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Canyon Lake 1/6/13 Fishing Report
I don’t normally get my wife to fish with me but we did fishing Canyon Lake together for my 61st birthday on 1/6/13. I had purchased a couple packages of Berkley’s Killer Crawler-Gulp 3” worms in Breen-Orange and Dark Crawler-Chartreuse Pepper, which looked excellent for smallmouth bass on a drop-shot rig. Plus, I also wanted to begin depth and temperature research on the area lakes using Fish Hawk’s DT probe. So, we loaded up and headed to the lake after the morning worship service.
The weather was less than ideal, however, it was the second of only two days since before Christmas which was not cloudy, misty, windy and cold. It was just windy and cold with clear skies. Air temperature reached 53 and the surface water temperature was 56 to 58 degrees with a strong northwest wind, large white caps, and clear skies. As evident by this photo and the lovely smile on her face, Jan was really enjoying the sunny afternoon on the lake. We did manage to find three places to fish where the cold wind was tolerable.
The Berkley Gulp worms did produce fish. Jan caught one 13”+ smallmouth. I caught three catfish, missed a few bites and had one break my 8# line. I certainly was not expecting to catch catfish but they were nice eating size and we now have more fish in our freezer. All fish were caught on the Berkley Gulp worms.
I knew from the smell last month that the lake had turned-over so there would not be a thermocline but I still needed the depth and temperature readings. My research is being conducted with a Fish Hawk DT probe which records and stores both depth and temperature every 5’ and then displays the information, after retrieved. In the three test spots I found the surface temperature to vary from 56.3 to 57.8 degrees. At 20’ feet, the temperature varied from 55.0 to 55.3 degrees. At 25’ down to 70’, the temperature increased 1 degree and then stayed constant. What depth were the fish caught? All were caught in 20’ to 25’ along sharp rocky drop-offs. I did, however, chart a considerable number of larger fish, probable strippers, at 65’.
It was not been the most pleasant fishing weather, but we did manage to bring home supper. Jan even drove the boat for her very first time. After getting home she stated that she gets to drive next time. Maybe her staying home is not so bad after all.
Barry Dodd
Jan 9, 2013 at 4:46 PM