Twin Lakes

[cpierce]

We went back to Twin Lakes yesterday afternoon. The wind was annoying for awhile, but then it settled down and was just a very pleasant evening.

There were a ton of campers there. The 95 + degree weather might have something to do with that! There were also a number of jet skis and boats out, but they kept their distance and weren't too troublesome.

We caught some nice bluegills, trout, and one lonely crappie, but neither one of us found a single bass that wanted to play. The bluegills were from 5ft deep to 20 ft. The trout and crappie were also out a little deeper. As we were getting ready to leave I talked to a couple of other float tubers that said the had caught some bass and bluegills. They were fishing close in on the east side.

The water is still dropping rapidly. Almost all of the trees and bushes are out of the water now, and there is a lot more exposed beach area. I wonder if that rapid decline of water level wipes out the spawning areas. Does anyone know how long it is for the eggs to hatch? At least the weeds are growing for the young to hide in.
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[Leaky33]

Good question, [] Hopefully the spawn is over and the fry have hatched protected by the males. Thanks for your help, I really didn't realize that I was conversing with a lady. WOW, this is great since there aren't that many. I'm really thankful for your input and with the pms and really appreciate your involvement. I truely don't want to sound sexist but good on ya! We need many, many more of you gals. [][][][][] You may not know how much you ladies add to a unbiased (non ego) input you have !!!! []
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[cpierce]

Thank you [blush][blush][blush][blush] I can't say that I am unbiased and don't have an ego though![laugh]
It takes a lot of people to make a board like this interesting and useful. There are probably a lot of kids, men, and women that read this that we don't know about. Sharing information and even teaching is what it is all about.
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[gstott]

I'm a little concerned about the nests this year myself. I was catching all those big prespawn bass, and then a week or two later there was dry land where I'd been catching fish previously. I'm sure some eggs were lost.
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[duksnfish]

Crappie hatch is generall in 2-5 days then they are safe so depending on when the eggs were layed, and how fast the water went down, a lot of them most likely made it. A female crappie can produce up to 10,000 to as many as 160,000 eggs depending on age class, but generally a female of about a half pound can produce this many. Black crappie can produce a little more, but, I think most of our crappie are white crappie.

Blue gill hatch in about the same time frame with as many as 38000 eggs at a time.

Hope this helps ya all some, and would be curious as to when some of you think the hatch may have been one and when water started dropping to a dry bed in the trees since I didnt get down there but only once during the spawn.

[cpierce]

I am not there regular enough to really say when the spawn was, but it sure seems that the water level drop has been fast this year. Maybe just because we had such a long spring with high water levels for so long.

My guess is that Twin has dropped about 2 to 3 ft in height per week-probably a little more than that. The only other one I have been to semi regular also is Lamont and it too had a quick drop of about 6 to 8 ft over a two week period.

If the eggs hatch in 2 to 5 days then they probably hatched and are in the weed beds.

Thanks for the information!
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[Leaky33]

[font "arial, helvetica, sans-serif"][BLACK]Largemouth
The male constructs a nest on rocky or gravelly bottoms, although occasionally the eggs are deposited on leaves and rootlets of submerged vegetation. The eggs, which are smaller than those of the smallmouth bass, hatch in three to four days. The fry rise up out of the nest in five to eight days and form a tight school. This school feeds over the nest and later the nursery area while the male stands guard. The school breaks up about a month after hatching when the fry are about one inch long. [/BLACK][/font]
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[Bardic]

When I was at McTucker Ponds Wed. there were a few big swarms of bass fry, and a 16" or so bass swimming below each one. Couldn't ever get them to attack my bait though.
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