what has happened with the sauger??

well , this has been a terrible year few months for sauger IMO. i dont know or have any clue whats wrong. ya think the water is right and ya catch nothing , ya think the weather is perfect and ya catch nothing. i have been real dissapointed with it this year. have they just not ran up the river yet? seems in the past fishing was good from thanksgiving until march or early april. but spring is around the corner and the white and hybrids will be on soon , hopefully.

anyone wanna shed some light on what has happened or has'nt happened with the sauger??

well i`ve been fishing the river for 30 plus yrs,,,and thru the yrs it seems like they run in about a 7 yr cyle. Last yr was KILLER. this yr nothing. I`ve seen this 4 or 5 times in the yrs. I`d like to know what the state dept says about this.

[QUOTE=onemorecast56;352621]well i`ve been fishing the river for 30 plus yrs,,,and thru the yrs it seems like they run in about a 7 yr cyle. Last yr was KILLER. this yr nothing. I`ve seen this 4 or 5 times in the yrs. I`d like to know what the state dept says about this.[/QUOTE]]

HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO GO OVER THIS WITH YOU. I TOLD YOU THE FIRST TIME YOU MET ME WHEN YOU HAD FREINDS IN YOUR BOAT AND I WAS IN MINE.............Okay, I'm calm now.......lets try it one more time.

a. As you come up the slew, bear right toward the KY bank.
b. Head up slowly until you get 33.4 feet from the first turbin.
c. Look to the bank. Look for the Oak tree that has 2.3 feet of bark stripped of the South East side.
d. Behind that tree is a Maple tree, that has three branches in a row pointed north. On the back of that tree, look for the branch that is sort of shaped like a question mark pointed West.
e. Line up the point of the question mark branmch, walk 16 feet straight ahead to the grey stone that is 2 feet wide, 1 foot long, and has a nick in the West corner.
f. Line the nick in that stone up with the big black rock to the NorthEast. Go to that rock.
g. Under that rock, is a switch box. Move the Arm to the "KILL EM" position.
h. Now quick, run down to the boat and go fishing fast, cause the box will automatically reset itself in 73.456 minutes to the "REALLY ***** ALOT" default position.
i. Here's the key, when the temperature is between 58.4 and 71.34 degrees, the box will not reset to the "*****" position. Today never got past 55 degrees, so whoever set the box to the "Good" position, probably forgot to go back and reset it.

Print this out, and keep it with you next time. If you have folks with you and things are going bad. Give it to them to read, and tell them if they can not figure it out, then the bad fishing is their fault. :)

[QUOTE=onemorecast56;352621]well i`ve been fishing the river for 30 plus yrs,,,and thru the yrs it seems like they run in about a 7 yr cyle. Last yr was KILLER. this yr nothing. I`ve seen this 4 or 5 times in the yrs. I`d like to know what the state dept says about this.[/QUOTE]

Doug you may be dead on cause i have heard this from 6 different people.


Bob i think some one has set that switch to horrible and it has gotten stuck!!

Hey Bob! you do know that you must prove mental stabilty to get that Captains license. :):)

Early October got two nice walleye and thought then sauger and walleye fishing would be good this fall but has been a bust for me ,got very few.Fishing the same place I fished in 2007 where several nice limits were took home where this year went home empty handed most of the time.
Jake

Doug is right about the cycle I have heard a 7 year cycle also ...Hey Doug how bout the warm water discharges??? I fished Gallagher back in Nov and we did pretty good several smakkies and ky's but no stripers

As an amateur fisherman and semi-pro fish geek, I too would like to know some scientific explaination for this phenomenom. Even I had a hell of year last year! Where are the fish?!

Where the over harvested? Was there a major die off? Have the fish just not migrated up river? Where do they go during the summer? Personally I didnt know saugar were migratory fish, I just figured they bunkered down in deep water even though Ive caught some nice fish during the summer in small creeks in Oldham county....????

[QUOTE=JD7.62;353433]As an amateur fisherman and semi-pro fish geek, I too would like to know some scientific explaination for this phenomenom. Even I had a hell of year last year! Where are the fish?!

Where the over harvested? Was there a major die off? Have the fish just not migrated up river? Where do they go during the summer? Personally I didnt know saugar were migratory fish, I just figured they bunkered down in deep water even though Ive caught some nice fish during the summer in small creeks in Oldham county....????[/QUOTE]

The first thing that came to my mind was overfishing. It'd be easy to figure out. Find out what size sauger most fisherman were catching last year. Then find the average growth rate of sauger in Kentucky. Divide the size of the sauger most fisherman were catching by the average growth rate. If it comes out to around 7, then we have some evidence for overfishing.

I second that opinion. Last year with the drought the river was low and fishable all fall into the winter and fishing was great. I think the harvest was also great which cuts into the numbers we are seeing (or not seeing) this year. They do run in cycles so with this being a poor year for harvest maybe they will bounce back in a year or two..

kc

Interesting. If there is some time cycle the sauger population rises and falls on it wouldn't surprise me if it was related to prey availability/population density. Someone said the river was down longer, lower water means faster water and less slow water/grass for bait fish to recover/hide in. A.k.a. a field day for fast predators like our friend Mr. Sauger. I'm sure if you guys think they where over fished, that they certainly where. See ya there JD.

I don`t think it was over fishing, I think some other factor is in there some where. I`ve seen this happen 3 or 4 times in my fishing the river heavy the last 30 plus yrs. But I`d love to know what it is....