Winter Catfish Are a Great Catch
Some folks think that when the water temperature drops into the 50's that the  big catfish disappear for the season. My friend Mac Byrum just proved that to be wrong. Mac was on an early morning Sunday trip by himself. The weather was cold approaching 32 degrees with a slight breeze. Mac saw his closest planer board take a dip and the rod indicated a hard hit. Mac grabbed the rod and started the retrieve and he new instinctively that he had a big fish. The rod loaded heavily, then there was nothing, the big cat was gone. Mac didn't even have a chance to take in the line to check it when his longest line planer board dipped and the rod nearly hit the water. Putting down the first rod Mac grabbed this rod and he knew that he was about to have the fight of his life. The fish headed for the bottom but Mac's years of experience and properly set drag paid off. After a long fight, he got this 50 pound blue catfish into the boat. The fish was 49 inched long with a girth of about 30 inches. Mac rushed to a friends house to weigh the fish and take a photo before returning it to the lake. Mac told me that he saw the image of this fish on his sonar before it hit the garlic flavored chicken bait that he was using. The image was exactly like the image of a big cat that we had included in our recent book :The Catfish Hunters", looked like a log sitting about 1 foot from the bottom. Don't believe those stories about cold water catfish hiding from the cold.

Vertical Jigging Working Well

There are so many bait fish in the lake right now that trolling live bait, although still effective, is giving way to vertical jigging. The bass are so used to seeing bait fish swimming horizontally, that they seem to go crazy when they see a jig being moved up and down in the water column. using a 3/4 ounce chartreuse jig, is catching more fish than the live bait.Of course you will need a sonar to find the fish unless the lake is calm and the bait fish are visible on the surface. if you find the bass, they will often hit the jig on the first drop. Using a light rod and reel, this is a very exciting way to catch a lot of fish in a short time. I have found that it is not uncommon to catch 10 bass in an hour of fishing.

                                                 
                               Be Careful With Ethanol During Boat Storage

This is the time of the year that boaters often put their boats into storage. Now more than ever there is a danger when storing boats. The E10 Ethanol additive put into fuel creates fuel separation when the fuel is not used for 60 days. The Ethanol attracts water vapor to your tank and when you try to run your motor in the spring, you will have water problems. Some additives will help if added while filling the tanks, but most additives contain alcohol and actually complicate the problem. The best way to prevent the problem from occurring is to completely fill the tank before storage.If there is no open space in the tank for moisture to accumulate, water vapor cannot be created. Tanks can also be completely drained but this is a much more difficult process. Your best bet is to use ethanol-free gasoline which is still available at a few stations and at some boating facilities.

Jigs Working Well Now

Bass are very active in Lake Norman

After a terrible late summer of fishing in July and August and on into early September, the fishing is finally getting better. The water temperature has dropped into the high 70.s and the bass seem to sense the oncoming fall and winter months. They are in all of the coves and channels, following the massive schools of shad and schools of small fry that come to the surface in late afternoon. Fish finding sonar equipment is exploding with image after image of large bass moving into these bait schools to gorge themselves on the small fish. When you hook one of these one to two pound spotted bass, they will spit up their latest meal as you retrieve them and often will mess your boat with partially digested bait fish. There is no better time to catch these nice fish than when they are in this pre-winter feeding frenzy. I have been regularly catching 15 to 20 nice bass in two hours with live medium golden shiners, chartreuse jigs and my favorite number 7 split shad rap crank bait lure. Shad schools that for many years contained between 2000 and 4000 fish are now much larger due to the disappearance of the Stripers. I am seeing shad schools with upwards of 8000 fish in each school. (these are my estimates). A typical shad school image on a sonar is almost always the same and they look like the one shown below.When you see a school of shas like this, circle the scholl and you will eventually catch fish.

Fishing and The Water Temperature

Fish are cold blooded animals and as such their body temperature changes as the water surrounding them changes. Every species of fish has a  water temperature that they are most comfortable in, meaning that their body functions properly at around that temperature. The comfort range for every fish varies around this absolute temperature and is normally expressed as a range of temperatures spanning from 10 to 15 degrees.

The comfort zones or preferred temperature ranges for many pf the popular species of fish are shown on the chart above. If you are fishing and the water temperature is within these ranges for the fish that you are after, you can expect the fish to behave as they have in the past. If however the water temperature is significantly higher or lower than these boundaries, the fish will be more difficult to catch because they are going to be doing things hat they normally do not do to regain their comfort zone. In the summer months many fish that are normally found in shallow water will retreat to deeper water because that water is cooler there. Many species of fish like bass will move to shady areas where the water is a little cooler, like under docks, bridges of underwater structure like stumps and brush.

Remember that the temperature that boat equipment normally reads is the surface temperature and for every 10 feet of depth, there is a temperature drop of about 2 degrees.. If the weather continues to be hot, like it has been this year, the schools of bait fish that would normally hang around in small coves and channels, will also move into deep water because a couple degrees cooler water is very important to these small fish. If the bait schools go deep, the predator fish will follow. So on these hot days, fish deeper for more success.

Take A Child Fishing

I will be coordinating a Family Fishing Day on Aug 25 from 8am till 11:30 at Camp Dogwood on Lake Norman. The program is free and is sponsored by the Lake Norman Wildlife Conservationists, The Harbour Fishing Club and the Southfork Bassmasters. Pre registration is required by calling 910-603-4929 or registering on line at http://www.lakenormanwildlife.org/. All kids ages 6 to 15 can attend but must be accompanied by an adult. Prizes will be given based on size and number of fish caught. This will be a great family event so sign up today because registrations are limited on a first come basis.

How About 780 bass in 7 days

You probably don't believe the numbers but thats what a trip to Kishkutens Lake in Ontario Canada produced. My fishing partner Ron Jurcy and myself fished about 10 hours a day for seven days and boated 780 small mouth bass and 18 muskies.

This is one of the smaller Muskies that I boated. The thrill was increased by the fact that we were using small crank baits without wire since we were fishing for bass. I lost several cranks but also boated great fish.

This is one of the average smallmouth bass that we caught. They were not all this large, some larger and some smaller.The middle of the day still turned out to be the best fishing times as shown by the chart below which plots all of the fish by the time of day that they were caught.

I learned a couple of new things about the smallmouth bass. They seem to bite best where the shorelines are in the shade and they get a little excited when the wind blows waves up against the rocks. All the bass were caught with crank baits although I tried other lures. I have retired the lure shown below because by itself it caught more than 200 bass.

This is the third time I have fished Kishkutena Lake and every thime it has gotten better. I can't imagine that it can get much better than this.