Shellcracker Fishing on Lake Murray Date: 8/29/2008 10:00:41 AM

In South Carolina, shellcracker fishing is common among panfishermen.  Pound for pound there is no other fish that out pulls these bullies!  I have experienced it first hand.  I’ve almost had (many times) a light action 6’6” rod pulled out of my boat, and also thought it was a catfish on the end of my line.  These fish pull very hard, even when they’re not biting that well.  When they DO bite, you will know it.  Usually by the end of March, depending on water temps, water levels and the moon phase shellcrackers start migrating to the shallows to spawn.  When the nights are in the hight 50’s and days in the 70’s , spawning will occur.  Severe weather fronts will delay spawning.  They will move back out to the nearest deep water, not far from where they spawn.  From my personal experience on Lake Murray, shellcrackers do prefer cooler water temperatures than bream. Locating prime spawning areas can be a little tricky. Offshore structure will produce bigger fish in my opinion here on Lake Murray.  Humps or ridges that are in the mouth of the main creeks or the secondary creeks will be productive, especially is there are stumps.  Shellcrackers do like areas where wood is present.  Also, the red clay banks and points with rock, gravel or shell beds.  But most of my prime shellcracker fishing areas on Lake Murray are secondary points with either stumps or rocks or gravel on them.  Shellcrackers are bottom feeders. Lures and Presentations My favorite way to fish for shellcrackers is with what I call a mini Carolina rig.  I use a 6’6” light action spinning rod with a Shirmano 2000 reel spooled with 8 pound Berekley Vanish fluorocarbon.  I use the 8# line because of the cover and clear water I’m fishing.  To the main line, I use a 1/8 ounce walking sinker, a small red bead, then a small barrel swivel.  To the other end of the barrel swivel I use at least a two to two and a half foot leader with a #4 eagle claw bait holder hook.  My bait of choice is wigglers, red worms, then baby night crawlers – in that order.  My #1 choice is a wiggler.  I anchor down in ten feet of water and will fan cast around until I find them.  Let the bait sink.  Let it sit from say maybe ten seconds to ten minutes, then pull the bait maybe a foot.  Then let the bait sit.  I usually fish with three rods, cast two out and let them sit.  The third cast out and move it along until you figure out what they want.  You may set that rod down and move the other two along the bottom.  You can also rotate all three along.  Caution – because this is how I’ve almost lost rods out of the boat.  Shellcrackers don’t mess around when they bite.  I don’t sit on one spot very long – maybe an hour at the most.  I may stay in that area and move deeper, but never deeper than 30 feet.  Then, after say another 30 minutes with no bites, I will move to a different spot.  Early spring and spring is when I find them shallower than ten feet. Winter, fall, and all summer you may as well start on points with rocks or stumps in at least 20 feet of water.  The better fishing on Lake Murray can be in 30 feet of water in December. Now, if you keep getting snagged and are constantly breaking off rigs, you can use a slip float rig.  But, your bait must be within three inches of the bottom if not right on it.  Remember, shellcrackers are bottom feeders.  I have caught tons of fish on a slip float rig. But, your bait must be close to the bottom. Cold Fronts Cold fronts can make shellcrackers vacate the shallows in a hurry.  Colder temps and high winds that drop water temp only a degree or two will move shellcrackers out to deeper water.  Just find the nearest deep water close to where they were and you will start catching them again. To me, Shellcracker fishing here on Lake Murray is very, very exciting!  It’s also very addicting.  The greatest rate of growth for a fish is between the time you catch it and the time you first tell your friends about it.   Tony Alexander

