Bartlett 8/10

[sparkchaser]

Fished Bart from 1830 to 0300. We launched at Yellow cliffs to 2 foot rollers and pretty strong winds. Headed into Cat Bay and marked some possible trees for later. We quickly headed into the river channel and got past the no wake buoys looking for refuge and started scanning. As seen in the screen shots, lots of fish with tons of bait fish. We tried pushing cranks and dragging jigs until it got dark. After dropping the lights, we switched to vertical rigs with minnows either anchored, or trolling at .02 with no luck. The wind died down, thankfully, and the storm that was rolling in from the north missed us by half a lake. We headed back into Cat bay and dropped lights over a couple of areas with trees having no luck. Headed back up into the river past ship rock and tried up there in 14 FOW over tons of brush with no luck. We had shad fry, and shad at every stop, fish jumping all over around us, just not into our boat.
On a side note we did quickly stop in and say hi to Desert Rat, who is camped in his usual spot at SB. I'm sure if you are out there, he will have good intel for you.

[Fishless]

has the rat been catching any fish?

[OneBlade]

Hard work I guess doesn't always pay off -- thought you'd get something there.  Thanks for the report.

[sparkchaser]

has the rat been catching any fish?

Due to the weather at the time, I didn't stay long. Meaning I didn't even get out of the boat, and he was hanging onto my bow and being drug down the lake. I asked him how things were going, and he said fishing sucked.

[sparkchaser]

Hard work I guess doesn't always pay off -- thought you'd get something there.  Thanks for the report.

I guess that's why they call it fishing . Liar's Corner was out of minnows, so we stopped at BPS. The minnows we got were lively and lasted all night, but they were small. I'm thinking that had some effect on catching because the shad we saw around the boat were 2 to 3 times as big. Plus no shortage of them in the lake. The fish in there are eating well.

[ArZFisher]

Same thing here. Been fishing hard this year for slabs with 5 to show all year. We have tried everything early morn, late bite, night bite, minnows, jigs, live shad with nothing to show. I really confused with bartlett this year.

[The Desert Rat]

Back at the barn after 14 days on Bartlett---after hours on the water, graphing and trolling, not much to report on "catchin"
However, I graphed several huge schools of Crappie---when found, they were in 22 feet to 35-40 feet and chained like a freight train--caught 3---doing the math, that is an average of 3/14days  or 3/100 hours ---LOVED every minute --!!!
I remain convinced, Bartlett will champion the Oct-May bite---as Sparkchaser pointed out, the bait fish are plaintiff, the lake is stable and with the increase in water capacity, the forage is plentiful--all great signs for the future of Crappie at Bartlett.
BTW--the storms were really interesting--water flowing down the main dirt ramp area of SB--had to 4x4 out with the 5th wheel--

[Fishless]

SRP will switch to Bartlett side this fall and rumors have it they are going to retain water in horse shoe lake again this winter so lake will go down fast the first part of the winter and if they keep it up like they did this last year another spawn will be destroyed, glad your optimistic about the crappie numbers in Bartlett guess I am spoiled I remember the good old days at that lake not that many years ago