Are you sick of hearing about Lake Monroe wipers?

All of our readers (seriously, both of them) are tired of the same old wiper fishing stories.  They've requested more content devoted to craft beer and recipes.  So, taking those critiques under consideration, I'd like to tell you about the wiper that I caught this morning.

It was almost chilly here, in the low 50s before the sun really crested the horizon.  Being a Monday, most fisherman were behaving themselves and going to work, but I decided to stop at the spillway for a few minutes before heading in myself.

I got the "good" spot between the stairs and the spillway itself, which has access to the rushing water and a relatively calmer but deep pool beside it.  I started by casting around my Goture swimbait, but for once, nothing was chasing it.  With my free time running short, I rummaged through my tackle box trying to figure out what to tie on next.  I almost went for a blade bait, which I actually found at the spillway a few weeks ago, but decided to go with my 3/4-oz bucktail jig instead. 

In a half-dozen casts or less, I hooked into a monster.

I could tell right away that this water donkey was a big one.  It was pulling drag like a mofo (as the kids say), and every time that I reeled it in a bit, it would make another run for the current.  This tug of war went on for a few minutes until I finally got the wiper to the surface.  It was hard to tell how big it was while it was still in the water, but when I got him toward shore, I immediately dropped my net.  There was no way this thing was fitting in my admittedly too-small landing net.  Instead, I hooked him by the gills and hauled him out of the water:

I don't have a fish scale (yet), but this was undoubtedly the biggest wiper I've ever caught.  It had to have weighed more than my 8.25 lb personal best, and it was easily longer than 24 inches.  I briefly considered keeping it just to weigh it at home, but work beckoned, and fish wasn't on the dinner menu this week.  I tossed the behemoth back into the water, halfheartedly cast my bucktail a few more times, and then packed up.

So there you have it, another wiper tale from the crypt.  Don't forget to leave comments below, and follow us on Twitter (@WaterDonkeyAdv1) and Instagram (@H2ODonkeyAdventures)!

Early morning wiper fun

My children hate me.  They stay up late even if I put them to bed early.  They wake up screaming in the middle of the night.  They climb into my bed if there's a moth haunting their room.  In other words, sleep is hard to come by some nights, and last night was particularly cruel. 

After a night like that, I wake up a little...shall we say...surly.  And I'm not talking Surly but more like surly.

Anyway, as I showered away some of my insomniastic rage, I decided to go fishing instead of heading straight to work.  With everyone else in the house slumbering at 6:15 AM, I headed for the spillway to wet a hook.  I found a decent spot near the current and started casting my Zoom Super Fluke but got hung up in the rocks.  As you can imagine, this didn't improve my mood at all.

I searched high and low through my tackle, but I didn't find anything vaguely similar to use.  What I did run across though was an Offshore Angler striper jig (basically, a white bucktail with a pink jig head) from back in my NJ days.

I didn't know how well this 1 oz piece of lead would work in fresh water, but there was only one way to find out.  After a couple of casts to get the feel of it, I tossed the jig into the current and hooked up with a big ol' water donkey!  He was a fighter too.  I would reel him in a few yards just to have him peel line back off, screaming drag as he went.  The tug of war went on for a while, but eventually, I landed the lunker with my trusty net.

I don't know how big he was (I need to get a fish scale one of these days), but he was too long to fully fit in the selfie.

At this point, my day had turned around.  I let the wiper go, dried my hands, and packed up my gear.  I even made it to work by 7 AM.  Not a bad way to start the day after all.

Early evening wiper fun

A while back, I was catching wipers on live shad, and I wondered if they would go for a live bluegill instead.  Well, I recently got my answer. 

After a hard day of parenting and husbanding, I decided to take an hour or so of time in the evening to go fishing.  I headed back to the Lake Monroe spillway and found quite a few people enjoying some late day outside time.  The water was high and rushing out of the spillway again due to some recent rain, and the only decent fishing spot that was open was quite near the spillway and hard current.  Honestly, it wasn't a bad spot, and I'll take what I can get.

I started working my Zoom Super Fluke/jig head combo and was rewarded with a strike after a few casts.  The fish was using the current to his advantage though, so I ended up fighting a wiper and a force of nature.  I managed to work the beast back toward my spot on the bank, but he spit the hook before I could even see him.  My lure was mangled from the fight, but I rehooked it and went back to fishing.