Date: 4/24/2008 9:37:58 AM

I love fishing all year round, but this has to be the most exciting time of the year to be on the water. The trees are starting to bud, flowers are starting to bloom, Easter is upon us, and the bass are moving shallow in masses. After what is normally a cold winter, the shallows begin to warm with an onslaught of warm days. I like to  rotate between deep and shallow water until I can locate that magical  number of 58-60 degree water in the shallows. My dad always told me to  find those pockets sheltered by the northern winds and off the main lake. Those should be the first areas to locate the bucks moving up. The bucks are the first to arrive, and will make beds in extremely shallow water, usually near structure. The shallow water is the first to warm. Eventually, wave after wave of more fish will arrive, making their beds in deeper, and deeper, water. They are comfortable bedding in deeper water because that water column eventually warms too. The bucks will stay on the bed four or five days before the females move up. The girls are not far off, but much harder to locate then the shallow bucks. I like to search for the deeper females on deep brush or rock piles. This can be a slow process, but can end in a gold mine. When Lake Murray had grass, I used to worship the rattle trap type baits to search out the larger staging females. Now that brush piles, docks, and rocks, have replaced the grass, I have been forced to slow down and use a jig, spinner bait, and/or texas rigged plastics. Locating those large groups of staging bass can be some of the most rewarding finds in this sport. Nelson Walker and I milked one brush pile in 17' to win a two day tournament during the spawn. That was a very memorable win because the fish were all over the banks, but we were able to do well fishing deep, and away from the other anglers. We had 60 pounds, and failed to haul in the limit of 20 bass. We only caught 16, but they were fat ones. Regardless, It is easier to catch the active biting shallow water bucks. It is not unusual to get between 15-25 bites fishing shallow in late March, and April on Murray. The sad thing is your best 5 may not weigh more then 10 pounds. You almost have to locate the females if you are searching for some lunkers. One early sign that the spawn is fast approaching are the orange eyes characteristic of March/April bass. That is always an exciting sign that the full blown spawn is approaching. This tell~tell sign is due to the fish hormones going wild (I remember how excited I was on my honeymoon with my lovely wife Missie~my eyes were probably orange too!!!!). Let me first point out that there are a million different ways to catch bass, so I will only share a few of my favorites. This is a great time of the year to share the water with an inexperienced wanna be angler. If you are a parent, it is a wonderful time to teach those young ones about bass fishing. My three kids, Susannah-12, Jack-10, and Garrett-8 love fishing this time of year, but can't handle bait casters. For that reason, I like using spinning tackle with light line (I love 6-8 pound CXX P-Line) rigged with a finesse or trick worm on a very light jig head. My good friend Chris Daves, has taught me a great deal about spinning tackle techniques, and he has been a Godsend. I rarely caught the quantity of fish that I do now. I'm convinced it is due to light line, along with that slow fall, on pressured bass. These light jigs are called shaky heads, but I don't like to shake them unless I'm hung on cover. I fish them slow from the edge of the shoreline out into about 6' of water. That bait falls slow, so a fish has plenty of time to move a good distance to engulf the bait. After a long cast, I lift the line slowly and carefully to determine if a bass is "on". You rarely feel a tick; you have to recognize the heavy feel or line movement. I love trying to detect when a fish is on my line using light line and spinning tackle. There really is something special about this presentation using light line and light tackle. I guess the best way I can describe this technique is to fish the bait on a slack line. If you don't fish with that bow in your line, the fish can easily feel you and spit the bait before you have time to stick that hook. The other fun part to this type presentation is the hook set, or I should say, lack of a hook set. This is hard for even the best guys on the water to master. I love to set a hook hard, but it does not work with 6-8 pound test line. You have to slowly sweep the rod tip in the opposite direction the fish is taking the bait, and just reel into him. I rarely miss shaky head jig fish as they will hook themselves as they swim against that tight line. If the weather has been steady, and the pockets are between 58-60, stay in the pockets as that should be the active areas. If a front has past, I like to back out of those same pockets to the nearest dock to the closest point, or the point itself. I continue to use the shaky head until those BIG females come shallow. When that happens, you better not have 6 pound test on your shaky head reel. At that point, I like to use 10-12 pound in clear water, and throw either a texas rigged lizard or a tube bait. You can fan cast to the same areas you were fishing just days before. When the bucks and females pair up, you better just cover water fast looking and fan casting ahead of the boat. When you spot the pair on a bed, you just have to properly control the trolling motor and boat, so that you do not disturb the 'friendly fish'. Once I get the boat situated, and you can either use a push pole or anchors, then you can start throwing every bait in the tackle box into the bed. Everybody has their own favorite bait to present to a bedding fish, so I will not even go there. If I find that ideal fish that sticks to, or closely to the bed, I like to try and bump that fish with my bait. It's my favorite way to get a fish mad. 9 times out of 10, that fish does not quickly blow my bait, but carries it 3 feet away from the bed. This long transporting of my bait, gives me plenty of time to react with a nice hook set. I promote catch and release, but suggest this be done very quickly during the spawn. The better the spawn, the better Lake Murray maintains it's current level of greatness. When you spot a male and female bumping or rolling, that is the process in which the female is releasing her eggs onto the bed. It's pretty cool to watch! Personally, I do not like to bother the pair when they have reached this stage of the spawn. They are both hard to catch, and if you can catch one, it can disrupt a good spawning season. Sadly, time passes by, and April comes and goes. When you get to the point that only the bucks are left on the beds, you have to come to the realization that the spawn is about done. Those tired females have backed out to deeper water, and are harder to catch until they start getting some of their strength back.  --  darrylstarkey@bellsouth.net

