Biakabatuka
Member
Hey Guys
On Tuesday night my daughter and I headed out to Langford lake, been sunny and warm for last few days and I didn't have high expectations. Not a regular fisherman in the mid-summer as most lakes you need to go deep and I don't have a downrigger. I hate fighting the fish when you also have the gangtroll and weights.
When we arrived the lake was dead calm and stayed that way until we left at 8:00 and was covered with flying ants. I have very little experience with ant hatches and the first thing I noticed was that there were no ants in the air near the dock, nothing bothering the kids playing near by, and about 1/2 the ants seemed dead. Does this mean the hatch was the night before and they are still just hanging out or dying slowly? We saw several fish rising but nothing like when there is a mayfly hatch. Probably a fish every 5 minutes and we were able to see most because of how flat the lake was.
We talked about what this would probably mean to the fish, she's 8, and agreed that we would probably not catch many if they have been eating the ants. We set out our rods with small gangtrolls, no weights and pink and orange wedding bands, our prefered summer colors. Changed speed, s-trolled etc... and everything worked. We use barbless and released 6 and kept 2 @ 17". We caught a fair range in size from 12-17 and several hit quite hard. The thing that really struck us was that both fish we caught had nothing in their stomachs. We look every time we keep one and gut right away to inspect and often see bloodworms, green chroni's, the odd leech or worm but this time neither fish had anything in thier stomachs but thier intestines looked pretty full.
We are wondering what's up with that? Did they eat a couple days before heavily and were just getting back to it now? I have heard stomach's can turn off from ants. Why nothing in the bellies.
Any suggestions are welcome. My daughter is budding zooligist and wants to know everything. At 8 she is ready to disect the world to see how things work and fishing is one of her favorite things. Also big on cooking the fish just a picky eater.
Thanks, Biakabatuka and Becky
On Tuesday night my daughter and I headed out to Langford lake, been sunny and warm for last few days and I didn't have high expectations. Not a regular fisherman in the mid-summer as most lakes you need to go deep and I don't have a downrigger. I hate fighting the fish when you also have the gangtroll and weights.
When we arrived the lake was dead calm and stayed that way until we left at 8:00 and was covered with flying ants. I have very little experience with ant hatches and the first thing I noticed was that there were no ants in the air near the dock, nothing bothering the kids playing near by, and about 1/2 the ants seemed dead. Does this mean the hatch was the night before and they are still just hanging out or dying slowly? We saw several fish rising but nothing like when there is a mayfly hatch. Probably a fish every 5 minutes and we were able to see most because of how flat the lake was.
We talked about what this would probably mean to the fish, she's 8, and agreed that we would probably not catch many if they have been eating the ants. We set out our rods with small gangtrolls, no weights and pink and orange wedding bands, our prefered summer colors. Changed speed, s-trolled etc... and everything worked. We use barbless and released 6 and kept 2 @ 17". We caught a fair range in size from 12-17 and several hit quite hard. The thing that really struck us was that both fish we caught had nothing in their stomachs. We look every time we keep one and gut right away to inspect and often see bloodworms, green chroni's, the odd leech or worm but this time neither fish had anything in thier stomachs but thier intestines looked pretty full.
We are wondering what's up with that? Did they eat a couple days before heavily and were just getting back to it now? I have heard stomach's can turn off from ants. Why nothing in the bellies.
Any suggestions are welcome. My daughter is budding zooligist and wants to know everything. At 8 she is ready to disect the world to see how things work and fishing is one of her favorite things. Also big on cooking the fish just a picky eater.
Thanks, Biakabatuka and Becky