Things slowed down for a bit, but I was able to soak in some of the scenery.  The white water was nice, and occasionally, a fish would jump.  At one point, I saw what looked like an Asian carp, which is bad news because they're invasive and known to ruin fisheries.  I'm old and half-blind though, so what do I know?  I also got to see a wiper chasing a good-sized panfish (probably a bluegill), so that answers my question.  Now, I just need to catch some bluegill for bait one of these days...

Anyway, fishing picked back up, and I managed to hook into another water donkey.  It felt like a monster, but most of that was the water current.  When I finally managed to land him, it was just a skinny little guy (compared to my previous wipers):

You can see some of the white water I was dealing with in this picture:

A skinny fish is better than no fish at all though, so I'm not complaining.  I released this one back to go get fattened up and started fishing again.  Eventually, I hooked into another behemoth from the deep and reeled it all the way to my feet, but my line snapped before I could net it.  One of these days, I'm going to learn to re-tie my terminal tackle after a hard fight...

At this point, I was losing the light and didn't have a head lamp.  While others continued to work the water, I called it a day and drove home.  I didn't have any fish in the cooler this time, but I still had fun.

Fishing for wipers with live bait

It's been 8 days since I've gone fishing - yard work and family obligations trump free time shenanigans - so I decided to hit the Lake Monroe tailwaters again this morning.  It's been hot (80+ degrees) lately, so I didn't know what that was going to do to the wiper bite.  There was only one way to find out...

I started out by casting around with my Zoom Super Fluke/jig head combo from last time.  On my third cast through the steadily drizzling rain, something hit my rig hard and started peeling line.  I had my drag set tight, but it wasn't stopping this water donkey.  The fish fought like a wiper, and sure enough, I could see that's what I was dealing with the first time it surfaced.  After a fun fight, I got the fish near shore and managed to get my net around half of it (I need a bigger net!), and it's a good thing I did.  My line snapped basically as soon as I netted the fish, and I surely would have lost it and my lure like I did with the walleye a few weeks ago if I didn't have a landing net.

This fish was my personal best wiper, weighing in at 8 lb 1 oz.  You wouldn't think that an extra pound worth of fish would make it fight so much harder, but I guess that's more than a 10% increase in size.  If you added that much muscle to me, I'd be on the Brute Squad too.

Anyway, as you can tell from the picture above, I ended up catching another 8-lb wiper.  That one took some work though.

I jigged around with my soft plastic for a while but I wasn't getting any bites.  Actually, I kept snagging some busted fishing line on the bottom of the creek, so it's probably no wonder that I was catching any fish.  After I got bored with that, I decided to dip into my tackle box and try some other lures.  I had a lipless rattling crankbait on top, so that's where I started.  I cast it through the current a few times and eventually felt something small take it.  I reeled in a foul-hooked gizzard shad:

I was just about to throw him back when my old man brain finally realized the obvious.  I've been catching wipers on shad imitations, so why not try to catch a wiper on an actual shad?  I quickly tied a 1/8 oz jig head onto my line, nose-hooked the shad, and tossed it into the spillway current.  Almost immediately, a huge silver shape hit it and left me with an empty hook.  That was fun to see, but it would have been more fun to catch that water donkey.

I tied my crankbait back onto my medium action rod and added a silvery spoon to my ultralight and went shad fishing.  I managed to hook two more (one on each lure) and then rigged up my jig head again.  After nose-hooking the first of these shad, history repeated itself: cast, water donkey attack, empty hook.  Now, I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but even I could tell that this a good way to feed wipers but a poor way to catch them.  So, I took a different approach with my last shad and hooked it through the back.

I cast my bait into the back corner of the spillway, and mid-retrieve, a big fish hit it!  Not only that, but it felt like I'd hooked it good too, which was necessary because this guy was right in the thick of the current.  I eventually fought it into slack water and managed to coax it toward shore while it zig-zagged back and forth to try to get rid of me.  I managed to land him though, and ended up with my second personal best of the day: 8 lb 4 oz!

I had my limit on the stringer but was having so much fun that I went about trying to catch another shad.  I snagged one on my spoon, transferred it to my jig head and hit the raging water again.  This time though, the shad either came off or was snatched off.  When I reeled my line back in, I noticed that my hook was bent, and I decided to call it a day.  I'll definitely try fishing for wipers with live bait again.  I wonder if they'd go for a bluegill...

More Lake Monroe Spillway wiper madness

After losing my last big fish because I didn't have a landing net (and several before that one), I bought a folding net on Amazon.  I thought I got the one with the telescoping pole, but I'm old and confused and ended up with a stubby little one.  Instead of returning it though, I figured I could make due with my baboon-length arms or figure out a way to connect the net to a longer pole at some point.

