Brookville

[JigMan2]

If anyone has plans to head out to Brookville I would pick another lake. Fished on Thursday, prior to a cold front which should have made for a good bite. Fished hard most of the day and only caught 11. Plenty of fish stacked on my brush piles but they wouldn't even think about eating. The problem was the recent shad hatch. In all the years I've fished Brookville I have never seen a shad hatch like this one. Massive clouds of shad everywhere you look. Their bellies are full and we will have to wait till the white bass thin the population and they get big enough to avoid being eaten by the Crappies. Depressing, really depressing

[Moose1am]

JigMan2:
You got something there. Friday night I was fishing in a local stipper pit that is hydrologically connected to the Ohio River. There are lots of Gizzard Shad in this pit as them get into the pit during periods of high water. Water backs up from the Ohio River into Pigeon Creek and Blue Grass Creek and the flood waters come over the farm fields into the North End of Blue Grass Pit at the new Blue Grass Fish and Wildlife area in Southern IN near Evansville, IN.

I noticed huge schools of fish about 5 ft under the boat. I didn't get a bite all night long. I even used a nice new submergable fishing light to try to attract some crappie to my jigs but to no avail. I saw one minnow swim though the water near my light. There was a good breeze so I had to put the anchor out to try to stay over the cover that I put in the pit last Fall. I must have not been in the right spot LOL as I didn't even get one bite in over three hours of fishing.

But I bet that all the fish signals that I saw on my Hummingbird LCR8000 depth finder were clouds of those newly hatch shad.

Does anyone know how many times a year the shad spawn and hatch new Gizzard Shad?

I am assuming that Brookville does not have a Threadfin Shad Population due to the fact that it's so far up NORTH. I talked to the fishery biologists about Threadfin Shad in IN and he told me that the only lake that can support a threadfin shad population is Gibson Power Plant lake and the Power Plant cooling lake called Turtle Creek. Those lakes receive the water water effeulent from the power plants and stay warm enough during our Indiana Winters to let the Threadfin Shad Survive the winters.

It's too bad that we are not in a milder climate as I believe that the threadfin shad would really help our crappie grow to record size. The threadfin shad don't grow as large as the gizzard shad and would remain at a size that the crappie could feed on thoughout the life of the Threadfin Shad. Gizzard shad grow too large for the crappie to eat after a few months.

If anyone has plans to head out to Brookville I would pick another lake. Fished on Thursday, prior to a cold front which should have made for a good bite. Fished hard most of the day and only caught 11. Plenty of fish stacked on my brush piles but they wouldn't even think about eating. The problem was the recent shad hatch. In all the years I've fished Brookville I have never seen a shad hatch like this one. Massive clouds of shad everywhere you look. Their bellies are full and we will have to wait till the white bass thin the population and they get big enough to avoid being eaten by the Crappies. Depressing, really depressing