Upper LOZ, 4/6 report

[MOslabs]

To begin, I have been reading suggestions and reports on here for a while now, so figured it was time I contributed a little bit.
Date 4/6/13
Location: Upper LOZ
Air temp: 60-65
wind: felt like category 5
Water temp: 44-47
Method: vertical jigging, slow drifting
bait: tube jigs, white, red/chrt, blk/chrt, blue/wht
Depth: 10-14ft down in 25fow

Wife and I went out yesterday, weather man was callin for warm weather, overcast skies, and extreme wind. Two of those conditions are favorites of mine for fishing, guess which? We got on the lake around 8am, a little bit later than I prefer, but the usual time when my wife comes along. Started fishing about 8:30, about the time the wind started to pick up. Caught a bunch of small fish early in 3-5 fow that I was wanting to check out. Although we were picking up a few large fish, the ratio of dink to keeper was about 10:1. About 10AM we moved out to deeper water to look for staging females. We went along the main channel drop and foundnd a couple large schools of fish holding between 10-14ft deep in 25 fow, over some logs and other brush. The only problem with that was that it was right in the open, subject to the full force of the now 20+mph wind(felt more like 60mph). We had some problems staying on the fish, wind kept blowing the marker bouyees off the spots, and the trolling motor was getting a work out. Despite this, we had a pretty good catch, roughly 60-80 fish over the next couple hours, mostly all large females. Ended up keeping 30, all over 10 inches, both black and whites. 90% had eggs. Eggs looked ripe in some, others looked to be a couple weeks out. Water temp when we got there was 44, mid afternoon was up to 46-47. If this warm weather keeps up, they should be moving in soon. Caught fish on just about every color tube jig we tried: white, red/chrt, blk/chrt, blue/wht. Correct depth seemed substantially more important than color selection. As stated earlier, edge of channel break, 10-14ft down in 25fow over brush.
On a side note, there were TONS of boat traffic out yesterday. Mostly snaggers, with several white bass fisherman, and a couple catfishers. Talked to passer-byers, snaggers were having some luck, most boats had at least one tied up, but no big ones yet. Water still seems to cold for the big female spoonbill to start moving up the lake, but they were letting water out. The white bass fisherman sounded as though they had been doing quite well the past few days, with several boats limiting out. And I saw one boat, boating several channel and blue cats, fishing with shad. Hopefully some find the report useful, sorry it got a little long winded =)

Mike

[jackie53]

"WOW" nice great report LOZ ROCKS!!!!

[BarryG]

Nice!

[dester223]

I have the same folding collapsible net.

Also nice report

[working man]

Thanks for the report.

[slabscab]

Man! Nice report that wind was abusive for sure I was out by the twin Islands and it was down right hairy crossing threw there it get nasty in a hurry over there with a north or south wind

[Hogster1]

Nice report. Welcome to the site and Congrats on the catch.:D

[LSL Angler]

Welcome from Lake St Louis. I brought my wife fishing LOZ Saturday too and she asked why we had to get up early to fish. She thought she was going to wear hear tank top out on the lake. That didn't happen with the clouds and the wind. She kept her jacket on the whole time. I think we had about 8 fat blacks with a total of 24 keepers. I would of thought my trolling motor batteries would have wore out but they hung in there surprisingly. Congrats on the nice bunch of fish.

[MOJON]

Awesome report!!!! Headed down Friday mornin for three days of whatever fishin we wanna do!! Just never really tried the crappie up that far lol just snagging and cattin!!

[MOslabs]

With the warm temps this week and warm rains down there, should be in for a good time no matter what you decide to fish for!