Regardless, I loaded up my gear and headed for the Lake Monroe Spillway early this morning.  I had my trusty Goture lure already rigged on my medium-action pole, and I couldn't wait to see if there were any wipers left.  I don't know how long the wiper rush lasts, but the water is getting warmer, so I figured it was now or never.

I lost my lure on the first cast...

To state it mildly, this was devastating to me.  These things are magic.  I couldn't give up after 30 seconds though, so I decided to try to mimic the lure with what I had.  I ended up threading a pearl white Zoom Salty Super Fluke onto a 1/4-oz Spot Remover Jig Head and hoped for the best.  This setup wouldn't swim like the Goture, but it was roughly the same size and color.  It was also a little lighter, which I thought might prevent some snags because the water level was lower than last time.

To my surprise, I hooked into a nice wiper after the first few casts into the current.  I fought the fish toward shore, and as I reached for my landing net, it spit the hook and swam off...

I actually have video of this whole shenanigan.  You can hear how excited I am to have a fish on the line and taste my utter disappointment at losing another water donkey that should have been on my stringer.  If this blog gets 1000 subscribers, I'll release my blooper reel.  Otherwise, that reminder of my ineptitude stays with me.

At this point, I thought the day was going to be a bust.  I lost my Goture lure like Austin Powers lost his mojo, and I lost a decent fish.  It's a good thing I'm stubborn though.

I got another bite, and another, and another.  By 7 AM, I had landed (with the help of my net!) four big wipers and lost that many to poor hook sets.  The video below is me landing a 7 pounder:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bq4Dts3USzY

I managed to land another beast that was just as big too, which you can see below framed against a busted piece of bathroom vanity (the wife is remodeling):

Overall, I got my confidence back, had a ton of fun, got to practice my filleting skills (or lack thereof), and I'm looking forward to fish nuggets tonight :-)

Multi-species Monday: wipers, largemouth bass, and crappie at the Lake Monroe Spillway

After all of my recent fun at the spillway, I headed back on the morning of May 11.  I figured that I'd have another wild wiper fest on my Goture swimbait, but on my second cast, I got snagged and broke my line.  I reached into my tackle bag to find another, but apparently, I left them in the garage.

Life is cruel.

I tried to jury rig something that would work - one of the big Extreme Shad that I tried before, the largest circle hook that I had, and a 1/4 oz egg sinker - and actually got some bites.  I couldn't get a good hook up though.  At least not with a fish.  I hooked a rock just fine and was stuck again.

I tried to walk my line around the bank of the river a bit to see if I could get a good angle to free it, but nothing worked.  Swimbait rig #2 was gone.  On my walk though, I found a lipless crankbait that had washed up on the rocks.  Hey, free lure, why not try to use it?  On my first cast, I hooked into this 6.5-lb beauty and reeled her in:

With visions of fish tacos dancing through my head, I put the wiper on my stringer and tried to catch another.  Instead, I must have been casting through a school of crappie because I reeled in two in a row that were hooked in their backs:

 

I don't understand the physics behind how that happened in the water...twice no less...but I decided to target some different water so that it didn't happen again.  Not long after, something hit my lure hard, and I thought I had another wiper on my hands.  It didn't feel as big as the first water donkey that I landed, but it was still putting up a decent fight on a medium-action rod.  When I landed it though, it turned out to be a chunky largemouth bass!  I need to get a fish scale because this might have been the biggest largemouth that I've ever caught.

After a quick pic and release, I went back on the hunt for wipers but eventually lost my found lure.  What can I say?  It was a great #MultiSpeciesDay, but it was also a day of snags.  Either way, it was better than being stuck indoors.  I can't wait to wet a hook next time.

Lake Monroe Spillway wipers, the bite is on!

Due to work, family obligations, and crappy weather, it took me 10 days from my last WDA to get back out fishing.  I was able to plan a little better this time though to try to target another wiper.  I respooled the reel on my Shakespeare medium-action Ugly Stik with 12 lb test line and had time to order some Extreme Shad swimbaits from Amazon.  I was set!

I went back to the spillway on Lake Monroe at 6 AM, put one of the Extreme Shads on my biggest jig head, and cast into the current.  And then did it again, and again, and again.  Nothing.  I think I got a few takes, but I could never set the hook.  To be honest, I don't think I had the right jig heads for the Extreme Shad, which are enormous swimbaits for a guy like me who's usually reeling in sunfish.

