Gills in rising water?

[Brian Eaton]

I am new to this site,and find all the info great,(except we need more okies here,hehe).I scouted a lake here that is known for big gills and redears.But here in south east Oklahoma,it has been raining a couple inches every other day.So what is a good strategy for them with the rapidly rising water? Also,they say redears are mostly caught on the bottom,what is a good set up for them? I was thinking of a downsized carolina rig and redworms. All yalls help would be appreciated,and I will post this coming weekends trip to help shed some lite to someone else battling the rising water.

[Dean]

Sounds like a good plan. Couple questions Walt. What's your favorite bait for redears with that rig (or otherwise)? Is it often a real subtle movement of the float or do the redears make it twitch pretty good?

[Jeremy R. Mayo]

Carolina riged worms fishin in the grass flats! Thats how they catchem here in the delta. I use crickets and they work excelent to!

[Dean]

Jeremy - you talking real worms or small artificials? Or BIG artificials?? :-)

[Bill "Musky" Modica]

Redears love meat....especially on bottom, and primarily on sticky bottom using spoons tipped with a crawler chunk near the basin pivot point.

[Ernie Odum]

Having a tough time with this myself. The water in the area lakes has come UP and in a Hurry with the reacent rain. I have had little luck with the gills the later part of this week thanks to the Much increase current into the spawning area and the act that water at the moment in these areas is Chocolate Milk colored.
I moved more downstream but the gills are either not there or ALOT deeper than I can access from sore effectively.

E

[Jay Fogle]

Hi - a little off topic from your original question. I lived in OklabyGodhoma! for over ten years when I was in the Air Force. My wife is from there and I have a lot of relatives still living there.

I saw you are in SE Ok - but if you ever get a chance - try fishing at American Horse lake out around Geary (Western OK) sometime and plan on staying until very late at night. It is about as close to heaven as you could get on earth in my opinion.

It's kind of where the midwest and the high plains kind of mix - and the sky at night on a clear night - its basicallly a damned up canyon - pretty deep and very pretty. At night it's almost surreal - big ole bluegill jumping on your crickets or fly - coyotes yippin and hollerin not far away - the dim lights and soft glow of other small boats around the lake - all peaceful and quiet - NO vehicle traffic noise - just an amazing place. (Roman Nose - Watonga Lake is similar except a lot more popular)

Anyhow - sorry to budge into your post - but it brought up memories I decided to share :)
Thanks
Jay

[Brian Eaton]

Thank you Jay.That lake is on the map for gill chasin! More so know.We got into some gills saturday morning( between rains) The bigger ones we found up the lake toward a major feeding river,but not up in it.Lots of flooded brush.Surprisingly the fish werent in em.They were holding about 2 ft out from them and 2-3 ft deep.We kept 27, 5 -8 inch gills,2 redears and 1 crappie.But probably caught close to 100 fish all together!!!One of the funnest fishing days we have had in awhile.Oh, and 2 gills had eggs in em.