Just one more crazy result of this weird late spring
Effects of this wacky spring weather continue to confound Mississippi fishermen, and this latest one may be the weirdest yet.
An electro-shocking boat from Southeastern Pond Management Company’s Canton office spent two hours working the banks of a private lake in Rankin County on Wednesday (May 15).
I was there looking for a story on managing a small fishery. Instead I walked away with, well, a shocking story from the shocking boat. Making three laps around the lake, the boat failed to knock up any concentrations of bluegill bream, which you’d expect in May.
“But man, did you see what happened when we got in that corner down there by the dam?” said Southeastern’s Scott Kirk. “We hit one heck of a redear bed. It was loaded and we had big redear coming up all around us. I realized it was a bed so I pulled out of there real quick.”
For the unknowing, redear (a.k.a. shellcracker or chinquapin) usually bed in March, no later than April in Mississippi. They usually finish spawning long before their more numerous panfish cousins, the bluegill, start bedding. In many years, depending on the full moon, you can hit the jackpot and catch both bedding at the same time, usually at the end of the redear’s cycle and the start of the bluegill’s, in April.
“This has really been one strange spring,” said Kirk, who oversees management of private lakes in Mississippi, Louisiana and Tennessee.
Indeed it has, for all fishermen.
This week, Rabbit Rogers, one of the best crappie fishermen in Mississippi and a legend on Barnett Reservoir, said he was “shocked” to find male crappie still plentiful in shallow pad stems on the upper main lake.
“I know we always have some spawning fish in the stumps and other cover down on the lower end of the lake in May and even June, but to find fish that shallow this late in May is odd,” said Rogers. “Now, there weren’t any females in there that shallow. It was all males, so the spawn itself is over up there in the grass but the males are still black and around the beds protecting the eggs and fry.
“I caught some females in between, meaning I caught them between the shallow spawning areas and the deep summer holes. They were spawned out, you know, kind of thin and poor in the stomach area. I wouldn’t be surprised to find spawning still going on down there in the open lower lake. As soon as this south wind stops blowing, I’m going to look.”
By Friday, those winds had not stopped, making it impossible for Rogers and other fishermen to fish open water. The Magnolia Crappie Club’s two-day state championship will be held on Barnett May 31-June 1, and Rogers said it is possible it could be won by catching spawning females from the lower main lake area.
Bass have been just as confusing. The weekend before last, fishing on a private lake in west central Mississippi, I caught female largemouth with big fat stomachs. And, they had not even moved shallow.
After two hours of beating the banks without success, we moved out, switched to 11-inch worms and hammered big females. We didn’t keep any, but studying the bellies we guessed that half had spawned and half hadn’t. They either had thin stomachs showing a void of where the egg sacks had been, or were bulging on both sides.
Just this past week, surface temperatures begin to reach the mid to upper 70-degree range again in most of Mississippi.
“It’s been like that down here, too,” said Rob Doherty of Hattiesburg, who fishes throughout South Mississippi. “We’re a bit ahead of you guys up there, but not by much. Our crappie are done (spawning), but the bass were later than I have ever seen them. I’ve talked to some bream fishermen and they are hopeful that by (this) weekend, the bluegill will move up.”
The next full moon is Friday (May 24), and the May full moon is usually the annual peak of bluegill bedding action.
“Would surprise me if (the peak) was later in June,” said Joe Watts of Canton, an avid bream buster. “At my lake, we haven’t caught a single redear yet and they usually finish bedding in April. Who knows what they are going to do? The way this spring is going, I wouldn’t be surprised to find all our beds loaded with redear and bluegills next weekend.”
If that happens, then maybe there will be a silver lining to this rather odd spring.
Be the first to comment