how long does it typically take for the mud to clear out? just by looking on the sat. imagery seems to still be muddy.
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how long does it typically take for the mud to clear out? just by looking on the sat. imagery seems to still be muddy.
If ya let water clarity cloud your mind you will never fish in March or early April. That's a mistake!!!!!! The bottom foot or 2 of water is cold, clean, and moving with current. Find an active bed and hammer it. Lock it into your GPS whether MOB and remember the number or load it correctly. It is imparative to drift a small bed multiple times and catch fish within a very restricted area ( i.e. 20 yards). Find'em, Hit'em,m and HAMMMER that school. The long drift days are for beer drinking. After you hammer your 6 jacks! Too cold to mess around in March.
Good Luck and Good Fishing
ok thanks jiginitis that is very helpful info.
Could I get someone to please post the website for the image of the lake. Thanks in advance...........spoon
See my post from 3/17/09 on page 2 of this forum. Satellite Photo's.....
thanks Baha
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the daily bag limit four until May 1st?
ha spoony how is the fishing out there i dont think my father and i will be out for that trip i would love to come out and jig for themgaint eyes that would be awsome to have a 10 lbder hit jigging i have had about 3-4 lbs here on my like but that wouldnt be any thing biggest i have had was a 5 lbs 20"Quote:
Originally Posted by spoontang
Hey Jig- I wouldn't know. I pulled up the image and it looked like chocolate milk. No way was I heading out there......... I am going out on a 30 hour trip on the Gulf of Mexico for swords, grouper, amberjack and whatever else I can catch on the 5th/6th. Did you have a good winter Jig? Did you get into anything fun?
Yep, with very little vegatation ground cover and typical spring rains, the tributaries of Lake Erie and Lake St. Clair (Thames, Maumee, Sandusky, and smaller ones) pump a lot on "muddy" water into Lake Erie (it's actually mostly very small clay particles from the clay-based soils of Ohio, southern Michigan, and southern Ontario). Thanks to the region's typical farming practices, clay/silt runnoff is very heavy. Maumee Bay and the nearer areas of Lake Erie are nothing like they used to be pre-1820's or so.
Yes, all the way up through most of June there is a thermocline (a transition line between water layers of different temperatures) in the Western Basin of Lake Erie. As the warmer and lighter river waters enter the colder and denser Lake waters, they displace and push over top of the colder, heavier Lake water. The farther you go from the river source, the more thermocline you'll find.
In early spring (iceout through April) the thermocline will vary from a few feet below the surface to about half way down to the bottom. In the reef areas and deeper areas off them the colder lower level water is often more clear than the upper (surface) layer, but not always, sometimes the opposite is true due to winds that create currents stirring up the bottom silt/clay.
As the season progresses, the thermocline moves both vertically (as the river waters push it eastward) and horizontially (as the water column warms up). I've personally seen numerous thermoclines scuba diving Lake Erie. At times they are pretty amazing, the transition from warm to cold being only a few inches, and I've seen clarity differences that look like there is a sheet of glass searating the two layers.
So yes, it happens that at times the fish are going to be in one layer or the other, but they may not be there for the reasons some fisherman think (because the water is clearer, or colder, or the presence of or lack of currents). The only way (other than years of experience) to really tell what's down there is to use a drop-over camera and check for clarity.
NOAA satilight (sp?) web site: http://coastwatch.glerl.noaa.gov/mod...egion=e&page=1
West Basin
matter of fact i did get into somthing fun i got laid off and fished the river down here by my home like 5 min from home and got lots of northers one that snapped 17 ib test line when set the hook it took three big chubs before i hooked it i would figure it to be 50" or more to break line that easy and that was this fall and i got into walleyes down there only got one but i had fish hitting four about two hours i thought where pike so i didnt set the hook right away the end of this month going to go try again when they come back in i just put minnow on a bar hook about foot to six " off the bottom got a nice buck this last day at 12:00 this didnt went to die i put three good shots in him and he still laid there for about 15 to 20 min before it die he had 16 " spread 8 points should of also had a bear bear hunting saw two in about 1 hour had asum fall other than getting laid off
Hey there Jig. I might hit some jigging action in late April. My favorite time to fish is about the 3rd week of May when they switch over to worms and the sow females start to feed agian. That is when we should hit it hard.
This time of year, spring, as long as northern Ohio, particuarly the Maumee River drainage, keeps getting moderate to heavey rains, the Western Basin of Lake Erie won't clear up. Windy days also stir up the nearshore waters along with creating currents that move the muddy water around.
Once the Maumee River gets back down to near "normal" flow, and there hasn't been any windy days, the Lake will start to significantly clear in four to five days. Unfourtunatly with the recent heavy rains in the Lake watershead, there is a lot of muddy water out there, and it will take it quite awhile to significantly clear up.
The quagga and zebra mussesls also have a big impact on Lake Erie water clarity. They filter the water as they feed, which is why the shallower, rocky areas generally clear up first and faster. Since the water is cold in the spring, the mussels metabilisim is slower, so they don't filter as much water in the spring.
Remember the thermocline issue. Just because the surface water is muddy doesn't mean the bottom water is also. Plus the walleye are out there around the reefs no matter what the water clarity, so you can still have good catches in muddy water (think of the river fisherman this time of year). Just adjust your tactics.
Use the Lake Erie Modis satilite imagery to help guide you to the less muddy waters.
West Basin