Thread: Shenango Lake

The lake level is still high by 4 feet. temp is 74. Mahaney and Shenango recreation area are the only open ramps, all others are closed. There is a heavy algee bloom. Excessive amount of timber is floating.

Started to troll this morning and most of the garbage was on one side of the lake. A little wind came up and blew all the junk to my side of the lake and made trolling impossible. Did catch some crappies and one eye trolling. All fish were suspended down 14 feet in 18 fow.

Todays up date. Water is very-very high. Docks are about 20 feet from shore at Mahaney launch. Had to back the Trailblazer almost to the back doors to float the boat off the trailer. If you have a deep boat you will have trouble putting in, even my 14 footer was a chore. The crappie were suspended at the 14-18 foot range over 20 fow. Caught 17 trolling this morning. 2 cats and one eye. Lake still looks like pea soup. My advise would be to launch at the camp grounds, With the rain that is forecasted for the rest of the week, it really shouldn't be all that busy next weekend.

Sparkie, how's the lake looking lately? Last I heard the water was up to the guard rail at Mahaney. That has to be a crazy lake right now.

Actually it's starting to drop back to fishable depths BUT still high with rain forecasted for the week, the level will shoot right back up. Trouble is that the fish are no where to be seen. The fish aren't out in the open water but hanging tight to the shallows. All the shallow spots are now 14-20 feet deep. The fish seem to have left the bars and humps and moved into the flooded timber. I'm seeing a lot swirls back in the woods. What fish that are in the lake are very scattered. Trolled for 2 hours this morning and only marked maybe 10 fish and this was at the east end of the lake.

Be careful and watch for timber floating. Had a 30+ foot tree float by me yesterday morning.

If anything it should bulk up the fish with these new areas opened to feed in. The fall bite should produce some real nice heavy weights.

The crappies were stacked up this morning for the first time in a long time. Every hump that I hit had them on them. Couldn't troll without getting 4 or 5 on every pass. Nothing over 12 inches but a lot of them. They want the lure trolled at a higher speed 2.3-2.5 mph for some reason.

On the lake this morning at 6 Am. Was trying to do some trolling for eyes but the darn crappies wouldn't leave my lures alone. Caught 17 in the first hour. All down 11-12 feet. It didn't matter what color I used. The larger fish came when I up the speed to 2.4 mph. Even caught a few at 2.5 mph, started out trolling 1.8mph but was catching to many little guys.

Was there too and casting jigs to brush piles on mid lake humps was productive for me. Caught quite a few that were 11" but most were 10". Still can't find the big ones, yet.