A Few Triploids From Bullshead

[acurrie]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The boat with the doggy platform

[Ayr]

Thanks for sharing your day, Drew.

 

Cheers,

 

Ayr.

[jksnijders]

Looking forward to some fall days down there... Sweet pics.

[esleech]

Nice fish, where they on the boatmen or leeches?

[acurrie]

Thanks guys,

 

Most fish were on Chronies, But Boatman seemed to work best in the morning, then around 11ish-3 pm chronies, scuds, and "Ice cream cone" aka.. wierd looking chronie.

 

Tried a few leeches but i think i have the wrong size, color,or pattern cause i wasn't getting anything.

[monger]

I believe the triploids are only 8-13" long and were only put in this year. The fish you caught look like 3 year olds and some of them look like they haven't cleaned up much from the spawning period (anus hanging out). The triploid females won't color up in the spring of their third year but rather stay nice and chrome. The males will still color up in the spring.

Looks like you had a good trip out with some nice sized fish. Did you catch anything over 20"? I wish they would change the minimum size limit to 23" so we could get one more year out these fish before they get bonked.

[rusty]

Yeah most of the trips we caught we smaller than that...the biggest ones were 12" or maybe 13". You can really tell because they're nice and firm instead of a bit spongy like most of the bigger fish.

 

Nothing over 20" for us this year Rob, and that was out of well over 150 fish between 4 guys.

[monger]

Hi Russ. It sounds like you guys had another fantastic trip to BH. Did you get to do any fishing on the surface or just the regular methods? I don't think we'll go until we do a blast and cast trip once pheasant season opens. It is surprising how a 20" limit appears to have removed ALL the big fish.

It proves how effective anglers are at removing the big fish in the spring. Hopefully the triploids will be less catchable by all the shore anglers in the coming springs.

[bloom]

I haven't caught many 20'' this year (maybe 3?), but I"ve been staying around the boat dock with my daughters haveing a blast with the little ones most days (yah, the trips are around 13'' already and fight pretty good)

 

I still think the 20'' are in there, but they're just tougher to catch, and they're definately not in the numbers they use to be.

 

Will hopefully head out this Sunday, and if the girls let me sneak out without them, I'll get away from boat dock and look for some big guys.

[monger]

Glad to hear the Wildberry reel is getting a work out Tim. It's such fun taking the kids out. I'm off with my little guy and the dog to chase Huns tomorrow. Have a great day!

[rusty]

Obviously flies under indies are still the best way to slay them, but we did really well hand twisting boatmen or whatever else too. I'm sure you'd nail them with floating boatmen but I just didn't have any with me.

 

I just don't see how the math works out to take all those big fish out, and I also don't see the harvest pressure after the pike opening. Something's killing those big fish though.

 

Rob - if you're ever looking for company for huns, let me know. I have a little single shot .410 that would love the workout.

[acurrie]

Yeah, I guess they are not triploids.. lol Still kinda noobie. Are you talking about catching 20 inch Triploids? Because I probably caught 4-5 non-triploids over 20 inches and 1 that was at least 22. I was nailing them in the Northeast corner, so i was no where near the boat launch. Man can they fight.. I broke off a few monsters... and was using 3X.

[bloom]

Glad to hear the Wildberry reel is getting a work out Tim. It's such fun taking the kids out. I'm off with my little guy and the dog to chase Huns tomorrow. Have a great day!

 

 

That wildberry is actually a real good reel...pleasantly surprised. Starting to think the 3/4 weight isn't cutting though. When she gets anything over 16'' on, that poor little 6' rod just bends right over. Can't believe how good she is as letting the fish run and manuvering them around the boat.

 

Could get a little scary if she every hooked up with someting over 20'' though on that little rod (her best right now is 18'')

 

Thinking hunting would be great with the kids...so much more down time than fishing at BH...sometimes it just gets too crazy out there.

