This past Friday and Saturday I scouted 5 of the seep lakes to see what I could find. The water temperatures at these 5 lakes were consistently in the 65 to 66 degree range. One of the lakes was shockingly low, like someone had pulled the plug. The shallow end where in the past I've had good shallow water fishing now looks like this:
I didn't find any fish in this lake or in 3 of the other lakes I tried (the water level was at normal levels in 4 out of 5 lakes). I'm assuming that they totally or mostly summer-killed. However, one of the lakes turned out to have fish, mostly in the 15 to 17 inch range, as you can see from my chart:
Here's a typical fish from that lake:
I hooked about half the fish on leech patterns and the other half on a baitfish pattern, so what do you think I found in the one fish I retained? The stomach was packed like a sausage with daphnia and nothing else. So much for "matching the hatch."
I can't explain why this one lake produced fish and the others didn't. That's just the way it is with the seep lakes, as you never know what you'll find in them. The lakes cycle up and down, so they could be great one year and terrible the next.
No other fishermen were seen at any of these lakes, just one hiker, so if you like solitude, you might want to check out some of these seep lakes.
I seem to be seeing more new non-native invasive plants these days, like this Austrian Peaweed:
Or this Tamarisk bush:
The Purple Loosestrife is another invasive, non-native, but it has been here so long and is so widespread now, it is like a native, and at least it adds color to the shorelines of the lakes:
Rex
I didn't find any fish in this lake or in 3 of the other lakes I tried (the water level was at normal levels in 4 out of 5 lakes). I'm assuming that they totally or mostly summer-killed. However, one of the lakes turned out to have fish, mostly in the 15 to 17 inch range, as you can see from my chart:
Here's a typical fish from that lake:
I hooked about half the fish on leech patterns and the other half on a baitfish pattern, so what do you think I found in the one fish I retained? The stomach was packed like a sausage with daphnia and nothing else. So much for "matching the hatch."
I can't explain why this one lake produced fish and the others didn't. That's just the way it is with the seep lakes, as you never know what you'll find in them. The lakes cycle up and down, so they could be great one year and terrible the next.
No other fishermen were seen at any of these lakes, just one hiker, so if you like solitude, you might want to check out some of these seep lakes.
I seem to be seeing more new non-native invasive plants these days, like this Austrian Peaweed:
Or this Tamarisk bush:
The Purple Loosestrife is another invasive, non-native, but it has been here so long and is so widespread now, it is like a native, and at least it adds color to the shorelines of the lakes:
Rex