Open T Sat 6/10

Sat June 10 at Little Pigeon ramp behind Yankeetown, In. 6:00AM starting time $60 per boat, no ramp fee. Come on out and fish the Ohio River above Newburgh Dam.........for information or directions call 812 568 5442

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Hey Don:

Did anyone hook into any big crappie on that creek while bass fishing? If so what would it take to find out where they saw theses.

BTW. I saw a 6.2 lb bass taken out of Otter Pit about three weeks ago. Some guys from Azteca had a small tournament sunday and they brought in some nice 2lb bass and this one 6.2lb fish. I took some pictures of it and the DNR measured it's length. I used my digital scales to weight it. I used two digital scales one rapala and one from Berkley to weight the thing. I also took some scale samples from it for age determination. The guy who caught it had it in a live well since 6:30am and they weighted it at 2:45PM. Unfortunately it died in the livewell.

They returned a few nice bass alive to Otter Pit at the boat ramp.

I fished the boat ramp last night and caught three nice (short) bass using a chartruse 1/32 oz road runner.

I guess with all the flooding we had this spring the fish may have moved up the creek from the River looking for a place to spawn or it had been in Otter pit for some time and no one caught or kept it until now.

I took some photos of the fish but it was with a Film camera so I can't get the pictures on the web until I get the film all shot up and developed. I still have a few shots on the roll of film to use up before I can get the film developed.

It's too bad we can't post pictures in here.
Regards,

Moose1am

We did not fish Little Pigeon. We went to the river. Caught lots of fish, bass encluded but the bass were all short. We did go in one creek on the Ky side but found nothing. With the river dropping it looks like the bass have moved back out into the river. I caught 3 nice slab crappie but don't remember exactly where but it would have been on the river in the Owensboro area. I realize this isn't much help but we were consentrating on bass and didn't think much about the crappie......

By the way, you mentioned the tournament at Bluegrass. In my opinion that should never be allowed. Those lakes are so pressured already they don't need tounaments. All they will do is kill more fish. Obviously the guy that killed the big bass did not know how to manage a livewell. It's really a shame......

Don is right about the amount of pressure that the bass receive at all the pits in the Blue Grass Fish & Wildlife Area.

Just yesterday I talked to a guy that was fishing at Otter Pit. He had three bass on his stinger. The fish were in shallow water that was full of black mudy after the fish disturbed the bottom sediment. He had a good fishing spot for this time of day. He had a 4lb bass and what looked like a 2lb bass on the stringer along with one short bass. I talked him into releasing the short bass while it was still alive. Evidently he was not aware of the DNR rules. The rules require the bass at Otter Pit to be at least 14" long and if the fish is short it MUST be returned to the water IMMEDIATELY unharmed. Not weighed with the weigh hook in the gill slits either!

During the Tournament at Blue Grass the guy that caught the big fish was very appologetic and I was sure that he was sad about the big fish dying. Not sad enough to give himself a penality for weighing in a dead fish though. He also needs to be schooled more in how to keep fish alive in the live well. And also how to properly weigh a fish.

I have new ideas on how fish should be weighted in at bass fishing tournaments to make them better able to survive, but it would cost some money. I am sure that big tournaments could easily buy bigger scales that can weigh the fish inside water bags. All they have to do is weigh the water inside any container and then put the fish into the container and weigh them once more. You can easily set the Tare on the new digital scales. Heck I buy my minnows by the pound and the bait shops all weight a bucket full of water and then add the minnows into the bucket while continuing to weight bucket until the right amount of minnows have been added. It's easy and it could be used to help keep the bass alive.

Bass that are taken out of the water are stressed and their oxygen supply is shut off for 2 or more minutes at a time. Sometimes the fish are paraded around and pictures are taken and they are without oxygen for longer than 5 minutes. This is not good for the fish

I have seen other angles that know the proper way to catch and release a bass. They lip the fish and don't keep it out of the water for more than a few seconds. They don't rub the protective slime coating off the fish's scales in order to prevent bacterial infection from occuring after they release the fish. I saw one such guy yesterday fishing at the South Ramp of Blue Grass Pit. He caught and released about 4 short bass. He had fun and released all the fish unharmed. I wish more guys were as good of sportman as this young man. Someone trained him properly.

Sunday there were about 10 people fishing Otter Pit when I arrived. I just fished from the bank and didn't really catch anything. I left my boat at home as it looked like it was going to storm any minute, but it cleared up nicely. It was still too windy to fly fish yesterday so I just rounded up some minnows to feed to my aquarium fish.

