Summer is coming to a screeching halt

[Roberta]

Temp at the Dayton,OH airport is currently reported at 56 degrees. We have a cold front coming in this weekend that's predicted to drop temps into the low to mid-thirties.

If crappie fishing hasn't been hard enough the past month, that ought to lock their jaws but good. Time to start planning for cold water fish. - Roberta

[chaunc]

Bobbie, i dont know what your water temps were like this week but this cold front will bring the water temps down to a good level. If it reaches 62 degrees the fish will make their run to the shallows and you should be able to hammer them then. The lake i fish in my area is still 7ft high from all the rain we got this month but the fishing is still good. My favorite piles are still producing. Just have to fish heavier jigs to get down to em. My shallow piles are still in 14ft. I'll try them this weekend and see if they produce. I'll post results. Dont give up, just move closer to the bank.

[Roberta]

Our water surface temps have been in the mid-70's and we haven't had rain in over a month, so the level is down about a foot from mid-summer. We have seen a very slight movement into shallower water, so maybe this will get things going a little, as you say. If not, we have trout release in three weeks and I hear the perch are biting at GLSM.

BTW, Chaunc, there was an article in yesterday's Dayton Daily News about the charter boats on Lake Erie. The reporter and his party were catching lots of perch, some keeper walleyes, and a few nice smallies. They were happy to report lots of YOY walleye that are already 6 inches long, which bodes well for next year. - Roberta

[Jerry Blake]

Hey Roberta,

I look forward to summer being over because we put the hurt on the crappie here in the fall (and the lake lice are all gone). When the surface temps start falling through the 70s the crappie start getting more aggressive and when the temps fall through the 60s they move up a lot shallower and get REAL aggressive.

They’ve been a lot more aggressive here lately but the bigger ones still haven’t started moving up. In fact we're catching our best fish from 17 to 20 feet deep right now, which is as deep as they’ve been all summer.

Our surface temps are still in the mid to upper 70s and hit 80 by late afternoon on a sunny day. Your crappie should be turning on right now. A good cold front may give them the lockjaw for a day or two but if it drops the water temps it will turn them on.

Here the fall pattern is very similar to the spring but in reverse. They don’t get quite as shallow but they use the same staging beds (or same depth brush piles if the lake level has changed) as they do in the spring.

I had a day off today so I went fishing. A friend (guy in the picture) wanted to take me bass fishing. He’s been catching his limit of Kentucky Bass in an hour or two on live crayfish fished on the bottom on rocky points and drops.

We decided to hit the crappie first and it was good because the bass weren’t in the mood at all today. We wasted a couple hours on the bass and then went back to crappie fishing and ended up with a good mess including one that was over 16-inches long. We caught the largemouth while crappie fishing – guess he wanted a Rosy Red and not a crayfish today.

[crappieman101]

I can't wait for the low 50's at night and the 70 degree days...I enjoy the fall and winter fishing much more than the spring, it seems like the fish are a lot more consistent.

[blufloyd]

O yeah. Water levels plummet, boats are hard to find, I get to walk up to big schools of slabs. That is the theory anyway. Then it freezes and the shelter comes out and fishing begins.

Guess you stepped in it, Roberta.

[Roberta]

Gotta say, this has been an odd summer according to everyone we've talked to locally. The two bait shops we frequent said that sales have been miserable this year. In the past, we would start getting a lot of fish once the day length approximated that of late April/early May. So far, that just hasn't happened.

Doesn't matter a whole lot to me since I like catching other stuff as much or more than crappie (Blasphemy!). It's the boat driver that ain't happy.

Blufloyd - we picked up some "silverside minnow" lures that look like dandy ice jigs. Have you tried them? - Roberta

[Moose1am]

It's true. I was talking to the bait shop owner last week and he said that his sales were off too. He is getting out of the business next year and going to sell CHEAP cigarettes instead. The other bait shop that I freqent sells their bait to the first bait shop. The second or other bait shop is larger and a wholesale shop with many more tanks to hold the fish. The owner of the second bait shop didn't say anything about sales being off. They seem to have been selling bait well or they are not talking. But the first bait shop ower was saying that this summer has been bad for him and that he was talking to other bait shop owners in the area and that they were telling him that sales were off too.

It's funny because I have been doing more fishing this summer than I ever had. I have been fishing almost every day the past three weeks. I just took several days off to recooperate from the darn mosquito bites. They got me though my shirt that I forgot to spray with Deet. Do you know that the mosquito has been responsible for more human deaths than anything else in history?

Fall is here and the other night the air temps got down into the upper forties. I can't wait to see how cool the surface waters are today when I go fishing.

The pits that I fish are really deep and there is a lot of water in these 175, 200 and 90 acres pits. They all have areas that are 60ft deep or so. There are many shallow areas too. I just found a spot to try today. I was looking at the topo maps of that area and found a stream bed that runs though one of the pits. The old topo map shows some woodlands in some locations on the map where the pits are lcoated today. That explains why I was catching fish there.

Gotta say, this has been an odd summer according to everyone we've talked to locally. The two bait shops we frequent said that sales have been miserable this year. In the past, we would start getting a lot of fish once the day length approximated that of late April/early May. So far, that just hasn't happened.

Doesn't matter a whole lot to me since I like catching other stuff as much or more than crappie (Blasphemy!). It's the boat driver that ain't happy.

Blufloyd - we picked up some "silverside minnow" lures that look like dandy ice jigs. Have you tried them? - Roberta