seasonal gaps and otherwise round-out the forage options for piscivores. And being so long and lean, even at their largest, emeralds remain bite-sized for most predators, and so they might hold unlimited promise for limited gapes. They tolerate cold water well enough, are native to the Ohio River watershed, and are lovely to look at, so they've got that goin' for them too.

Frankly, I'd be surprised and maybe disappointed if this hasn't already occured to MDDNR fisheries folks. In an age of zebra mussel veligers and other exotics it may not be as easy as it once was to find a safe source (unlike say Lake Erie), but it might still be worth investigating.

Your thoughts/opinions? Am I overlooking something?

'4u2

Old Methods

Mikeguard01 — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 01:21:11 GMT

In anticipation of the hard water season just wanted to know if anybody has tried any of these old perch methods I've read about years ago. The first one was to drill a hole adjacent to the hole your fishing and drop some bright red and yellow flags on a line to the bottom with a weight. The bright colors are suppose to attract perch.

The second is to take a 4 inch section of copper tubing flatten the ends. Then drill a hole in each end and add split rings. On one end attach a 6 inch dropper with a gold hook. The other end to the main line. Then lower the rig to the bottom. Lift and drop the copper tubing off the bottom to stir up the sediment to attract perch. Then lift the tubing one foot off the bottom and wait for a strike.

Mike

Marcum v. Vexilar

StrikeLead — Thur, 12 Nov 2009 01:23:56 GMT

I have a very close friend that will be having his rookie ice season with me this year. His wife is buying him ice gear for Xmas....he is starting from scratch other than what I give him.

Anyway, she wants to buy him a flasher. This guy used my Vex FL18 & FL20 last year in what was his only time on the ice and liked them. I think his wife wants to buy him one but it's a bit costly with all of the other new gear they need to buy.

Question.......last year I heard a lot of good things about the new Marcums. And, they are considerably cheaper than Vexilar. Should I suggest to her a LX-3 or an LX-5? Or, should they just fork out the extra money for Vex.

Something new this year.....

Perchnut — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:42:47 GMT

Is it too early to talk ice fishing...riiiiiight...Ok, so a few things i plan to do this year, besides the normal stuff.....

- def want to hook up with some of the regulars on this board...on the ice preferably....i know this has been discussed,,,hopefully it happens

- Pull an all nighter. I wanted to do this last year, but it never materialized...so this year for sure,,,,at least once...Hopefully i'll have my new shack, if not the old one will suffice...

- Spend an afternoon or evening targeting crappies...even if i dont catch any...at least give it the ole college try...ive got some ideas.....

Anyone else have any plans to 'mix it up a bit' this year. I love ice fishing and it never gets boring to me. But like all my outdoor activities, I always like to throw in something new just to keep it 'more funner'!!

Savage Resevoir drawdown pics; lifetime chance?

chesapeakecarper — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 02:58:13 GMT

Some pics I took this past week's trip visiting a number of Pa/W Va/Md lakes...thinking BIG Picture opportunities like this come once in a lfetime.

Mediocre Monday: Fishing for Pride

fishing4u2 — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 03:29:57 GMT

Alas all good things must come to an end. Despite spending much more time on many more (formerly smoking hot) spots and under far easier wind conditions, the three amigos (all pysched to put a last punctuation mark on the perching), together scratched up a grand total in the low to mid single digits today.

We fished shallow, deep, and in-between. Rocks, gravel, weeds (thick, thin, tall, and short), clay, and mud. Points (primary & secondary), coves, channels, banks, sharp drops, and flats. Fast, slow, and medium speeds. Positively gynormous, large, small, and just the right sizes, in various colors. Jigged, swam, hopped, dropped, drifted, ripped, and even just let sit on the bottom.

Continuous polarized peering about (after a week of this I finally saw a largemouth lurking/drousing by a stump before shying off very slowly). Depth-stratified cruise-trolling with eyes continuously glued to the split-screen, bottom-locked, expanded-view water column, searching for any swim bladder echos even barely separable from the bottom signal clutter band, and finding very, very few indeed (at 12-14'). Short of still-fishing with live bait, if a likely stone was left unturned today then I don't know what it was.

On DCL you know you are in deep trouble when even the pickerel can hardly be bothered to follow - and this pretty much describes the sum total of the entire morning's productivity. I had one fair-sized pickerel ghosting very close behind a light and tiny spinnerbait, and had to suddenly halt the retrieve so as to force the fish to either turn aside or run into it mouth first. It took the latter option but regrettably the hook did not hold through the third head shake before becoming unbuttoned. Sometimes you just know a decision point has been reached.

