Wed 5/27 - What Algae?

[TikYakToe]

I’m not sure if we fished a different Barrett than others have been fishing, but this felt like the normal Barrett we’ve fished the last 20+ years, other than the lower water level.

Dead-sticking light-colored Pop-Rs worked best early, and wacky-rigged watermelon-red flake Senkos worked best after the morning bite wore off. The slower the presentation, the better.

We got a few on the drop-shot w/Roboworms, but they didn’t produce nearly as well as the wacky-rigged Senkos.

I’m not sure if we didn’t see all the algae others are talking about because we mainly fished the banks of Hauser about mid-way back, where passing wakes kept the water moving, or if the conditions have improved a lot in recent days.

We ended the day with roughly 60 fish, and were off the water before 1:00. It was a blast introducing two first-timers to Big B!

P.S. If you want some cool POV shots on the fly, grab a pair of Metas . We had a blast today “Hey Meta, take a video” right before setting the hook .

https://share.icloud.com/photos/07bLn02 ... h6keEu8s-w

[reelhooker]

Great to hear! Thanks for the update

[Gotfish?]

The water where you are fishing is pea green (both in the link and in the image), there's plenty of algae there. But the filamentous algae might be less, that is the stuff that is really annoying. Algae blooms can come and go several times in a season.

[Osidecoffee]

I think I saw & heard the filming of that vid haha. I was out on a green float tube fishing some bluegill beds down the way.

[JWall]

Those smiles say it all!!

[Osidecoffee]

I don’t have the energy to do the full on report today, and gotta get back to helping my wife with the kids after taking the day off, but there were definitely encouraging signs of life out there today.

2 weeks ago it felt like it was almost exclusively a finesse bite out there for us with worms & senkos. I got a few free rig fish outside of the brush line that were fun, but the day was filled with shallow, small fish on worms for us

Today, there was a good amount of life in Hauser. I didn’t make it over there until 7:30 or 8am? But was greeted by busters right in front of the bathroom as I was crossing over the main lake, and they continued on deeper in Hauser for the next hour or two off and on. The jerkbait bite also sounded good enough from what I heard. I never managed to tie one on of course, but saw fish suspending in 15-20’ of water at times, and talked to a fellow angler who got a bunch of dinks throwing one. It was definitely nice to have more options out there!

It could’ve been the overcast weather getting them going today, but hopefully the trend continues on…

[KJ_ToadCult]

It sounds like conditions changed a lot from last weekend. I fished both Saturday and Sunday (23-24) and it was pretty tough each day. Fished Pine one day and Hauser+main lake the other. Caught 48 total across both days, biggest was about 3lbs, most 1-2lb. Zero top water bites either day and only caught 1 on reaction bait (except I also caught a couple small bass and a nice crappie trolling a crankbait). Drop shot was most reliable overall, but I also caught some on wack rig and jig. The Texas rig, however, did not get bit consistently to my surprise. Super slow presentations or rig on the drop were what got bit most, but even then there'd be stretches where I wouldn't get bit for a while in spots I normally catch stuff. On top of that the algae was awful. Any rock or cover down to 12' or so had this thick pale algae that coated everything, which was a pain to clean off almost every cast. Second day I mainly fished 10-20ft deep just to try to avoid it. Caught about as many at that depth as the 3-10' range though. Definitely the toughest days I've had at Barrett.

In terms of shad, at the Cast Hope event in April in Hauser I saw schools and shad with bass attacking them on my graph. They were around 15-20ft deep, and I caught some dropping a hookup bait down into it. This this past weekend while I was exploring the cove by that camp and saw what looked like shad fry swimming in schools among all the dense trees and brush (which were covered in algae) in shallow water.