Kaw lake archives

**Fishers** · 02-12-2013, 08:32 AM

Fished Kaw yesterday and it was very difficult. When I got home I checked the lake lever info on the corps site and inflow to the lake had jumped up to 4500 cfs. I got a clue there was water flowing when the boat was getting dragged under the bridge with no wind. I started the day off fishing standing timber and brush in 25-35 FOW searching for the fish. I could see them on the finder but could not get them to bite, I used both jigs and minnows. I picked up one sand bass in 5 hours. In a final desperate act to avoid being skunked I went to Sarge bridge hoping to find the dinks I had caught there earlier in the year. I ended up finding fish around and underneath the schools of shad in 25-28 FOW, they were not hitting jigs so I went with a minnow only rig. 1/4 ounce sinker on the bottom single hook 12" above it. I would park right over the fish lower it till it hit the bottom reel up 2 feet. I used the spider rig set up with 3 poles. The bite, if you could call it that, was the fish putting the minnow in its mouth and just holding on to it. As the boat slowly moved, if I saw the angle of the line tilt as the boat moved away like I was snagged on the bottom, I would lift the rod to hook the fish. I tried striking as usual, but I was just yanking it out of their mouths. I ended up keeping 7 nice fish in the last hour, caught probably 15 total.

**Redge** · 02-12-2013, 08:42 AM

Fishers, glad you got to go, and at least you partially figured them out! I find it frustrating to be looking right at the fish on the finder and they won't bite!!!!! Last winter I was way more successful than I have been this year? No idea why. Did the fish you cleaned have anything in their stomachs?

**Fishers** · 02-12-2013, 09:01 AM

Originally Posted by Redge

Fishers, glad you got to go, and at least you partially figured them out! I find it frustrating to be looking right at the fish on the finder and they won't bite!!!!! Last winter I was way more successful than I have been this year? No idea why. Did the fish you cleaned have anything in their stomachs?

Yup they had shad. I bet I was getting bit the first places I fished but due to the wind and not knowing how subtle it was I just wasn't picking up on it.

**Ranger09** · 02-12-2013, 09:13 AM

Current on any body of water makes a difference. Like we have stated many times in different threads you can still catch em but it becomes harder and the technique changes as well as does the activity of the Crappie. Glad you got em figured out Fishers and got enough for supper..Congrats My Friend.....Ranger

**dennishoddy** · 02-12-2013, 10:49 AM

We fished lake Ponca yesterday with the same results. The bite was so subtle, that we had to slowly move our jigs back and forth looking for the line to not follow.

**Crappie ciller** · 02-12-2013, 11:23 AM

[ The bite, if you could call it that, was the fish putting the minnow in its mouth and just holding on to it.

Fishers since that type of bite occurs so frequently we have coined a term for it so as to have a universal means of referring to it. We call those irritating so and sos Hitchhikers. I don't know why but it seemed to fit. By the way I am impressed by the way you stuck with that and figured something out that worked. Nice bag of tricks!

**Fishers** · 02-12-2013, 04:33 PM

Originally Posted by Crappie ciller

[ The bite, if you could call it that, was the fish putting the minnow in its mouth and just holding on to it.

Fishers since that type of bite occurs so frequently we have coined a term for it so as to have a universal means of referring to it. We call those irritating so and sos Hitchhikers. I don't know why but it seemed to fit. By the way I am impressed by the way you stuck with that and figured something out that worked. Nice bag of tricks!

Thank you ciller, its a new trick to me. I had read about using a heavy sinker and a single hook to work deep inside the wood piles on this site sometime ago, I think it was the Oolagah thread. I rigged one pole up and it worked well, when I would get snagged on wood I would drop that sinker and it would pop the hook off the snag. I did get one nice fish deep inside a wood pile like that. While I was still rigged up like that I chased some fish I saw on the finder away from the wood and it was evident real quick that they preferred that rig. I wish I had more time to mess around with them, it was satisfying to get them to bite and learn a new way (to me) to catch them. By the way, I misstated in my earlier post, I was actually using 1/2 ounce sinkers not 1/4 ounce.

**Fishers** · 02-12-2013, 04:37 PM

Originally Posted by Ranger09

Current on any body of water makes a difference. Like we have stated many times in different threads you can still catch em but it becomes harder and the technique changes as well as does the activity of the Crappie. Glad you got em figured out Fishers and got enough for supper..Congrats My Friend.....Ranger

Thanks ranger. I notice in your reports you are always using jigs, do you ever use minnows?

**Ranger09** · 02-12-2013, 04:42 PM

Occasionally late in the summer when the water temps are hi or when I'm fishing a torrnament rigging. Thats about the only time.

**dennishoddy** · 02-13-2013, 12:27 AM

I joined this forum on the advice of Criket George. Went fishing with a couple of guys from Kansas that fish Kaw that you all know.

My entire fishing career of 40 years was thrown out the door, regarding crappie.

I was one of the guys that went blindly into brush piles near the bank during spawn and caught a few.Gotta have tiny minnows, or tiny jigs.
One day on the lake with those guys was mind boggling.
Braided line, big jig heads, long tails, were unheard of.

I'm working on improving, and watching these OKLA threads to learn from you guys. I was at the Kaw weigh in, and was impressed with the catch.

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