Winter Easing Its Grip... I Hope!

Things are finally starting to break loose…. Well the ice anyway. The harbor and inner-harbor shore fishing continues to be as slow as I can remember. I can say that it will go down in history as my worst winter since at least 1987 and maybe ever if I looked close enough to my records.

We can only speculate about why it has been so bad, but most fingers point to our little silver friend, the gizzard shad. The winter fishery lives and dies by the gizzard shad. Under most circumstances it is whether or not we can find the schools of shad. Generally if you can find the shad you can find some winter trout or walleye action. This year was an exception that I have never experienced before. It was a gizzard shad population boom like we have never seen before. There have been shad everywhere. Thick schools of shad from the upper reaches of the inner-harbor all the way out into the main harbor. The shad were so thick at times that you couldn’t cast without hooking them on crankbaits, spoons, or nearly any lure you’d toss out there.

Even the boats that have been able to get out into the main harbor and troll around or work the clean water discharge are reporting thick schools of shad. The seagulls have been living in seagull paradise this winter.

So what is the problem??? My guess is too much bait. All winter long there was absolutely no urgency for any game fish out there to look for food or chase anything. They literally had to swim with their mouth open. Another theory about the poor inner harbor fishery is also the case of too much bait. On normal years, the fish would push up into the inner harbor looking for food that could be found near the warm water areas influenced by the Valley Power discharge. This year the entire harbor was full of shad and there was no reason for them to migrate into the inner harbor. We have no scientific proof of anything but I do know that it was the worst winter I ever had and also the most shad I have ever seen in the harbor. The two have to be related.

The winter fishery lives by the shad and dies by the shad. This year we died. Luckily there are signs of spring out there.

Tight lines and smooth drags!
Marc