Where are the rockfish?

[JABIII]

We fished from 3pm to 12 am Saturday and from daylight to 2 pm on Sunday in the Wateree. Fresh herring and live bream for bait. Not one bite other than more gar fish than I have ever seen.

How can you fish the Wateree on April 1 and 2 without catching a rockfish? How in the hell can you fish ANYWHERE and not catch, at least, a bunch of catfish? White bass? Haven't seen them in 10 years.

Is the once fish filled Wateree River becoming nothing more than a polluted Gar hole? Are the rockfish going the way of the white bass? What is going on?

[2thDoc]

you are a bad fisherman?
[img]graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

[JABIII]

Maybe I am just a bass fisherman. I did catch a 7.5 pound largelip on a butterbean jig while trying to jig up a rock...

[Dook]

pollution, and you are only as good as the company you keep

[willk]

JAB, I saw the law man on the river two weeks ago and he said that the stripers wernt up yet. I dont know if you fish the upper or lower part of the river(I assume the lower) but he also said there wernt any shad up yet either. He said we havent had the long spells of warm weather yet.

[tradorion]

hmmm- last time i offered thoughts on stripers i got told once again that i had no right spouting my opinion on a public forum- go figure- [img]graemlins/whip2.gif[/img]


while we never saw any long solid runs on the Santee there were some nice bursts of both shad and striper activity showing up in the nets... but the locals/old timers had the same questions on "where are they??"

i also haven't heard of any consistent runs of catching fish at the tailrace either.

T

[Stripa Swipa]

Miller White told me several years ago that the white perch ate the white bass eggs and that caused their demise in that system. I hate that my kids will not be able to catch schooling white bass on rooster tails like I did. As stuff gets mysteriously introduced into these systems, other things are affected. Gar and Flathead cats are messing up a lot of gamefish in these systems as well.

Please don't get me started on the stripers.

[Boom Boom]

What fucking asshole introduced the white perch to the system and furthermore, WHY?

[Swamp Rat]

I always thought that white perch were always there. But I also wondered where the white bass went. In Murray, we would rip em in August when they started to school... and in March up in Sparkleberry Lake on jigs and Bayou Boogies. BB's were killer on 'em in Murray too, trolled in the early spring.

Haven't caught a white bass in years. I miss em too.

You can't drop a smallish bait under a light or on the bottom in Murray without white perch messin' with you. I'd rather catch an eisenhoward....

[Spider]

seems like the white bass dissapeared from the wateree about the time union camp built, don't know if there's any connection. have a friend thats been catching rockfish since february, not an ass of them but a few nice'uns.

[bog hole]

the last white bass i saw caught was probably around '98.
Stumphole woods.