While I still had the spillway to myself, I decided to try another of the Goture swimbaits that I used to catch my first wiper.  In no time at all, I set the hook in a beast wiper and started to fight it toward the shore.  This was a different battle than the first wiper I fought on my ultralight, and I was definitely feeling more in control.  I got the fish close enough to see, and then it spit the hook...

I'm not going to lie.  I mutter some curses, threw some rocks, and plopped down on the ground like a defeated man.

Thankfully, my stubborn streak kicked in, and I started casting the swimbait again.  That was a good decision because all of a sudden, the bite was on!  I caught fish, after fish, after fish:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If I look dazed and confused in these pictures, there's a good reason.  I have never, ever had a day of fishing go this well.  Not a single one of these fish was under 5 lb, and the biggest was a 7.5-lb, fat and sassy, 100% pure water donkey.  I think it was all the Goture swimbaits too.  Other folks had started to show up at the spillway, but I was the only one catching fish.  I saw them tossing out crank baits, flies, and even other swimbaits with similar coloring to mine, but no one was having any luck except me.  In fact, as soon as I got home, I ordered another pack.  If you're interested, check them out: https://amzn.to/3dNsY0x

A freight train on an ultralight

Three days after the last WDA, I decided to try my hand at wiper fishing.  For the uninitiated, which was me not too long ago, a wiper is a hybrid between a white bass and a striped bass.  They look an awful lot like a striper, though they tend not to grow as large, and the dark stripes down the fish's sides aren't all parallel.  On wipers, one or more tend to be broken along the length somewhere.  It must be a HOX gene expression defect in the hybrid, but I digress...

Like many hybrid species, wipers display heterosis, or what is more commonly known as hybrid vigor.  In this case, the wipers grow faster than either parental species and are voracious eaters.  They also put up a heck of a fight when hooked.  I found this last point out the hard way.

Being an idiot, I tied a Goture lead head swimbait to an ultralight rod and reel combo spooled with 4-lb test line and went wiper hunting.  Now, I'm not used to jig fishing, especially with something that weighs almost 0.8 oz, so every time the lure hit a rock on my first few retrieves, I thought I was getting ready for a hook up.  It even got hung up on a rock and thought that I'd hooked a big one for a second.

When a wiper finally did take my bait, there was no mistaking it.

That fish inhaled the lure and took off like a freight train!  I had my drag set pretty tight to begin with, but it was peeling off line like the bail was still open.  After a long run, with me panicking and probably acting like an idiot, the reel stopped smoking, I tightened it up a bit more, and started the battle.  I would reel in a little and try to pull the fish toward the surface, and the fish would either dive, zag in a different direction, or both.  And this went on, and on, and on.  With light line and ultralight tackle, I couldn't horse the fish in.  I had to play the waiting game and just try to tire it out without breaking my line.

Eventually, after what felt like an eternity, the fish finally surfaced, and it looked like a monster to me.  The wiper must not have liked the look of me, because he tried a few more escapes before I eventually got it close enough to the rocks to grab.  I wish I had a landing net.

Now, there's nothing in the above picture for scale, but this was a 114 oz (6.9 lb), 21 in long wiper - easily the biggest fish I've ever landed (including a dogfish that I hauled in pier fishing in Myrtle Beach many moons ago).  What a water donkey!

With shaking hands, as much from excitement as from fatigue, I tossed the wiper in my bucket and headed straight home to turn it into fish tacos.  Let's be honest; I also texted this picture to everyone I know ;-)

Back in the saddle

I still had some worms left from my April 22 water donkey adventure - and my wife hates having worms in the fridge - so I decided to head back to the spillway two days later.  There was a fly fisherman working the spot that I was in last time, so I set up shop next to some flooded stairs hoping that a few fish would be hanging out around there.  Long story short, it wasn't a great place to fish with worms.  The fly fisherman was having some luck, so I decided to try tossing out a lure.  Out of sheer dumb luck, I managed to land a blue gill and another yellow bass (#MultiSpeciesDay).

Obviously, none of these little guys were water donkeys, but that's what the fly fisherman was reeling in.  He caught a 5.5 lb largemouth bass and a good-sized wiper.  Either fish would have been a trophy for me and ended up in my belly, but he was strictly a catch and release kinda guy though.

He was also friendly, and we got to talking, which wasn't easy next to the roar of the spillway and our physical separation due to social distancing.  He recommended bottom-fishing for the wipers, using anything that looked like a shad.  I might just give that a try next time...