Starvation: 5/21-5/24

[MichiganAngler]

I hit Starvation every year for a Memorial Day weekend camping trip with friends and the weather has always been a lion or a lamb. This year it was a lion and the fishing showed.

Conditions were bad overall. We camped through three or four good storms at Rabbit Gulch and lots of scattered rainfall. Water temps varied from 51-56 degrees and we saw the water level rise about a foot in four days. If it's not spilling, it has to be pretty close. We drove out to Knight's Hollow to scope it out during one of the longer rain showers and the road was in pretty rough shape. The camping area was tore up even worse because of all the runoff. I never got a break in the weather long enough to make it up there in the boat, but I suspect the water temperature is a couple degrees warmer and that there might be some fish hanging out in the shallower Salterus Wash.

We fished in between storms on Thursday and Friday and caught a few bass early in the morning between 6-7 AM. They were found on rocky points and caught with crawdad shad raps or crawdad colored plastics. Pretty standard. I thought the smallies were gonna be on every morning all weekend, but they slowed down by Saturday morning and ran deep ahead of bigger weather I think. The fish we caught were all between 10-12 inches, with the exception of one fish that was around 3 lbs.

After some Saturday morning storms, we got our biggest break with about 12 hours of clear skies. We ended up trolling lead-core rigs with crawler harnesses and picked up eight 3-5 lb rainbows for the smoker. The trout are very healthy overall.

That evening at dusk, we picked up a handful of walleye and a couple more rainbows fishing on rocky flats near deep water dropoffs in about 20-25 feet of water. They were caught on jigs with night crawlers or drop shots with plastics. Each of the walleye looked fat and happy too.

I haven't caught a perch in Starvation since 2013. Anyone have any insight to what's going on? Are we going to see the walleye population suffer as a result?

Sunday brought more bad weather, so I packed it up and headed for home.

FYI, the normal "boat launch" at the end of old hwy 40 has a pretty steep dropoff on the edge of the old pavement. I didn't have enough ground clearance on my trailer to back over it and I saw a few other boats abort launches there as well.

Also, I want to give a shout out to the DNR staff that works at Starvation. Ya'll are a friendly, professional bunch that do a great job. Good on ya.

Attached are a few pictures.

Best of luck out there everyone.
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[TubeDude]

"I haven't caught a perch in Starvation since 2013. Anyone have any insight to what's going on? Are we going to see the walleye population suffer as a result?"

[#0000FF]There was a reported big perch dieoff right after iceoff a couple of years ago...all sizes of fish. But some survived and spawned and there are a few schools of small perch along with a very few larger ones. It will take a few years to come back but it will come back.

Evidently the walleyes are finding enough to eat. But a lot of their diet these days consists of crawdads. There are enough in the lake to feed the predators until the perch make a rebound.

Glad you got some fish but wish Mama Nature would have been nicer to you.
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[MichiganAngler]

Thanks, Pat. It must have been after ice-off in early 2013. I marked a couple small "blobs" on the sonar that I figure could have been perch schools, but I never dropped a line down to investigate.

Perch seem to be fairly resilient. What do you think could have caused them to die off?
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[fishman]

Nice report. Im looking forward to fishing starvation this year on the boat. Never have b4. How do you like your i pilot? Im shopping them out. I have a 16 ft starcraft. Its pretty light, im wondering about going with the terrova 80 but could probably get away with the 55. What one do you have? Cant go wrong with a jig/crawler anywhere it seems. Those are nice bows and eyes.
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[MichiganAngler]

I absolutely love my iPilot and I can't see myself fishing without one, ever... I figure your 16' Starcraft is probably very similar in weight and profile to my 16' Lund, so you can probably expect the same performance that I've seen.

I have the 55 lb 12V setup and have never thought about needing more power. On a calm day at Willard, I can troll at 2.3 mph on a fresh battery and my 122 amp-hour deep cycle lasts about 5-6 hours of solid trolling or a couple full days of just working shoreline. By then end of the day, the max speed will trail off to about 1.8 mph.

