Thursday, April 29, 2010

Almost there

Wanted to check out the river so I grabbed some chubs and sunfish that I had been keeping in my modified cooler baitwell and headed out. I have a culvert that I use to monitor the water level. When the water is about half way up that culvert it's time to soak some bait. It's almost there. The Skunk is dropping pretty good so the fishing should pick up just about the time most of us have to put our rods away and start thinking about going back to work. If thats the case I might have to launch the boat Monday or Tuesday evening. I just ran my bait traps because I wanted to collect the bait and pull the traps just in case the weather man is right about tomorrow night. It's difficult to count chubs when they are swimming around but I'm guessing there is close to five dozen. Oh I almost forgot, I did catch a half a dozen small flatheads on my little recon mission.
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Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Free bait trap plan

The skunk is still high and muddy so I decided to get some chores done so I can do some fishing when things settle down. Visited the river and saw only a couple guys trying their luck. It didn't look like anything was happening.

Check out the bait trap on sliprig.com. It is a Slip Rig original, found exclusively on sliprig.com. You can get the plan for free by contacting us via email. We will email the plan to you.

Good Fishing

Monday, April 26, 2010

High and muddy

The Skunk River is flowing high and muddy. From Saturday to Sunday morning the river came up about 7 feet. I tried dropping a few chubs down below the dam hoping to find a big flathead with no success. Unfortunately there was a couple guys dropping nightcrawlers straight down from the dam and they had a rope stringer full of little (1,2 and 3 pounders) flatheads. What can you do? Anyway. It seems like flatheads of all sizes like the night crawlers early in the year when the water is still cold. The bad news is that it is raining again.

I picked up my copy of the Catfish Insider on Saturday. I get mine at the local bait store, Big Creek Outdoor Supply in Mt Pleasant.

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Sunday, April 25, 2010

High water

I'm not sure how much rain we got last night but it was enough to bring the river up about 7 feet since yesterday. If I'm not mistaken I believe I heard that the water wouldn't crest until sometime Monday so it might come out of its banks in some spots. We'll have to wait and see how high it gets before we know how badly it affects the fishing.

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Saturday, April 24, 2010

Rain and more rain

Its saturday evening so I would like to be at the river but it is 62 and raining. Maybe I'll give it a try later tonight or early in the morning. One person that I know of put his bank poles in yesterday. He said they had 10 channel cats this morning. About a half hour ago I went out to see if the rain had brought out the nightcrawlers but I only saw two little ones. Im getting ready to go out and check again. I picked up about 5 or 6 dozen the last time it rained.

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Thursday, April 22, 2010

Couldn't give it away

After almost 2 weeks of fast action you couldn't give bait away tonight. Some how I just had a feeling that it would be slow this evening. I decided not to launch the boat tonight so I fished from the bank below the dam at Oakland just in case the bad weather set in early. A few small ones were caught from the dam. I did catch one flathead (about 3 pounds) on a chub.
This was the first time I have fished from the bank this year and I have to say I was disgusted by the amount of trash that has been left behind by other fishermen. Beer cans, bait containers and many other types of trash line the banks of our river and it is still April. It reminded me of something I saw earlier this year at the dam below the Coralville Reservoir. A bird nest had fallen out of a tree and I noticed that part of the material used to make the nest was fishing line that somebody had left on the bank. Sure it was a good choice of material to hold the nest together but I wondered how easy would it be for the baby birds to get caught up in the line.

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Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Rock shy

Put the boat in the water tonight. With a virgin prop on the boat I was a little rock shy. I was afraid to navigate through the rocks so I wasn't able to fish the tailrace below the dam at Oakland. I tried some large chubs for bait tonight but my bait was bigger than the catfish, I think. I only caught two, a 3 and 5. I cut the outing short because its a week night. Between work and fishing it was still a 13 hour day.

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Sunday, April 18, 2010

Time for a new prop

Had a good day on the water. Could catch as many channel cats as you wanted and a few flatheads as a bonus. Bad news is I hit the rocks on the way into the tailrace below the dam at Oakland. The prop is missing a good size chunk. Was catching all of those fish worth the price of a new prop? Well, I would rather not break a prop but since it is broke and there is nothing I can do about it I'll say it was worth it.

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Its on

I dropped the boat in at about 6 am. Although I thought it might be cold on the way up the river I failed to realize how cold. I almost froze! I think it was 39. The water temp was 62 and I thought the bite might have slowed down but it didn't. 2, 3 and 4 pound channels were feeding good. I'm not even sure how many I caught. Did get 3 flatheads though. I didn't check my lines and re-tie knots as often as I should have and it cost me two fish. One must have been of decent size because the line went tight real fast and broke even quicker. It felt really solid. Pulled the boat out of the water at 12:30 pm. Ran out of chubs.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Getting there

The water is warming up. 65 degrees to be exact. A co-worker and I used only two poles and stayed fairly busy with quite a few channel cats and one flathead. All on chubs. Even better news was that the boat didn't leak. Can't wait til tomorow

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Boats out of dry dock

Well, the boat is all welded up and I'm ready to hit the water. Ran the bait traps this evening. We had four traps out and ended up with about 5 dozen chubs and a few crawdads. I haven't been on the river since last saturday so I'm getting a little anxious. Visited the river this evening and saw them catch a few small ones. No sign of any shad yet. River temp was 61

Monday, April 12, 2010

Holes in the boat

I pulled the boat out of the garage to get it ready for tomorrow. I'm taking it to get the crack I found in one of the welds fixed. I decided to look it over for more cracks one more time and I found another crack in the same weld on the opposite side of the boat. I'll get both sides taken care of tomorrow and be on the water Wednesday evening, hopefully. I wish I had checked it over during the winter so all of this could have been done before ice out. Lesson learned, I guess.
Check your boat guys. See you on the water!

Saturday, April 10, 2010

hole in the boat

Didn't hit the water as early as usual this morning. Was headed up the river by 8 am. Water was about 2 feet high and muddy from the storms that went through the area a couple days ago. Anchor winch decided to stop working. As I tried to fix that I noticed that water was coming into the boat through a busted weld. Although the fish were biting, I dumped what I had, packed up and headed for the house. Managed to get an appointment to get the busted weld re-welded. The boat will have to be beached until they weld it up on tuesday.

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Unstable weather

Just as the fishing was picking up the weather has thrown us a couple curve balls over the last three days. A big rain storm two days ago and now severe thunderstorms passing through the area. You can still catch a lot of fish, in the 8-10 inch range.

Friday, April 2, 2010

False start to catfishing?

It's only April 2, 2010 and the cafish have been hitting fairly steady the last couple days. Just a few days ago the only bait that would work was nightcawlers and now it is almost entirely a creek chub bite. The sudden jump from crawlers to chubs caught me off guard. I did manage to pick up a couple dozen frozen chubs from a local bait shop. Although the air temps have been near 70 for a couple days, we are only at about 57 today. Coincidentally, the air temp is the same as the water temp. My concern is that the fishing may die off again before the real bite gets going. This bite seems to be about 2 weeks early for this area, probably because of the recent flood and the water temp which is up about 10. I probably caught 20 -30 fish today with about 6-8 nice ones.