How Fish Finders Work Date: 1/28/2007 7:25:37 PM

By: Andrei Loskoutov The thrill of any fishing adventure begins with finding the right place to wet your line. Fishfinders allow anglers to quickly identify key targets and structure, as well as fish. A Fish Finder is a subset of a group of instruments called sonars. A Sonar consists of a transmitter, transducer, receiver and display. In the simplest terms, an electrical impulse from a transmitter is converted into a sound wave by the transducer and sent into the water. When this wave strikes an object, it rebounds. This echo strikes the transducer, which converts it back into an electric signal, which is amplified by the receiver and sent to the display. Since the speed of sound in water is constant (approximately 4800 feet per second), the time lapse between the transmitted signal and the received echo can be measured and the distance to the object determined. This process repeats itself many times per second. Display: The display shows a history of the received echoes. The user can make a number of adjustments to tailor the display to his or her preference, such as senitivity, the depth range and chart speed. Displays use a variety of technologies, provide different resolutions and number of shades of gray or color. Each display is made up of a number of pixels, which are little square blocks that make up the images. The more pixels and shades of gray or color the better resolution and image clarity. Fish Targets: Echoes from fish within the beam will be shown on the display by illuminated pixels. What image appears on the display depends on a number of factors: the sensitivity setting on the fishfinder, the cone angle of the transducer, the speed of the boat, and the size, depth, speed and direction of the fish. A fish that is swimming directly beneath the boat, it will create a consistent echo that will cause a continuous line to appear on the display. A stationary fish caught in a narrow beam transducer appears as a single point on the screen as the boat passes above it, whereas under the same conditions the fish appears as an arch if a wide beam transducer is used. To read more of How Fish Finders Work, or select a Fish Finder that right for you, please visit our site at: www.bystore.org. Almost anyone can now afford to own a unit that will assist in a better fishing. Author Bio Andrei Loskoutov www.bystore.org

The Life Of A Largemouth Bass Date: 1/28/2007 6:42:06 PM

The Largemouth Bass is American-s all-out favorite game fish! It is probably the most glamorous species in the fresh waters of the world today. The largemouth is fundamentally a lake fish, and that is where it colonizes best. It is not a scavenger, it is strictly predaceous! It is not fussy about food. "If it moves, eat it!" is a kind of motto of the species. We bass fishermen today are fortunate that our predecessors in their wisdom saw fit to introduce this species of fish into waters far beyond its natural habitat. Largemouth bass are now to be found extensively in "warm" freshwaters around the world. However, because this bass is by nature exceptionally wary of the dangers affecting its existence, it is frequently frustrating to not be consistently successful in catching them. The Largemouth Bass is the basic freshwater game fish. He is voracious as a predator but extremely wary of danger and spends only a very small portion of each day actually feeding. The largemouth bass are extremely curious and this results in a good many getting hooked early in life. But they soon become wary (maybe "educated" is a better word) and often this leads anglers to believe a lake is "fished out" or does not contain many bass. A largemouth bass soon learns that lures, especially those it sees most often, can get it into trouble. The quality of fish and fishing can be readily diminished by too much angling pressure (at least by too much removal of the larger breeding-size bass). However, an undesirable alteration or destruction of its habitat is the greatest hazard contributing to the depletion of the species in any given body of water. The Largemouth Bass (Micropterus Salmoides) is the most adaptable of all the bass species. Given the choice, he will avoid bottom areas of lakes and other waters which are overly muddy or layered with silt. But the Largemouth Bass is also very tolerant, and if muddy water is unavoidable from time to time he will simply make do. The water may be clear, stained, murky, warm, cool, shallow, deep, cover-free, or infested with jungle-like swamp growth and chances are excellent that "Micropterus" and his progeny will get alone just fine. The Largemouth bass feed primarily by sound (vibration) and sight. They can detect even the smallest vibrations caused by other fish or prey pushing aside water as they move through or onto it. With their extremely acute vision they take full advantage of periods of areas of subdued light. Any predator prefers to remain in darker waters where it is somewhat concealed and where it is far easier to see prey passing by which is swimming in better-lit water while the bass remains in semi-darkness. It is impossible to catch bass until you find them! Therefore, the procedures for locating where they live, feed, relax and rest up between feeding activities are basic to successful catching. Fortunately, it is possible to predict fairly well where bass are located at any given time or place if an angler is prepared with an full understanding of the habits and behavior of this fish. The old admonition to "think like the fish" is merely an incentive to learn the whys and reasons of a fish-s normal behavior in order to be more successful in catching them. About Author Bass Attacks http://www.bassattacksdvd.com Article Source: http://www.1888articles.com

Jimmy Houstan Quote Date: 1/28/2007 6:43:24 PM

"Don't forget to duck when you set the hook and miss!" --Jimmy Houston