October Crawdadin’

Monday October 15, 2024 – This year has definitely been the year of the crawdad. It seems like the minnows have taken a break at Big Lake, or they’ve been dodging my sonar for the past 10 months. I did see some fish activity today, though—it’s possible I spooked a school of shad near the surface. I didn’t have high expectations and decided to switch things up by taking a break from chasing dinks in the Forebay and instead target one or two bigger fish in the lake. Vaughn and Dan had a slow day at the Forebay yesterday, so I figured I’d tough it out at the lake, even though the wind picked up a bit in the morning as the fog lifted around 10:00 a.m.

I keep hoping the presence of baitfish in the Forebay would mean the lake should have them too. I used to think the pumps would equalize the bait populations between the two, but after looking into the way the dam pumps work, I’m not so sure. It seems unlikely any fish or minnows could survive the pressure and blades of the pumps that generate electricity as water exits the lake, or those pushing water from the Forebay back into the lake. And over the past couple of months, with the lake draining and the pumps pushing water out, the water level has dropped about 15 feet since I was here three weeks ago. Today’s mission was to find a school of bigger stripers in about 20 to 25 feet of water or fish for larger singles along the dam rocks with a Gobi/Crawdad fly, hoping for a couple of good catches.

I started the day fishing at the Las Pedros Rocks and managed to land a single fish. I had a conference call at 10, so I kept fishing along the southwest shoreline while attending the meeting, picking up a few dinks along the way. Afterward, I zoomed over to the racks, but there were no pumps running and no fish around the pillars. I noticed a few boats trolling the upwelling area without much success, so I shifted to fishing along the dam, from the Racks to Monument, and that’s when my luck began to change. I landed about a dozen fish off the dam rocks using a deep, slow-crawdad pattern near the bottom. With the trolling motor set on three, I fished the rocks as slowly as possible, occasionally running into schools of fish. The water in this section was clear and free of algae, which was a welcome change from the conditions in the Bay of Pigs.

After the successful run along the dam, I decided to fish the Bay of Pigs using the same approach. Last year, I had some epic days slow-jigging the bottom with a crawdad fly along the dam, and I think this technique works so well because it increases the chances of finding fish hugging the rocks, searching for crawdads and shrimp. The Bay of Pigs was blanketed in thick green algae, but fishing the rocks from 25 feet of water at the dam all the way to Guardrail paid off. It was just as productive as last year, with plenty of fish hitting the barely moving flies along the bottom. I ended the day with 30 very nice fish, including a dozen over 20 inches. It turned out to be a surprisingly good day, especially considering I wasn’t even targeting schools of fish.

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One thought on “October Crawdadin’

  1. Nice report, Meng. Glad you got into a few. I’m looking forward to my next rip on the lake. I don’t know with who since I’m boatless now. Maybe with VW – or you, if you want to take the old man out again.

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