I think that we older fishermen should help educate the younger guys when they need it. Most younger fisherman are good fisherman and know the proper way to handle their catch. But there are still a few that need more training and education. I guess if they better understood the word "SHARING" as in sharing the resouce with others and future generations they would be better able to understand why we have DNR fishing regulations. Some just don't care and some just don't know any better. Those are the guys that we need to work with before the DNR CO's give them a big ticket and a huge fine.

I explained to the one young man with the short bass on the stringer that if Gordon Woods caught him with that fish on the stringer he would be in big trouble. I think he got the message as he immediately released that short fish from the stringer. Hopefully it will grow up and give more people some fun catching it's offspring someday.

Regards,

Moose1am

Actually that does help me Don. Thanks. A falling river will draw the fish out of the creeks back into the river.

I need to start finding out more information on fishing for crappie in the Ohio River.

I have studied fishing for trout in streams so that may help me in fishing a river system.

I think that the trick is to find out the water levels and the flow rates etc. Then get out there and put some time on the water.

I may even start trolling for crappie on the Ohio River. I could end up catching some big fish that way.

So you went all the way up to Owensboro, KY. I have two 6 gallon steel gas tanks for my little 35 hp motor so that should allow me to get around the river a good ways. I always felt afraid of running out of gas with just one 6 gallon tank on the River. Now I know if I go upstream on 6 gallons that I can make it back downstream on the other 6 gallons and I also carry an extra 1 or 2 gallons spare gas can for emergencies. Knock on wood, but so far I have never run out of gas in my boat... not yet. Tomorrow I probably will run out of gas after saying that. LOL


Regards,

Moose1am

When to Otter Pit the other day. Sunday I think it was. Talked to a young man fishing there. He had a 4 lb bass and another bass which I guess was about 2 lbs along with a short bass all on the same stringer. I talked him into releasing the short bass before he got into big trouble. He did keep the 4lb bass and the other bass to take home to eat. He caught them on minnows and a bobber.

So there are still some nice sized bass in Otter Pit. I think that they see so many lures that they lean not to attack the artifical lures after some time. Now that's just my theory and I could be wrong. Maybe they are just dumb enough to never learn what it feels like to get hooked. But then again maybe they do REMEMBER.

Otter pit along with all the other big pits at BGFWA get tremendous fishing pressure. I am sure the DNR guys have the man hours fished for these pits.

It still amazes me that I have seen a 6lb bass, a 4lb bass and at least 5 two lb bass come out of Otter pit in the last month. This is late May and Early June. Maybe its due to the spring floods allowing new fish to migate into Otter Pit from Blue Grass Creek and Pigeon Creek and the Ohio River this spring? Or maybe they have been in Otter Pit hiding from all the artifical lure bass fishermen?

Regards,

Moose1am

The guy that caught the big bass really did what he could to keep that big fish alive. He had a tank that I would guess contained about 20 gallons of water in it. He has three other 2lb bass that survived in that live well. He used a 12 volt DC water Pump to aerate the live well. Not sure if the water got too hot or that the big bass was just too stressed out. Big bass may take longer to recover from a fight at the end of a fishing pole. I don't know when the big bass died. I don't know how deep he caught the fish. Most likely he caught in in shallow water as he did tell me that he caught the fish early that morning around 6 am or so. That was what I think I remember them saying. So maybe the fish was just in the live well too long. Maybe they should require the weigh in to be earlier in the afternoon.

I really don't fish tournaments for many reasons. But I really see no difference in for boats fishing seperately and then bragging about their catch afterwards back at work or them fishing in a small tournament. There were only 8 guys fishing in this tournament and there were more other fishermen fishing Otter pit that day than just these four boats.

What need to be done is to educate everyone on how to better care for fish after they are caught. Maybe the bass tournament guys should have a earlier deadline for the weigh in's which would help prevent long times in a live well.

I did notice that the guys were still fishing at the boat ramp until 2:30 pm when they had the weigh in scheduled. Those guys were really working hard to catch that last fish.

In their defense they only lost one fish at the weigh in. All the other fish (there were about 6 fish total) were alive at the weigh in and they where returned right back to the water after they were weighed. Only the 6.2 lb bass didn't make it.

It's a shame that that big bass was not kept alive but then sometimes that happens. Maybe it was just time for that fish to die?

My only real concern was that the guy's learn to not stick their fingers or anything else up into the fish's gills. I do hope that the smaller bass that were weighed this way and released are not hurt. I would prefer people puncture the lower lips with the scale' hook than to stick the hook into the gill slits. But that's just one guys opinion.

Regards,

Moose1am