[rusty]

Not saying there are or aren't 22" fish in BH - but neither me or anyone I've been there with in quite a while has caught them. They are tough to measure without a tape because they're such pigs. I've fished every square inch of that lake too, and my best fish came from the point across from the launch in 5' of water.

 

Here's a few from a couple of years ago though. I had days there when these were damn near average. One day at the wall of whales I caught three like that in three casts. Those were good times.

 

All three of these fish taped within a 1/2" of 22".

 

[rehsifylf]

Great fish.

 

I go in the spring around may long-weekend and the banks are loaded with people. I'd prefer that they just make it catch and release. I think there is just too much population too close to the lake to manage it as a 1 over 20".

 

Here's a pic of a a nice rainbow my 9 year old got stripping in a purple leech from shore (it was so $#$%$ windy that I could not row my jon boat accross the lake - everytime he would get a fish, by the time we landed it, we we're back at the boat launch). I was about 50 yards down shore when he hooked it, so just had to let him fight it on his own. When he hooked it, he had about 30 ft of wet line at his feet, and did a great job getting it to the reel. It was quite the thing to watch.

 

He was so excited and had absolutley no problem with a quick pic and then sending this back for someone else to enjoy.

 

[acurrie]

Nice Fish!

[maxwell]

some of those fish look starved.. ive heard teh shrimp n minnows are almost gone.. wish they would stock half as much as they did so there was more room to grow and more food too go around... i dotn blame the wack n stackers much... yes htey do take fish but there should be more if there was more room too grow... how about only stocking 10 000 or even 5000 sure enough they couldnt keep that many in a year..... not even half

[Nick0Danger]

some of the fish seem real healty but max has it, less fish more food bigger fish

[Taco]

some of those fish look starved.. ive heard teh shrimp n minnows are almost gone.. wish they would stock half as much as they did so there was more room to grow and more food too go around... i dotn blame the wack n stackers much... yes htey do take fish but there should be more if there was more room too grow... how about only stocking 10 000 or even 5000 sure enough they couldnt keep that many in a year..... not even half

 

You got it, looks like the forage base has gone to hell, some of those fish are gaunt.

 

EDIT; or is the failure to spawn that hard on the fish? maybe trips are part of the answer

[rusty]

I think it's the latter, but that's just my opinion.

 

I ran an aquarium net through some weeds and came up loaded with small scuds (Hyaella?). There are lots of minnows in the shallows still and the chronie hatches are still incredibly prolific.

 

My personal, unfounded, poorly educated opinion is that the stress on the fish is coming from harvest in the spring combined with heavy sustained C&R pressure through the summer and fall in conjunction with the sexual maturation stress. Like Max pointed out, the insane numbers of fish in there are not helping the situation.

 

The big hen you see in the top pic there was fought hard and landed in 4 minutes; we gave up trying to revive her after more than a half hour. I think the C&R mortality of those eggbound and miltbound fish is a lot higher than a lot of us would like to believe, and you just don't see the dead ones because of the water clarity.

 

I really hope trips are the answer, but in the meantime, the lake is still an awesome place to take someone who's learning to flyfish or hasn't really nailed trout before.

[bloom]

Was out today and the shallows by the boat dock where thick with minnows. Hauled some weeds up on my anchor and the whole weed clump was 'moving'...covered with the small shrimp (most i've seen all year)

 

I caught a larger fish today (~18-19'') and it sure faught poorley. Another guy there said the same thing happend to him on his larger one. Like Rusty said, the C&R pressure on the fish could be paying it's toll. All the fish from 17'' down fought really well and were just nailing the boatman. Still wasn't able to get away from the boat dock area though and I'd like to see how the fish behave on the other side of the lake. Guess I'll have to charge up the battery and head out again next Sunday

[maxwell]

what if te regs were 3 fish under 20 and non over? leave the trophis too grow bin and strong? keep te stocking te same jstu change the regs too maintain trophoy fish in a trophy lake?