Clear Water Reservoir

[Bryan-AZ]

I'd like to figure out how to consistently catch fish on my new home lake. This lake has a few challenges, but I'm really intersted in understanding the water color challenge.

- Most of the lake is clear with 40 feet visibility looking down from the surface.
- The natural headwater of this reservoir is blocked off for a good portion of the year due to Eagle's nests--the water color does improve at the headwaters.
- The northern coves have a bit more stained water and this is where most people fish.

Volume 4 discusses a clear water example that puts the deep water sanctuary around the 80ft mark and a good movement would put the adult fish at the 30 - 24 ft breaks. When it comes to straining the water trolling spoonplugs on a clear lake, do you still start at the 2-4 ft contour? My guess would be to use wire line and double the depth numbers.

This reservior changes about 65ft in depth annually, which leads me to my next question. The northern coves do have better water color, but the deep water back in the coves goes above 60-65ft mark. Will the adult bass use structures in these coves during the high water season? The 65 ft deep area in the coves today will be dry in September/October.

You can see the numbers from this past year:

LakePlez-WaterLevels.JPG (22.13 KiB) Viewed 2610 times

This will give you an idea of the water color in the "lower basin" or lower 1/2 of the lake (78-80ft bottom depth):

LakePlez-69feet.JPG (35.46 KiB) Viewed 2610 times

LakePlez-77feet.JPG (67.07 KiB) Viewed 2610 times

5 miles up the lake from that spot ^^ is the northern cove area. The water color does get better, but again, the 60 ft view you see below will be dry land in 6 months:

LakePlez-CastleClarity.JPG (34.49 KiB) Viewed 2610 times

This is the same location with the camera tilted toward the water surface. This is to give a perspective of how much the sunlight can penetrate the clear water, even when there is a decent wind chop on the surface. The white-washed top of the picture is the camera facing up to the sun from 60ft down.

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[Steve Craig]

Bryan,
First of all Welcome to the board. Glad you are here and glad i have another Spoonplugger within driving distance (100 miles)! Happy you made it over.

This looks like Pleasent? If so, John used this lakes water color a couple years ago in his presentation at the Winter Seminar. I took many pics for him of this particular lake. It is even clearer now than it was then, just like your pics show.

We both know what to do if we HAVE to fish this lake. We go to the headwaters where we know there is better color. Water color is everything in a lake of this type. Like you say, if we could only fish the Auqa Fria arm, we would have a much better situation. There is better nutrients coming in from that side and it is not as sterle as the rest of the lake. Fellows this lake gets most of its water pumped in from the Colorado River and is very, very clear. Quagga and Zeba mussels everywhere too. Buck would call it "drinking water". In fact I have him on camera saying that very statement about this lake!

The lake is loaded with Stripers and you can catch some good ones there.
Big Clear Highlander.
Our guidelines say to not fish any farther up the lake than were the lowest draw down mark gives us 10 feet of water in the channel. It is my feeling that in a lake of this type, we need to double that number to 20 feet.
This guideline has worked for me out here.

Bryan, Have you fished up the Castle Creek arm? I have seen some very good color there in the past.
You will figure this one out as long as you stick to it. It is just a toughy!

Again, welcome to the board and I look forward to spending some time in the boat with each other.
Steve

[GDS]

Brian, Welcome to Spoonplugger.net! Your question about at what depth to start "straining the water". I've heard John say it may times to similar questions. "you just need to check it out", every day is different. Now most likely it will be very deep, but no way can say for sure where to start. If you start at 20' and go as deep as you can and don't make contact you'll question yourself later. Were they at 15', straining is straining! You'll get a feel for the lake after a while and will answer the question yourself.

