Report May 22-25

Fishing Reports and Lake Conditions Only. Ask your questions and post remarks in the General Forum Please.

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MrSimon
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Report May 22-25

Post by MrSimon » Mon May 27, 2013 8:29 pm

Here is a short video from out trip.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBXp_J1im18

I will keep this short.

Except for Wednesday afternoon when we arrived, the weather was cold and quite windy with rain. It was nasty for sure and it definitely shut the fish off. Frankly, the fishing was terrible.

We were targeting pike and they pretty much had lockjaw. The ones we did find all came off deep weed lines. We got a few with spoons, jigs, spinnerbaits, jerkbaits, and senkos.

Largemouth are on their beds in the shallows and smallies are all bunched up on shoals. When you come across them, its hard to leave cause they are easy picking right now. I don't necessarily agree with the closed season, but we do respect it and move on if we are getting only bass and no pike in an area.

Boat traffic and fishing pressure is a whole lot higher than it used to be. Lots and lots of new cabins too. No slot limits on pike and a high creel limit have taken their toll as well. Pike numbers and size are certainly down from 9 years ago when we started fishing the lake.

All in all, we still had a fun trip.

riverposie
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Re: Report May 22-25

Post by riverposie » Tue May 28, 2013 8:05 pm

MrSimon wrote:Here is a short video from out trip.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBXp_J1im18

I will keep this short.

Except for Wednesday afternoon when we arrived, the weather was cold and quite windy with rain. It was nasty for sure and it definitely shut the fish off. Frankly, the fishing was terrible.

We were targeting pike and they pretty much had lockjaw. The ones we did find all came off deep weed lines. We got a few with spoons, jigs, spinnerbaits, jerkbaits, and senkos.

Largemouth are on their beds in the shallows and smallies are all bunched up on shoals. When you come across them, its hard to leave cause they are easy picking right now. I don't necessarily agree with the closed season, but we do respect it and move on if we are getting only bass and no pike in an area.

Boat traffic and fishing pressure is a whole lot higher than it used to be. Lots and lots of new cabins too. No slot limits on pike and a high creel limit have taken their toll as well. Pike numbers and size are certainly down from 9 years ago when we started fishing the lake.

All in all, we still had a fun trip.
boat traffic? I have a video from last year on the 4th of July..I was the only boat on the lake in the afternoon..no traffic at all & we took about 100 bass in a week..

MrSimon
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Re: Report May 22-25

Post by MrSimon » Wed May 29, 2013 9:13 am

Yes, boat traffic.

Almost every bay had one or two boats in them at all times. When the winds were really heavy it was common to see five or six boats in a sheltered bay at the same time.

Lots of pontoon boats and pleasure boats running around too.

While fishing in the cut, there was a steady stream of boats coming through the channel ... one right after the other for over an hour.

I've never been there on the 4th of July, but last week there was a lot more boat traffic than we've seen the same week in previous years.

I still think there are a LOT of fish in Black Lake ... and the bass fishing is excellent. The pike fishing however is taking a beating. It will be very hard for the pike population to survive the complete lack of conservation efforts combined with a massive panfish population that feasts on pike eggs.

Its nobody's fault really .... its just the way things go.

fisherman2582
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Re: Report May 22-25

Post by fisherman2582 » Wed May 29, 2013 1:26 pm

Nice video enjoy seeing these. I personally believe as for pike we saw the biggest pike in the lake after 15 years of goin to the lake, but numbers are down its possible that over fishing in winter derby's has taken some of the breeding fish. Also i see alot of people keep pike that are small for what reasons im not sure cant be a whole lot of meat on a small one, but with that said Black Lake is not by any means a trophy pike waters. Biggest pike ive seen caught in BL was about 37. So i do agree that numbers are down a little but pressure is also up on the lake a slot limit would be great for walleye and pike. I know we have a group of six guys that go in may and we saw alot of bigger pike but not the numbers we are use to so with that said hope this info helps and as far as traffic pretty crowded during the season opener,and with about 90% of boats pike fishing. Not hard to miss the big floats. Pike size for us has increased while numbers have decreased. Crappie size seems to be lower over the last few years also with alot of fish measuring in at 9 inch. Good Fishing to all

MrSimon
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Re: Report May 22-25

Post by MrSimon » Fri Jun 07, 2013 2:18 pm

Glad to hear you guys are still seeing nice sized pike. 30" is the largest I've ever caught at Black. Average seems to be in the low 20's.

If they put a max size limit of 24", I wonder if we'd start to see more big fish? If I knew there was a pretty good chance of catching some 30+ pike, I'd enjoy fishing the lake more.

As it stands now, I'm really happy with a 25er.

This is the biggest pike I've caught at black.

Image

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