I've been winter fishing keystone for the last couple of years and keep catching dinks. I can find huge schools of fish and shad on the locator but can only catch 5 inch crappie. Any recommendations?
About to give up on this lake.
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I've been winter fishing keystone for the last couple of years and keep catching dinks. I can find huge schools of fish and shad on the locator but can only catch 5 inch crappie. Any recommendations?
About to give up on this lake.
What state are you in? Which Lake Keystone are you talking about? There are several around the country and you profile doesn't show your location.
Oklahoma
Crappie Hog, I don't fish Keystone regularly, but fished it last weekend. We caught five fish and there was a man at the ramp who said that that was first time he had talked to anyone who had caught any at all in several weeks. All the dead and dying threadfin shad is the reason it's bad in my opinion, but I really don't know.
Woops, above thread should read "in my opinion."
CrapAlicous..... i noticed a ton of shad that were struggling. Forgot to ask about that at the weigh in, so you seen them too huh? what do you think is the cause? I never seen schools, but i seen tons of single ones that were as near to death as you can come without dying.
Hey Swollencrappie. It looked like to me that they were threadfins. I believe northern Oklahoma is about as far north as they can survive. They can't take the cold. About every three or four years it gets cold enough to kill em. A few years ago we were loading the boat with blue cats at Grand. A cold snap hit and the shad started dying. After that, you could fish all day and not get a bite.
With the -2 degrees a few days ago, do you reckon we had an even more widespread shad kill? And, it seemed to me, the fishing was off for the whole summer, and I don't think I saw as many shad as I have in previous years. But I don't base the fish population on what I can catch. The water levels have been up and down like a yoyo-I don't think that helps. And I don't think the spawn this spring was very good. CrappieAlious, thanks for your input. Hope you and UncleJosh get em figured out by spring!
I was fishing off the oil derrick near Mannford and saw a shad ball, which had to be over 20 foot in diameter and at least 20 deep. I stayed on top of it and caught dinks that was almost transparent. LOL if I were to find a shad ball like that at Oolagah I can almost guarantee catching some big fat crappie. I was just wondering if there were others experiencing the same thing.
Dinks is all I have ever caught at the oil derrick, but then I haven't fished it all that much. I'm usually north of 412 bridge.
I don't know how much a shad kill effects the fish population, but I definitely think it gives them a full belly for awhile.
There was a major shad kill from the cold at Oologah Lake a few years ago. It was absolutely horrible and an unbelievable sight. The birds had a feast.
Sorry guys I really didn't mean to kill the fishing by pulling all those slabs out last spring.:banghead
Thanks Dinobot!
And another thanks to Dinobot! :biggrin
Ditto, Dino. And double ditto on the Phil Robertson poster.
The blue cats went nuts!!!
It was only 9 degrees two nights in a row at CB, and there were very few shad floating, but I have seen pretty large kills during cold snaps at Hefner. The cold snaps and cormorants can be murder on the shad. Ever since PETA got the ban on killing cormorants, the fishing has deteriorated at many of the lakes. Some sources say that cormorants can eat five pounds of fish per day, but googling them indicates that one to one and one half pounds is average. Several years after the cormorant protection went into place, the Daily Oklahoman had a headline that said 9,000 cormorants had taken up residence on Lake Hefner. Those birds were there for seven weeks. I watched them eat tons of fish. Think about 9,000 birds times one pound times 49 days, or 441,000 pounds, or 220.5 TONS of fish. If they averaged 1.5 pounds per day, that is 331 tons. Before that time, 2 pounders were common, and Carl Jones and I were getting 2.5 pounders by slip corking during the winters. Since then, a 1.5 pound fish has been a BIG one.
Last year the cormorants took up residence on Guthrie Lake. 30 to 40% of the crappie that I caught had stab wounds. This year, all of the fish have been dinks.
The guys who fish cats at Ft. Cobb say that the shad balls have all been below thirty feet (trying to avoid the cormorants), and they are catching forty pound blues with stab wounds from the cormorants.
Now that I've ranted, were there a lot of cormorants on Keystone this past year?
Big sky I agree with the Hefner part because .haven't caught any good ones since!!!!
Crappie George-IMO there WERE lots of cormorants on Keystone last summer! I hadn't really noticed them in the past, but they were there last year. Swollen crappie, what's your opinion?
I am currently residing in the Philippines where we get mostly Asian television and a few nights ago I watched a man fishing with Cormorants in the sea. I was amazed at their speed and efficiency under the water and horrified at the size of the fish they can take out- looked to be about 2-3 pounds each time. Never saw one catch a smaller fish. A loner visited my pond two years ago but soon found himself feeding the fishes. I remember how thick they were years ago on Gibson and how concerned we were about the crappie population. Our concerns were warranted I believe and I am with Bigsky. Any non native latecomers to our lakes that come in such numbers are going to threaten that ecosystem. I love the ospreys and eagles and even the pelicans but wish they would open season on the Cormarants.
I'm fairly new to the keystone lake area and have found the same thing. Dinks. Even though they taste good if you can get enough of them I would much rather get ahold of those bigger ones caught in the springtime spawn. I have fished the heated dock just east of Mannford and had mixed results.Had decent results a Mannford ramp area in the past. Care to share any possible bank fishing spots that produce in our lake?
One place I have had results in the past is Appalachia bay-just off the north end of the parking lot. Last year not so good, but didn't fish there as much. Hope this helps.Quote:
Originally Posted by mrsapulpa
Hey, cc. I hope that fish food was intruding on your pond in the Philippines. They are protected in the U.S. About twenty or so years ago, PETA got them on the endangered species list (even though they were large in numbers), with a potential fine of $15,000 per bird. PETA has a lot of power in Congress, and they were "outraged" that people were killing these "poor defenseless birds". Judges around the country have been a bit more lenient, probably because they know the havoc caused to the fisheries. They have totally cleaned out many catfish farmers in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas. The ban has had the effect of creating a cormorant boom. Fisheries experts have documented the destruction of, and damage to, many fisheries by cormorants U.S. Fish and Wildlife now considers them to be overpopulated, but could do nothing about it, except to approve of sonic cannons at catfish farms. More recently, catfish farmers got the OK to kill any cormorant with a catfish in its mouth. Unless fisherman organize and put some heat on Congress (not much chance since PETA has tons of money and influence), the only hope to reduce cormorant numbers is if they clean out enough lakes that they starve themselves. And where does that leave us fishermen? :dono
I couldn't be positive but I'm pretty sure that cormorant had a catfish in his mouth right before it took its final swim with the fishes.
I KNOW for a fact that it did. Every cormorant that I have ever seen had a catfish or crappie in its mouth. It choked to death trying to swallow the fish. HONEST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The crawdads have to eat too
Well spoken, gentlemen. If you Google it, there is a lot of evidence that they are particularly susceptible to one disease: lead poisoning. Let's hope there is an epidemic.