Adding another 80+ lbs of battery to my boat just wasn't an option for me. I bet that Starcraft will scoot with the 24V setup though.
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[TubeDude]

[#0000FF]The reports of large numbers of dead perch...of all sizes...came from a couple of guys who were fishing for early 'eyes and browns after ice out in March of 2013. The fact that it affected perch of all sizes...and that it is highly unlikely to be winter kill (in that deep lake with a short ice season)...suggests that it is something else.

The same thing has happened at Rockport a few years ago and at Jordanelle about the same time. Since no official CSI dissection and analysis of the dead fish has happened it is pure speculation. Some say it is a species specific virus. I don't know.

I do know that the perch had been acting unperchlike for a few months before. Late in the fall of 2012 we were finding schools of perch suspending well above the bottom...in several areas of the lake. I had never seen that before. Perch are known as bottom huggers. Then the same phenomenon showed up during January and February ice fishing trips. The perch were often suspended up as high as 15' over 40 feet of water. See the screen shot of my Showdown in the attached photo.

I recall thinking at the time that something must be wacko with the fish or they wouldn't be acting like that. I have since wondered if they were being affected by a pathogen that led them to unusual behavior patterns. They still took our jigs and they were fine on the table...with no evidence of parasites or other visible ailments. But the massive dieoff/disappearance was caused by something undetectable by casual inspection.

When the perch were first (illegally) introduced there could not have been large numbers of them. And they managed to explode in numbers in spite of all the hungry mouths...walleyes and smallmouths...and browns. That was before all the rainbows were planted each year.

I only caught a half dozen or so perch last year. The biggest was probably about 9 inches. And in all the places I am accustomed to seeing and catching grundles of perch I found nada, zip, zilch. However, like yourself and a few other regulars I have talked to, I have seen some closely packed sonar blobs that look suspiciously like little perch trying to hide out from the big nasties.

So...I am optimistic that their numbers will return. I only hope it is sooner than later. Us old guys don't got a lot of 10 year cycles left in us.
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[Therapist]

You can never have to much power up front !! I have 24V - 80Lbs and wish I could set up a 36V- 110lb system. By any chance did you go up to where the river comes in and all the flooded cane is ???

[MSM1970]

seen you out there between storms, I was camped up to the end of rabbit gulch, you should have stayed, Monday was good weather till 3 when I left, it was tough fishing for sure, talking to the DNR guys, they said we wont be able to launch boats in the gulch, he was not sure when it would be implemented, he said later this year or next because of the mussels, I asked about the smaller craft he said he wasn't sure how they would handle them,
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[coues52]

fishman, PM sent....coues52
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[wyoguy]

We caught some small perch in the Knight Hollow area last winter thru the ice. At times it was like the old days when you had a hit every drop. They were mostly 6in or less. Due to the ice conditions that was the only place we fished, and only a few times at that.
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[PACKFAN]

Walleye are looking good. This is the first year we haven't spent Memorial weekend down at Starvation for years, usually kept the fifth wheel down there all summer until archery season. Decided to spend the summer at the Gorge this year.Thanks for posting the pictures. Kinda made homesick for Starvation. [fishin]
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[stan55]

Last fall I found a couple of perch schools in my usual spots. All under 6" but there were a lot of them. Was planning on hitting Starvy over the weekend but Koke bite was on at the Berry.
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[fsh4fun05]

I was up there also, it's a tradition for me. I stayed at my trailer West of Starvation and it was a muddy mess up there. I did pretty good for smallies and the fishing for me was better during the storms. Only one FAT rainbow on a dropshot but the bass were plenty, biggest just under the 3# mark.
Saturday I beached the boat and hid under some rocks while the lightning passed. Yikes! That was no joke. Monday was beautiful but I missed more than I caught.
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