[Bryan-AZ]

Thanks guys. Yes, good old Lake Pleasant. The clearest pictures (from the post above) are from near the dam (south part of the lake). The murkier picture is from Castle Creek, 5 miles north of the dam. The restriction for the Bald Eagle nesting area was lifted this week, so I went up to the headwaters today (8.5 miles from the dam). Definitely, a better water color and here is a sample:

Apr6-HeadwaterColor.JPG (42.28 KiB) Viewed 2523 times

A few Crappie were hanging out by that tree:

Apr6-Crappie.JPG (31.5 KiB) Viewed 2523 times

I'd guess that the water visibility near the dam was about 40-45 feet by looking down at the bottom from the boat and checking the depth meter. Castle would be about 35 and near the headwater area was about 25 feet.

As for trolling, I started with a 700, wire line and 7 full layers (back & forth) -- it bumped around 23-25 feet. I've done so little trolling but really enjoy it--I want to get a lot better at it. But for some reason, I feel like I need to be trolling in 65 feet amongst the trees in this lake. Steve has given me some ideas that I'm definitely going to work on, in order to troll the depths and debris of Lake Pleasant. Plus, I'd like to get into more Stripers, and whenever I see these fish, they always seem to be in a hurry to get somewhere, versus a largemouth that can stare at the side of a stump for an hour.

Apr6-Striper.JPG (47.54 KiB) Viewed 2523 times

[Steve Craig]

Bryan,
What did that fish weigh in your avatar? Looks like the back ground could be Plez, or Powell, or even Havasu?

[John Bales]

This is the clearest water I've ever seen. And your just getting started spoonplugging? Steve, give him something to start on besides this place. I couldnt believe this clarity at these depths. I like a challenge but this place would woop even the best spoonpluggers for most of the time. Find yourself another if you can and save this one for much later.
If you decide to tackle this one, you will have to spend your time identifying deep breaklines in the 50 to 80 feet zone and expect to spend a lot of time there using drop shot rigs and anchoring and casting heavy jump type lures. You will have to be directly over the spot and if you can interpret where these spots are, then you have a chance to catch a few fish and some large ones also. It is going to be a tough one for sure. More than what I would want to handle myself. John

[Steve Craig]

John,
I believe Bryan lives on this lake. At least i thought that is what he told me. I told him a while back to go elsewhere. Saquaro, Canyon, Bartlett, Apache, and Roosevelt, all have far better color than Plez. Best time to fish it is mid summer after the alge bloom and on a total cloud cover day!

Havasu has clearer water than this lake, Except the Bill Williams arm, which has a light yellow green color.

I have Buck on camera actually saying that Lake Pleasent was drinking water only!

[John Bales]

I would have to agree with that statement with all my heart. John

[Bryan-AZ]

I have Buck on camera actually saying that Lake Pleasent was drinking water only!

Ha! It is good for water skiing, too! ... Yeah, I have a small houseboat there, so the convenience factor is too great when you can take about 10 steps out of bed and get into the front of your fishing boat (at least it is a big deal when you live in a desert).

So I figure it is more of a lemons--make lemonade type of situation. I'm reading through Buck's material and rather than putting the emphasis on landing fish right away, just try to figure out a way to learn the teaching better. The beauty of clear water and a nice underwater camera is that I can see what Buck is talking about in the books. When he talks about a "reef" structure situation, I am using the underwater camera to see it. It is not the same thing as the spoonplug as being the teacher, but I guess you can consider the camera as an aid to learning the material. Using the fancy, down-imaging graphs, running up a point looks like a really "steep-deep" situation, but it is actually different when looking at the same point with the camera. With the underwater camera, I see the break lines clearly, and it really makes sense when I see a small school of 4 ten+ pound Striper bass cruising along the 2 foot drop breakline at 30 feet, that is only about as wide as a sidewalk.

Trolling with a spoonplug is a challenge in this water with so much debris. But drifting over a structure with the underwater camera in the clear water is teaching me (or validating) quite a bit of what I'm reading...plus, I'm having fun seeing all the stuff underwater.

