[Earth Day Edition] Open Water Season Starts in Nebraska

Long at last, it’s open water season, and we have wasted no time finding fish.

The waters were warming up nicely until the cold front this past week. Water temps in the Tri County and Johnson Lake were all the way up to 50 at one point. Now I’ve heard the temp has dropped quite a ways, which is to be expected. We fished in water from 47 to 50 degrees and found the fishing to be slow. We managed only a few crappies in the canal, and only one sauger at Johnson. While talking with other friends out on the lake, their success has been similar. While we thought that the walleyes could easily move up on the dams at night real soon, that may have been pushed back just slightly because of this cold. But I do not believe it will be a big setback. With a slight warm up ahead in the forecast, the night fishing could be hot.

Largemouth Bass.

With snow melt coming from out west, the canal has been moving quite a bit of water. Last year at this time it was common to see water moving as slow as 1100 cubic feet per second (cfs). This week we’ve seen it up around 2000. When fishing the canal, it’s nice to keep the current in mind as it can really move the fish around. I believe that was part of the problem with our lack of success with crappies and saugers. The water is simply dictating some of their movement right now.

Now onto something completely different. My friends and I have been doing something lately that is new to us, which I’m sure will be old news to some of you. We have a variety of public and private sandpits that we’ve been targeting for big largemouth bass with stick baits. We have been working hard on trying all kinds of new baits and seeing which ones are doing the best for us. The baits that are doing the best for us are baits that suspend at rest, as this is a key part of our presentation. We’ll cast out, crank the bait down a few feet, then let it sit. Twitch it, reel slow, let it sit. There are all kinds of combinations of cadences you can use while doing this. We’re finding most of the time we do not need to let the bait sit longer than 5 or 6 seconds. The bass that are taking these baits are very aggressive, sometimes waiting until the lure is near the shore to come out and grab it. Some of our most fun catches have been heart stoppers when the water erupts at your feet. Another reminder that just because you’re almost at the end of your retrieve, you still need to be ready.

I had the opportunity this past weekend to fish with my friend Marty Hughes, who, as Kayakajak, is the foremost expert in kayak fishing in the region. We set out in search of monster bass at a public area near Elm Creek one day, and private waters the next. While we didn’t find the monster we were looking for, we did find a pattern that rewarded us with a few catches. Most all the fish we caught during the weekend were in shallower waters where it was the warmest, calmest part of the sandpit. These fish are moving up to warm up, and are often easily tricked into smacking a passing bait. It’s amazing at how much access you have while in a kayak. You can go many places that are otherwise hard to reach with larger vessels, or difficult to fish from shore. I learned a lot about kayak fishing this weekend, and you can too if you spend time with Marty on one of his adventures.

The nice thing about this recent cold weather is that patterns like the ones mentioned above will go a bit longer into the year. We’re having a lot of fun finding out which stick baits work best, and frankly, it’s just a fun way to fish. Having a bass smack a lure after it’s been motionless for a short time is real fun.

That said, be sure to get out and enjoy the springtime in Nebraska and get a great start to another great year.


Editor's Note: In celebration of the 45th anniversary of Earth Day population-we™ staffers will celebrate our love for planet earth with green posts the entire month of April! Our resident fishing blogger, Brian Robinson, is an outdoorsman who clearly has a love and respect for everything fishing. Thanks for reading our first Earth Day post. 

-population-we™ blog post by Brian Robinson 

© 2015 population-we, LLC

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Fall Fishing Nets A Monster Fish

I’m hearing from a few reservoirs around the state that the fall pattern is starting to show itself. Slabs and blade baits are producing some fish once in a while, and it’ll only improve. Big Mac remains slow from what I’ve heard from numerous friends. A blade bait did produce a 63 pound flathead for my friends at Sherman Reservoir last week, though. What a blast that had to be!

The Big Flathead Fish.

Elwood is still a bit behind, it seems. We looked for fish on the graph for a little while, and tried some of our go-to spots, and the hardest part was trying to differentiate between all the bait on the screen and active fish. Almost everywhere we went, there was bait. A few places looked promising next to drop offs, so we anchored up and put some fresh shad down in 45 feet of water. It wasn’t long before we had a few bites, and my friend set the hook on one. Turned out to be a nice three pound channel cat. They were being real tentative and not committing to the bait at all. We lost several others as they were holding onto the shad long enough for you to feel it, but would then let go. We decided with a slow bite that we’d try something else.

