Help

[Danny Lang]

Water temps has reached 90 degrees on lake Sinclair today, having a hard time finding fish, any suggestions? Thanks for any suggestions.

[Takeum]

Look deep

[Danny Lang]

Already fishing treetops and reeds at 30 feet, do I need to go deeper than that, i fish normally at least 4 days a week, tring to stay up with the fish, but the past few days only catching 10 to 15. But they are people I saw at the boat ramp had 40-60, and I would like to find a better way to catch them.

[skeetbum]

Don’t get below the thermocline or you get zip.

[Danny Lang]

Don’t quite understand, I can let a minnow down 15 feet, and 1 minute he is dead, but I see shad on my depth finder at 20-25 feet,HELP this is killing me.

[CrappiePappy]

Don’t quite understand, I can let a minnow down 15 feet, and 1 minute he is dead, but I see shad on my depth finder at 20-25 feet,HELP this is killing me.

Are you taking your minnows out of ice cold water, putting them on the hook and dropping them down to the 15ft depths ?? If so, they're probably dying from thermal shock.
If you're seeing Shad at 20-25ft ... chances are the fish are "at least" that deep, and may be deeper (depending on oxygen/temp levels at those depths).

If I'm catching 10-15 fish and others are catching 3-4 times that many ... I'm gonna ask them 2 questions : "how deep" - "on what" .... and if their answer is the same as what I was doing, then the difference in our catch rates is likely "where" they were fishing.

[Danny Lang]

Crappiepappy you may have hit the nail on the head, with the 100 degree temperature we have been having I am putting frozen water bottles in my minnow bucket, putting them into that 90 degree water is putting in shock, didn’t think of that. Tomorrow I will be try deeper to see if that works, thanks fellows

[wannabe fisherman]

In this weather we've been having the best place to find fish is in the meat dept. of your local grocery store

[Ketchn]

we found fish in deeper water yesterday , thought I saw a thermocline , but there were fish below it , I think the enormous solid wall below 10 foot deep was actually about 3.7 zillion shad , just saying
dont know your lake but they may not all be in deeper water , find the huge bait balls is my suggestion , the crappie will be on them bigtime .....

[Barnacle Bill]

Ditch the minnows and go with jigs. I would be willing to bet that you are getting a lot if bites and don't know it. Don't wait for the thump because it rarely happens in this hot weather. When you go over your brush pile or whatever notice the depth of the top of the pile. That is you target depth. Slowly drop your bait down to it or if you are not over it you can cast to it. I use the count down method to determine bait depth. Now comes the fun. Again do not wait to feel the bite, you want to see it. Watch your line very carefully. If it does anything out of the ordinary SET THE HOOK. For instance if it stops falling - SET THE HOOK. If it moves to one side or the other SET THE HOOK. I think you get the idea.

I was taught this method by a friend that is also a guide. The first time we went he caught about 150 and I caught 1. But the second time he caught his normal 150 but I tore him up. I caught 3. But at least I discovered why I wasn't catching. I can't see. Oh well win some loose some.