10-25-2016, 01:05 PM
The forums are dead... No one posting anymore. Of course if it is about Mead I can see why. What a dead fishery these days not counting Stripers.
Hit Mead for the first time in over 2 months Friday. Stripers being the target since I was feeling the need for a fresh meal and some smoked goodies.
Bait was so so. Took a while but got all I needed in a hour or so in the usual spots. Shallow up in there. Multiple times I had to walk to the back of the boat to get the front to rise enough to get the trolling motor clear of mud and me moving. All the bait caught was on the small side. The Stripers didn't seem to care. Caught 17 by 10:30 and called it. Exactly what I needed. 14 for the smoker and 3 to eat. Turned the remaining bait loose, put all the Striper stuff away and went on my way to see if a LMB/SMB might be about. Not one nibble. I didn't even see any LMB/SMB bigger than 6 inches visually anywhere. Left the lake sometime between 1400-1500. The weather sure was awesome. Shorts and no jacket still even before sunrise. Can't beat that in October. If I remember right the water temp was 71 at sunrise. I think anyways.
At the ramp I talked a ranger for a while and he said all the same to me. What he has been hearing from everyone in general. Zip, nada, etc LMB/SMB wise.
Most of the Stripers caught where on the skinny side too.
Anyways... They still taste good [
] Made a semi "complex" batter for them that I haven't used before and the outcome was the best Stripers to come out of the deep fat fryer ever. Extremely happy with my new batter. I changed my temp on the smoker down a little for this batch and again the best ever. So new temp wrote down from here on for Stripers. Then a pound of the smoked fish got turned into a cream cheese based dip. Good weekend of munching and I am quite popular at work this week [cool]
Tom
[signature]
Hit Mead for the first time in over 2 months Friday. Stripers being the target since I was feeling the need for a fresh meal and some smoked goodies.
Bait was so so. Took a while but got all I needed in a hour or so in the usual spots. Shallow up in there. Multiple times I had to walk to the back of the boat to get the front to rise enough to get the trolling motor clear of mud and me moving. All the bait caught was on the small side. The Stripers didn't seem to care. Caught 17 by 10:30 and called it. Exactly what I needed. 14 for the smoker and 3 to eat. Turned the remaining bait loose, put all the Striper stuff away and went on my way to see if a LMB/SMB might be about. Not one nibble. I didn't even see any LMB/SMB bigger than 6 inches visually anywhere. Left the lake sometime between 1400-1500. The weather sure was awesome. Shorts and no jacket still even before sunrise. Can't beat that in October. If I remember right the water temp was 71 at sunrise. I think anyways.
At the ramp I talked a ranger for a while and he said all the same to me. What he has been hearing from everyone in general. Zip, nada, etc LMB/SMB wise.
Most of the Stripers caught where on the skinny side too.
Anyways... They still taste good [
] Made a semi "complex" batter for them that I haven't used before and the outcome was the best Stripers to come out of the deep fat fryer ever. Extremely happy with my new batter. I changed my temp on the smoker down a little for this batch and again the best ever. So new temp wrote down from here on for Stripers. Then a pound of the smoked fish got turned into a cream cheese based dip. Good weekend of munching and I am quite popular at work this week [cool]Tom
[signature]