My friend Grant and I loaded the boat and headed over to the Tri County Canal where I often fish. We tried some trolling and picked up another channel cat, and things slowed down again. Until….that one bite. The leadcore tightened up, then slack, then tight again. As Grant grabbed the rod, the fish finally realized he was hooked, and then the fight was on. I don’t know how long it took us to get him in, but I would wager a guess on about 15 minutes or so.

Grant just moved back here from Hawaii, so this was a pretty new experience for him, and entertaining for me. I told him what to expect as I was certain it was a big flathead. Not until the fish surfaced did he believe me, which made things more interesting. After helping Grant with some drag settings on the reel, I finally netted the fish, if that’s what you want to call it. The fish did not fit real well, and I was trying not to let him flip back in and snap the line. Grant grabbed one side of the net and we finally wrestled him into the boat. The monster fish (pictured above with Grant) went 45” long with a girth of 27.”

My scale turned out to be less than reliable, so using a few charts found on the internet puts the fish at about 44 pounds, which I feel comfortable with. The body was full and it was a very healthy fish, so who knows, it may have hit 45 or 46. After smiling for some pictures, we watched as it flipped water at us with its monstrous tail. The crankbait was not very deep in his mouth and just ahead of his gills, so it was a nice clean release. Of course we hope to see that fish again next year when it’ll be over 50 pounds.

Of course, the next day we headed back out and tried for more, only to strike out. We did lose a real nice sauger close to the boat, as well as a nice crappie. Managing a few channel cats and white bass on cranks was enough to keep it interesting on an otherwise slow day.

The temps look stable for the immediate future, which I believe will keep things slow to average on the water. Once we get that cold snap, look out. I still say chances are good that we’ll have an outstanding fall bite, but we need to have that cold snap for things to really go crazy. Enjoy the weather while you can--we all know what’s coming.

-population-we™ blog post by Brian Robinson

© 2014 population-we, LLC 
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Fishing Outside Your Comfort Zone in Nebraska

It finally seems that the cold wintery weather has disappeared. Since we’re well into a late spring, my biggest fear is that it’ll turn into a hot summer in a very short amount of time, which would leave some windows open for a short time to catch specific fish at specific times. Right now, we’re taking what we can get.

Fishing on a lake in Nebraska. 

Water temps across the central Nebraska region have slowly been rising, only to be pushed back down at times by cold fronts. We recently had a few outings that showed the temps to be in the upper 50s, almost creeping into the 60s. This is a good thing, as some of our summer trolling patterns start in the low 60s range.

At Harlan, we found water that was in the 60 degree range and tried trolling, just to see if it would work. It turned out to be a great day for us as we boated 19 walleyes, the largest being 20 inches. The best part was, we caught most of these fish with nobody else around. All fish were over 15 inches. Throw in some nice white bass, a few drum and one wiper, and it was a fun day to be out.

The next day we returned to closer water at Johnson Lake. The water there is a bit cooler, but we tried trolling anyway. We picked up two saugers, and saw very few other fish caught. We decided to hop over to the Tri County canal, only a few miles away. We ended up picking up three more saugers, a couple of real nice crappies that were in full pre-spawn mode, and a few more white bass. I had a real nice fish on that came undone with about 20 feet of line to go. Even though with water temps around 63, I figured it might be a bit early for the flatheads to be real aggressive, but I’m sure that’s what it was. Flatheads are built for power and strength, so even a 10 pounder feels like a beast.

The good news is, the water temp is rising. The bad news is, it probably is not rising much this week on account of our temps barely being over 60 degrees most of the time, with lows dipping all the way down to 30 degrees. I try to look at the good part of this, which is if you have a pattern that’s working, it’ll keep working for a while longer. Maybe longer than usual, with this weather. I know lots of fish are being caught using crawlers now, instead of minnows, which means the fish are only becoming more active and aggressive. Sometimes we get in a rut and try things that we’re used to, and force those tactics to work, and then they just don’t. So don’t be afraid to try different things with these fluctuating temps. A perfect example is that previous to this past weekend, I went away from my plastics and crankbaits and actually used live bait, which is something I used to do exclusively. I ended up getting a limit of walleyes in the Tri County Canal near Johnson Lake, with two smallmouth bass, two more walleyes and a sauger being added by my friends. Never hurts to try things outside of your comfort zone.

-population-we™ blog post by Brian Robinson

© 2014 population-we, LLC 
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