Where is Dave ?

Bill Clark said:
Anyone heard from huntin' Dave Mccann ? I hope he has not been affected by the flooding in Iowa.

The flooding is screwing up my fishing,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, other than that, I'm high and dry. Thanks for asking. I did have my BBIII out today on my local river. 6 inches below flood stage and I was fishing in the trees over what would normally be dry land. [w00t]
 
Dani said:
Well....didja catch anything???

Did you see any pictures? [whistle][whistle] I honestly thought I might even with the high water. Found a nice pocket of slack water but nothing bit my artificials, maybe need to try some live bait.
 
Dave, you have a lot working against you: As poikilotherms, early spring fish are still not all that active in that cold water, lowering their rate of feeding. In flood events, a phenomena termed "catastrophic drift" kicks in within the aquatic invertebrate community, causing many invertebrates to abandon their hold-fast sites and release into the current to drift downstream into more suitable waters and environments. Merritt and Cummins developed a broad zonation model that essentially described stream zonation by current speed and substrate make-up. They described these zones of preferred habitats for various invertebrate specie assemblages, with aquatic invertebrates sequentially grading toward more terrestrial habitat characteristics and preferences as sampling progressed away from the midline of a water course. What few fish that are feeding, feed infrequently still, and there is literally a mountain of aquatic drift as well as terrestrial "critters" that are moving in those flood waters. The third big adverse impact is the volume of suspended sediment moving within the water column, which is a major gill irritant, putting fish "off" their feed.
 
Yet still,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, I find the best time to go fishing is; when ever I can. Now the best time to go "catching" is variable. [;)]

All good info. Water temp was 35 to 36 degrees surface. The walleyes are staging for that 46 degree water but can be caught any time now. If one can get to the open water, walleyes and a limit of them can be and are caught all winter long in my local river. Flood water is indeed not the best choice for catching.
 
Dave, everyone here is either gearing-up for spring steelhead fishing or the yellow perch spawn at ice-out. Perch daily creel limit has been dropped to 25 a day, down from 50 a day, except on Lake Erie waters. Spring perch are great eating fare! When I was living down in Ludington, we were directed by Federal Energy Commission representatives (FERC) to conduct a broad sport fishing potential assessment of the Ludington Pumped Storage Facility's jetty and breakwall complex, as part of a larger mortality impacts study. We modified fifty of those wire cylindrical minnow traps and baited them with dead fish heads from our gillnet catches, swimming them down to place among the limestone blocks the comprised the complexes. We marked the spot on the surface, since attaching a buoy to the traps would just draw fisherman to the site who would pull the traps. We found amazing numbers of crayfish living on these complexes, feeding on the dead fish piece emanating from the turbines. We also saw several walleye schools in a spot along the shore of Lake Michigan that is not known for walleye numbers or fishing...they sure do move around a lot. We switched to fall hook and line fishing, catching limits of perch when everyone else was fishing fall salmon. Fall perch were much "meatier" than the post-spawn spring brethren.
 
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