A few years ago, my long-time fishing partner Jim Yoder and I were
fishing for saugeyes on Piedmont Lake
in East Central Ohio. It was mid January and, for weeks, the
temperatures had been dropping into the 20's at
night with daytime highs in the 40's. Nearly every morning we had to
break thin skim ice for about a hundred
yards to reach open water but by noon it would all be gone. Surface
water temperatures were always around
35 to 38 degrees by mid-afternoon.
There were a number of other
anglers fishing the same lake that year and most of the fish caught were
small
to medium Jacks. Big females were rare. Most of the fishermen were using
tried and true methods, based on
smaller baits and lures, and everyone was catching fish. With the cold
water and the abundance of those
perfect eating size fish, Jimmy and I were each taking a few fish home
to stock our freezers.
When we cleaned these fish
we were noticing that the size of the shad that they were eating was
very large.
A 16" saugeye could have as many as four or five shad in the
4" to 7" range in it's stomach. Were these
winter-kill shad or were these saugeyes actively seeking and chasing
large shad on a regular basis?
On one of our next
excursions, we decided to try to imitate the size of the shad that we
had been seeing in
the stomachs of the fish we had been taking home. We began by
drastically increasing the size of the bait or
lure we were using. In the area of the lake we were fishing water depths
dropped to 30', in places, with most of
the fish relating to a mid-lake roadbed that topped out around 15'. We
began using large chubs, suckers, or shiners with stinger hooks in the
same areas and, although we caught some fish, there was really not much
difference in our success.
Then, after spending several
fishless hours after a cold front rolled through we decided to call it
quits, but,
stubborn as we were, we just had to fish our way back to the ramp. Tying
on larger, 1/2 ounce jigs, we added
4" plastic tails and large, 6" sucker minnows with stinger
hooks. Firing up the gas motor, we let line out until
our rod tips were jerking as the heavy jigs were digging into the bottom
as we moved along, out in the basin,
in 25' to 30' of water.
We probably caught over a
dozen fish on that trip back, and all of them were females. The largest
was just
over 6 pounds. Since then we have done this often enough to convince
ourselves that these fish didn't
necessarily want a small or slow bait. Over the years we have tweaked
and fine-tuned our presentations to
the point where we can usually catch nice fish, even on the worst days,
by speeding up and bulking up, even
in that cold winter water.
We have tried this approach
on walleye waters to find out if this was a method more suited to
saugeyes and
have seen no difference. There seem to be two kinds of bites. The best
and easiest bite is one that allows us
to eliminate the use of live bait and keep our hands and fingers warm
and dry. The same big jigs and 3" to 4" tails, digging into
the bottom and kicking up puffs of mud and sand, can provide some
exciting action when
pulled at 3/4 to 1 MPH with the gas motor.
On days when the bite is
slow, a live bait rig with a 3/8 to 1/2 ounce egg sinker about 2 feet
ahead of a
floating jighead with a large shiner or sucker minnow and a stinger hook
can put good numbers of fish in the
boat. Again we are pulling these baits with the gas motor. The downside
of this was the lack of smaller fish for
the freezer, but it didn't usually take long in the morning to put a few
Jacks in the boat with smaller and slower
baits and lures.
We missed being able to use
our methods this past winter. We had safe ice by mid December and it
lasted
through late February. Very few big saugeyes were caught from Piedmont
Lake through the ice this year but
the numbers of 12" to 20" fish were staggering. After ice-out
we were on the lake, trying to find those bigger
females, but they had apparently already begun to move out of the deeper
basins and just weren't there to find.
Maybe next winter, if the
weather is mild and the lakes remain free of ice, we can once again fire
up the
gas motor and confirm the opinions of the traditional crew, that we are
indeed just a little bit crazy, to be
moving that fast or using baits that big, in the middle of winter.
If your home waters stay
free of ice this coming winter season, and if the fish that you are
cleaning look to
have been feeding on larger prey, try doing just the opposite of the
tried and true. Try some speed and some
size for those mid-winter 'eyes!
