Wade fished the west side from about 6:30pm to dusk with a buddy.
Conditions: Beautiful day with high temps in the 80s; partly sunny with breeze. Water temp was 82 degrees; 3.5' and dropping (this was a slightly higher water level than the previous week, when it had mostly been at 3.1'). Clear water with a minimum of drifting grass. Significant amount of fishing pressure, both kayaks, boats, and waders, as we were near a popular access site.
Fishing last night was slow.
We started with poppers and had a few hits and misses but switched to subsurface stuff. I got a 12" and a couple others on a stonecat but this was my large fish for the evening. At sunset, we went back to topwater and for awhile it looked like the evening popper bite would heat up, but it fizzled. We were getting hits and long line releases on small fish about every tenth cast or so. Not fast evening popper action.
White flies are on. They started very late, about 8:40, and by dark were fairly prevalent. I'd guess that the hatch is just starting as the level we saw last night was just a fraction of full emergence. There was almost no fish activity on the bugs until right at dusk when a few pods of fish could be seen here and there. These pods were the typical small fish and they were easy to catch on a popper and we stuck a few just as we were heading back to shore. Had we stayed into the night, I suspect action would have picked up on the bugs.
Conditions: Beautiful day with high temps in the 80s; partly sunny with breeze. Water temp was 82 degrees; 3.5' and dropping (this was a slightly higher water level than the previous week, when it had mostly been at 3.1'). Clear water with a minimum of drifting grass. Significant amount of fishing pressure, both kayaks, boats, and waders, as we were near a popular access site.
Fishing last night was slow.
We started with poppers and had a few hits and misses but switched to subsurface stuff. I got a 12" and a couple others on a stonecat but this was my large fish for the evening. At sunset, we went back to topwater and for awhile it looked like the evening popper bite would heat up, but it fizzled. We were getting hits and long line releases on small fish about every tenth cast or so. Not fast evening popper action.
White flies are on. They started very late, about 8:40, and by dark were fairly prevalent. I'd guess that the hatch is just starting as the level we saw last night was just a fraction of full emergence. There was almost no fish activity on the bugs until right at dusk when a few pods of fish could be seen here and there. These pods were the typical small fish and they were easy to catch on a popper and we stuck a few just as we were heading back to shore. Had we stayed into the night, I suspect action would have picked up on the bugs.
