[kastmisser]

Two buds and I went to JM to troll for wiper and maybe saugeye if the wiper weren't biting. None of us had fished the lake before, so we started out going across the face of the dam about 6:00 am. Water was 61 degrees and murky green. Visibility was about 2' at the dam and 1' when you got about a quarter mile away from it. Seemed low too, was about 50' below the highest water mark on the dam, the deepest we saw was 24' at the dam and it was pretty much all 9 to 11' once you got away from the dam. Didn't mark any fish at the dam so we began trolling the south shoreline. Between the three of us we only got one 15" white bass (football shaped), one 14 and one 13" wiper and one 14" 'bow all morning, all on crankbaits. Marked some small fish, one or two medium fish and no big ones. Pretty disappointing morning for as long of a drive as it was. About 11am the wind started blowing and we got off the water at noon since the bite slowed down anyway. Talked to a local who was launching his boat when we were and he said that JM has not been that good ever since the drought. Went back to camp and set my tent back up, relaxed and hit the spillway in the late afternoon. Caught some small wiper on spoons and I hooked something huge that would not come up. I played tug of war with him for a while since I couldn't let him run because of a lot of underwater brush that he would have gotten tangled in and he ended up getting off. Felt like a big wiper.Next morning we did good at the river as it leaves the spillway, lots of smaller saugeye, walleye, wiper and white bass. Kept a few of the wiper and bass for lunch. The fish in the lake were very lethargic, we weren't sure if we had a stick or a fish on, except for the trout.  Wouldn't recommend going there for anything but crappie, there is much better wiper fishing found closer to home, IMO.

 

[fisher32]

Very nice report. Sorry you didn't do any good on the main body. The locals are rite. That lake used to be dynamite b4 the drought. I remember getting limits of crappies an wipers on every trip. Talked to the ranger one time before the drought and he had said, they did a crappie sampleling and estimated that lake to have over 1 million crappies in there. This was about 4 years ago. I sure they're still in there but you might need a boat if they're not on the dam. I would try to deep channel that runs from the cement dam to the railrod tracks. Even though the water is extremely shallow over there, the channel still holds lots of fish and is fairly deep if you can find it. It's like a snake shape. When the cold fronts move in that's where I would be. Better luck next time.

 

[roadkill]

were the alot of crapie being caught?

 

[kastmisser]

Yeah, while I was driving around the lake not seeing hardly any fish, tbmanivong was at the dam kickin' butt! See his John Martin 5/13 report.