After the Fourth
Grand Lake had a lot of visitors over the Fourth of July weekend, and it was fun to see all the people out on the lake. With all the tubing, skiing and big boats running, the fishing can get difficult, but the economic impact of everybody showing up helps the lake and its businesses.
Broken-record summer
Jeff says the summer pattern gets into a rhythm where every report sounds like a broken record, and that's where we are now.
Crappie
A lot of people are catching Crappie in the dark spots of their docks and switching to minnows. You can still catch plenty on artificial lures, but in the dog days of summer Crappie get finicky, especially on brush piles out in the lake, and sometimes you need a minnow to get them to bite. Haydn with Williams Guide Service says it's the after-the-Fourth bite: fish come up and look at the bait without fully committing or hitting it very hard.
Seeing it on LiveScope
You can see that behavior on LiveScope now. Before, you never really knew what the fish were doing or how they reacted. Haydn runs a double LiveScope rig, so he and Jeff can talk through what the Crappie are doing. It's interesting how predictable they get from season to season when water conditions and weather patterns are the same.
Water and generation
Western Oklahoma got a tremendous amount of rain last week. Grand Lake got some too, but not enough to raise the lake. There's some intermittent generation below the dam. Grand Lake is fortunate to have constant inflows from springs, creeks and rivers: the Neosho, Spring River, Grand River, Duck Creek, Honey Creek and Drowning Creek. Even creeks that don't run much water run all the time. That lets the GRDA keep running intermittent generation and hold the lake at conservation pool through summer, which works well for people.
Catfish
Drifting for Blue Cats on the flats is one of Jeff's favorite things this time of year. Start at about 10 feet and drift out to about 40, or go the other way, 40 up to 10. Catfish are shallower in the evenings, at night and early in the morning, then often move to deeper water and suspend or hang near the bottom. Fresh Shad is a great choice if you can net some. Keep the boat at about a half mile an hour on your GPS. Anything over one mile an hour can be too fast, so slow down and control your drift.
Bass / Facebook group
No Spoonbill news, but guys are catching Bass, and pictures are on the GrandFishingReport.com Facebook group (close to 17,000 members). Jeff wishes more people would post reports, so share a picture of a fish you caught on Grand Lake.