When some of the crew started to admit they were contemplating what else they could possibly be doing with their time, I perceived I had to deliver the "when the going gets tough..." sermon and insist on at least one full, disciplined hour of determined angling effort from all hands with no excuses or whining about the bite. "Soon enough the snow will be flying and you guys wanna look back and admit you went soft and just bailed on the remainder of this warm, calm, and fine day? Everybody enjoys easy fishing and near-continuous catching, but that's not very often a realistic expectation, now is it?  Once you quit in your head, may as well put a fork in it 'cuz you are DONE. You know that. For the season, that is. Now, let's man up and at least fish for pride, if nothing else!"  Lately we had been spoiled. It was high time to quit living in and hoping for more of the recent past, and start fishing in the now.

They didn't throw me overboard, but instead took the hint. As the invitee I'd get my chance to call the shots for a time, but it was just as clearly now time to put up or shut up.  They already knew my Plan B inclinations. Unless there's actually a darn good expectation or reason to fish shallow in a clear, moderate to deep lake, and it is actually working undeniably well, I come from a very different stillwater tradition.

To put it bluntly I positively HATE running around slinging various baits up close against every dock or stick-up or stretch of bank one has ever caught a few fish off of, whether at some point in the distant or the recent past. Hello! You cannot fish in the past, or in the future for that matter. The way I see it, either those fish are active AND shallow right now, or they're NOT. And it should never take very much time at all to find out. So by all means check up in shallow cover first. You might have timed it just right, or you might just get lucky and stumble into the action. But if not active and catchable there, then by golly let's get on with it, whether or not the alternative happens to be comfortable or easy. To do otherwise is to burn perfectly good daylight for nothing but the suntan, which isn't all that good for you either. May as well just recline on the bank, drink a beer, tip your hat down over your eyes, and take a little nap. Rant over. Whew! I feel so much better now, I can resume the story...

So in the very early afternoon, we shifted assignments, boat positions, and our location and doubled down. In the span of less than five minutes of that next hour, to be invested thoroughly covering the entirety of an of-late unexplored-by-us large main lake point, hopes were raised for a come-back. It started with three decent pickerel, a good perch, and a heavy bite-off in a combined half-dozen casts or so. The banter we left the dock with was back.

In retrospect it was unnecessary to twist the knife, but rather than just join in on the newfound hoop'la, I faux-offered good ol' Plan A: "Now that the fish are biting and all, how 'bout we resume running and gunning around yesterday's venues doing the same-old, same-old, and before long we can talk once again about which fairway we'd be on by now had some of us made better choices?" But they were now sold and gave me carte blanche, doubt-free, for the next ninety minutes. Another fair perch and several more pickerel came aboard. I overheard some quip about it being kind'a nice to have a guide for a change (however gruff and insistent). Good enough for me.

At one point my guys made simultaneous hookset attempts, and were rewarded with twin bite-offs. Ba-da-BING, just like that! Somehow that was even more encouraging. With those guys back in the game I'd resumed tossing the heavy stuff as far as I could and just keeping after it, with attitude. I guess the last few vacations spent wading large pushy rivers the whole live-long day for elusive western steelhead has stiffened my already stubborn spine. There comes a time to give up of course, but this sure wasn't it. Not yet.

Several large pickerel had followed my lure, but seemed to lack a little courage in their convictions, so I took size down just a notch. Finally the bait stopped cold over fifteen feet of water, and with a satisfied grunt both heard and felt throughout the deck, honed hooks on the bucktail sank home.  A minute of so later I figured I got the northern I was hoping to release. While getting the jaw spreaders out to unhook it, there was a sincere "OMG... the biggest pike I've ever seen just came up and took something off the stern (all the while pointing excitedly about forty feet away)!"

We all looked back and saw an immense and still growing swirl (complete with multiple whirlpools) shortly followed by a somewhat lesser but still impressive displacement of water as the victim (a trout?, one of our released pickerel?, or perhaps what was left of something else entirely?) got collected in a raw anti-climax. Immediately unclipping the snap on the wire leader, I bumped size up to the MAX and quickly covered the place with a half-dozen casts, but soon suspected there was at least one less hungry fish still swimming in DCL.   So maybe I didn't quite get the northern I was hoping for after all. Nevertheless our juices were flowing again.

