Nolin lake jumps

[HURRICANEBOB]

I found jumps at Nolin today (Tues, 10 Jul). Right at the mouth of Dog Creek and right out front of there. Started at about 7 am and lasted till it turned sporadic around 10-1030 in the morning. Saw some small schools of what looked like larger fish judging from the size of the splashes. Also saw what looked like either swarms of white bass or totally crazed piranha :-). Looked almost like bluegills in the jumps. I say that because the surface would just fizzle with hundreds of small hits, with no really big blow ups.

I also noticed each blow up of a group of fish was very short lived. I mean like 5- 10 seconds and gone. I looked at my graph, and noticed I was marking a ton of fish near each blow up at the 14-25 foot mark, but next to nothing at the surface. Surface on my graph said is was 86.7 degrees. Bait balls they were chasing looked to be juvenile gizzard shad in the 1-1.5 inch range.

I had fish hit silver and black Zora spooks, and small and large torpedo prop baits of the same colors. Not one hit on a crank of any color. On some retrieves, I had the same lure hit 5, 6, 7, and some 8 times without a hook up. And yep, all the hooks were straight and sharp. I just was lucky enough today to be able to watch the spectacle and feel the hits without having to get a lot of fish smell on my hands.

The few fish I did hookup with were small, and most I just shook off before landing.

Anyway, with the very warm surface, I think the fish are staying deep in the cooler water, see the bait ball, make a rush gang attack, and then immediately dive to deeper again. I was getting some hits by throwing a silver spoon into an area right after the surface feed broke down. I let it sink 10-15 feet and then started a slow twitch retrieve.

Gonna go again this week. I think I'm going to line all my lures this time with velcro and see if I can get more hits to STICK.

[jfw]

I found jumps at Nolin today (Tues, 10 Jul). Right at the mouth of Dog Creek and right out front of there. Started at about 7 am and lasted till it turned sporadic around 10-1030 in the morning. Saw some small schools of what looked like larger fish judging from the size of the splashes. Also saw what looked like either swarms of white bass or totally crazed piranha :-). Looked almost like bluegills in the jumps. I say that because the surface would just fizzle with hundreds of small hits, with no really big blow ups.

I also noticed each blow up of a group of fish was very short lived. I mean like 5- 10 seconds and gone. I looked at my graph, and noticed I was marking a ton of fish near each blow up at the 14-25 foot mark, but next to nothing at the surface. Surface on my graph said is was 86.7 degrees. Bait balls they were chasing looked to be juvenile gizzard shad in the 1-1.5 inch range.

I had fish hit silver and black Zora spooks, and small and large torpedo prop baits of the same colors. Not one hit on a crank of any color. On some retrieves, I had the same lure hit 5, 6, 7, and some 8 times without a hook up. And yep, all the hooks were straight and sharp. I just was lucky enough today to be able to watch the spectacle and feel the hits without having to get a lot of fish smell on my hands.

The few fish I did hookup with were small, and most I just shook off before landing.

Anyway, with the very warm surface, I think the fish are staying deep in the cooler water, see the bait ball, make a rush gang attack, and then immediately dive to deeper again. I was getting some hits by throwing a silver spoon into an area right after the surface feed broke down. I let it sink 10-15 feet and then started a slow twitch retrieve.

Gonna go again this week. I think I'm going to line all my lures this time with velcro and see if I can get more hits to STICK.

Love the velcro idea