My strategy is to pretty much ignore everything 40+ deep (too hard to fish right now), until I have a better understanding of the structures above that depth. I think Pleasant has some really great "wide-bar/reef" structure situations, and I am hoping to pick up some stragglers using trolling methods that can work through all of the debris. I tried some three-way swivel/spinnerbait stuff this weekend that seemed to get through the standing timber without getting caught up. Steve Craig clued me in on this, and I'd like to explore it more to try to dial it in. I definitely did not have the depth/speed control that I think I need versus the feel of a spoonplug, but it is something that I need to work on. I did not lose any baits, versus sacrificing serveral series 700/800 spooplugs during the day.

I've caught a few decent bass dropshoting between 40-50 feet into the trees, but it isn't the most exiting way for me to fish. Actually, I have found that I've been chasing carp dots on the fancy down-imaging sonar at those depths...most of the time. I'd love to catch those carp on doughball dropshots or even figure out how to tailhook them, like J Duplex, but amongst the 50 foot trees...those are skills I just don't have.

Reef structure situation:

Apr8-Bass1.JPG (44.68 KiB) Viewed 2426 times

I found the flathead catfish sanctuary...

Apr8-CatfishUnderTree1.JPG (64.47 KiB) Viewed 2426 times

Steep-Deep situation:

Apr8-Catfish.JPG (59.63 KiB) Viewed 2426 times

Adult Fish food:

Apr8-Food1.JPG (53.93 KiB) Viewed 2426 times

Nice white dots on the down imaging sonar:

Apr7-Carp1.JPG (33.22 KiB) Viewed 2426 times

Yep, that's a cocklebur stuck to the carp's chin...

Apr7-Carp2.JPG (43.78 KiB) Viewed 2426 times

Apr8-Carp.JPG (67.82 KiB) Viewed 2426 times

It would be nice to troll into some schools of these:

Apr7-Striper1.JPG (33.79 KiB) Viewed 2426 times

[Steve Craig]

Bryan,
You have to learn how to crawl before you can walk.STUDY the material. Dont just read through it. There is a difference. I like that you are using the camera. It is just another tool. An aide. Especially in this lake! While it will not catch you fish now, down the road it will. so if it is helping you learn the lake, more power to you.
Hey, when you are looking around, keep an eye out for many of my Spoonplugs down there. There are alot of them before I figured out what not to do!
While it is great to be able to feel all those reefs, breaks, and breaklines in a Natural lake, with bottom bumping lures,many people do not have any idea how tough it is to go to a lake like Pleasent or Canyon or Saquaro, and deal with all this clear water, deep breaklines, and entire forests that are in the bottoms of these lakes. They gobble up lures. Added to this that most all these lakes have a terrible MOSS situation, and you just have an almost unbearable trolling problem.
Stick to the drop shot at the greater depths. While this is a very slow presentation, and you cant cover alot of ground in the fastest manner, it is effective once you find the contact point.
also, dont be afraid to go to a Carolina Rig later on. Put some Mann's 12 inch Jelly Worms down there.
There are some really big bass and stripers in these lakes.
Just remember, that you have to find out what works for you, IN YOUR SITUATION, yet still follow the basic guidelines put forth by Mr Perry.
Call me anytime,
Steve

[Bryan-AZ]

Trust me...clear water at Lake Plez isn't even 1/4 my problem.

My Dad got me into Spoonplugging in the early 80's at a boat show semiar by Don Dickson and reading the Green Book during that time. I learned what I could at the time, and always enjoyed the local tournaments fishing with my dad and his friends.

Back then, whenever I thought there was better fishing than the spot we were in... he always said -- "When you get old enough to own your own boat, you can go fishin whatever place you want." Well, many years later, that time has come.

I did kick his butt on Lake Plez this winter (not by much), but now that he has migrated back East...he is gloating. I helped teach him how to use the fancy HDS structurescan/side-imaging sonar at Plez and how to use a new smartphone. This is a dangerous combination.

Here he is at Lake Plez, back in Humbug Bay showing off the big catch:

Dad-BassPleasant.JPG (61.18 KiB) Viewed 2420 times

Now that he is back in the midwest, he has a "run-n-gun" sidescan sonar method on these "small" clean bottom lakes that seems to be working out for him.

I get this type of stuff on the phone all day now....

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Pure torment.