Fishing report (Dunkin Shiners)

[5th Tuition]

Well; good news is Lou and I had a great day even though we got skunked.

Headed to Smithville lake after we bought 4 dozen shiners from Clydes (2 doz small, 2 doz large). Got to Smithville about 12:30 pm and hit the little store for some subs. Took them to the spillway and put out 5 rods (2 with large shiners, 3 with small shiners). The good news was that the shiners swam pretty well in the cold water. They didn't attract any hits, but we had fun watching them swim toward shore or log jams and relative safety. We changed them out frequently in order to attract either the bass, crappie, or chain pickeral that inhabit the spillway. Nothing we did (tried different spots, changed depths of the bait) worked. Gave it a good hour and a half try and decided to try another lake.

Headed to Tuckaho lake and the lake is frozen solid, but the spillway (and below are open). We fished the bridge pilings and the pool area. For some reason (water too cold) the shiners would die after only about 30 seconds in the water. It didn't matter if we used the large or small shiners.

After "twitching" dead shiners for about an hour, we called it quits and headed to Wye Mills to try that spilway. Good news was the shiners lived in the cold water, bad news was we didn't catch anything there either. There was a lot of open water here, but nothing biting. Since the shiners were staying alive in the water, we dumped out the rest of them and decided to call it a day.

As we left the lake, I told Lou to ride down to Wye Landind just for "chits and giggles" to see if it was open water or frozen. It was wide open. The commercial guys have been keeping it open. One commercial netter was at the end of the pier unloading a slew of white perch. He said it wasn't a very good day, the perch had gone deep in the colder water. We shot the breeze with his crew and him for a while and decided to finally hit the road.

All in all a fun day, looks like we need to wait about 10 days to 2 weeks for the water to warm up just a bit.
5th (Marty)

p.s. Looks like they are working on the new jetty at Sandy Point. The barge they are using looks like it is keeping the entrance open and ice free if you are carefull.

p.p.s. How did anyone esle do today.