I didn't want to see the desire fade with the day yet young, so without proposing I pulled the plug on that place after I figured we'd gleaned the only willing biters we were apt to get. There were similar nearby places to check with fresher fish to tempt. On our next stop the guys again quickly got into a double of nice perch taping out at 13".

We didn't know it at the time of course, but even with spirits high we'd just passed our peak for the day. Other short strikes soon followed as went about methodically covering the second broad point, but only one more perch crossed the gunwhales (my only one of the day) when we circled back around to try and milk our last productive spot-on-the-spot.

By 2 p.m. we were all once again chopped liver, although we remained on the water fishing like we meant it until early dusk, gradually working our way back to the ramp as the clouds finally completely ceiling'd the sky. The lone, late-day walleye we figured we might have earned by sticking with it and not giving up never materialized.

While waiting for the driver to go and get the truck, the captain and I came to the tentative conclusion that perhaps the problem we'd faced today was really too much of a good thing during the past week. The perch were very much on the feed that whole time, and maybe they were now... finally... just... full! As the truck first wheeled into sight I could not resist flipping something back out and down maybe a dozen feet a time or two.  "Tap-tap!" and a dink of a rock bass shortly found itself briefly topside. I think I enjoyed that last one the most of all.

Pysched to prep for ice!
'4u2

Super Saturday!

fishing4u2 — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 04:09:30 GMT

Got another invite to spend the afternoon with my boating pals, and to once again ply DCL under fair weather for perch, and we simply slammed 'em silly. Right from the very start our lines were tight and by dusk we had triple limits anchored by several legitimate 15"ers. I'll try to post a pic later... too tired & hungry after all that wind by day, and a big solo filleting job just now finally completed.

Btw, I had never fished for DCL perch in open water before, and so I was very pleasantly surprised to find them tastier than later on from under hard water, particularly during mid- to late-ice when I find them foraging mostly on fingernail clams. Anybody else feel there is a seasonal difference in quality?  I was also surprised by how frisky the better perch did their pulling as compared to during ice-time. A few of them really had us fooled, right up towards the end when we could finally get a visual.

After the last couple of sub-freezing nights the fish (and most of the bait) were no longer visible in the shallower water as on Monday, but appeared to have backed off towards either the cove centers or adjoining secondary points, especially where we could still find reasonably healthy standing vegetation.  Six to nine feet of water seemed to be the best depths for active perch. The very backs of the shallower coves only turned up pickerel for us.

Scaling down our lures resulted in a more balanced catch by the crew, although I was somehow still wearing the hot hands. The same Roadrunner jig continued to score well, but for the sake of comparison so did my custom/homemade 1/10th oz single spin(nerbait) which accounted for more of the largest perch.  Likewise, replacing the crinkle-tailed tube body with a larger and darker plastic curly-tailed minnow imitation seemed to turn them on. I gave a midget sinking Rattle-Trap a good soaking in an area known to hold chasing perch, but it barely induced even follows much less a single take. I was surprised by how deeply many of the perch took the jigs... it seemed like most struck imperceptably softly and on the fall, and were 'just there' when you went to next work the bait.

For incidental catches (besides the ever-aggressive pickerel) I landed a pair of all-but-legal northern pike (released of course), and each of my partners took at least one fair smallmouth (also released). No largemouth or bluegill were either seen or taken, and despite fishing a well-known hotspot for an hour or so after dark, there were no 'eyes in the mix. Upon cleaning the catch I found virtually ALL of the perch contained multiple young-of-year bluegill sunfish, which averaged 1.5" in length. If there were a better way to match this 'hatch' for size, color, and action I believe a person could have him- or herself a genuine field day. Perhaps we owe the high quality bluegill population in the lake to the combination of abundant Daphnia for their forage and a thorough thinning of their y-o-y by the perch?

Truly this lake's perch fishery must be one in a hundred, perhaps one in even more?

Feeling fortunate to get to experience it firsthand,
'4u2

size

bigfish12 — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 14:39:35 GMT

hey strikelead thanks for that page of jigs but got a question and thats what size do i use?

second time

bigfish12 — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 14:26:31 GMT

hey guys this is my second time going and i need all the help that i can get thanks to bobberman and strikelead i got a jig to use but need all tips to us minnows how to jig the minnows?