So I was at Potholes over the weekend and I notcied that there was a severe lack of carp activity - am I missing something? Normally at this time of year I expect the fish to be in full spawn mode, with jumping and rolling going on everywhere. From Friday night to Sunday morning I saw maybe 10 fish jump.
I camped out at the falls on Winchester, got there in the late morning on Friday - 5 fish in the pool. Now, I expect there to be 150 fish in there if things are normal, so I figured somebody had gone in there earlier in the morning and chased them out. Went back out onto the lake for the day on the west side, found very few fish and those that we did see were deep, not in the shallows and not rolling around.
Went back to the falls around 6:00 and actually ended up chasing fish upstream to the falls, got a school of around 50-60 herded up into the pol below the falls and got some shooting in (cheating, like shooting fish in a barrel, but still fun)
Woke up in the morning expecting to find another 100 or so fish in the pool and found absolutely none. I know nobody else had been there because I was camped RIGHT THERE.
Figuring that maybe we were in the wrong spot, we broke camp and trailered the boat. Drove into a lake down in the seeps that I have really had good luck at over the years - saw only about 15 fish where I would normally expect to see hundreds.
Dumped the boat back in at the bridge on Lind Coulee in the evening around 10:00 to try out my new lights - cruised the area just upstream of the bridge for about 1 1/2 hrs (until my trolling motor blew up), saw one fish. Water was murky, but still...!
My questions are as follows:
1. Did I miss the spawn this year? Due to the warm weather, did they just spawn early and it's done and over?
2. Has anyone fished up in the Crab Creek area, and if so are there still fish on the spawn up there? (we heard there were fish at the "Eagles' Nest", but I don't know where that is...)
3. Are the numbers down? I know when I started bowfishing Potholes 20 years ago I never saw another bowfisherman, it wasn't until about 5 years ago that I ever saw anyone and the last 2 years have seen a real increase, and the tournaments. Are we actually having an impact on the population?
Just throwing this out to see if anyone has seen the same thing - of course, I'm not ruling out that it could be my own incompetence... I don't get over there as much as I would like, so I can't really 'pattern' the fish. Maybe I'm just going to the wrong spots. Any feedback is appreciated, and good luck to everybody!
Russ
