Night fishing with light and shad net

Sorry to hear that you are going downhill, Jackie. But at 85, I can certainly empathize with you. Hopefully, my eyes will be the last to go since I like night fishing so much. Anyway, this is what the bell looks like that I use on my rods. Only problem is sometimes, if you set the hook, the bell goes flying across the lake. So I tape em down. Thank the Lord for Duct Tape.

You can buy these things in bulk on eBay for about 30 cents each.

Cheers.....

7 May:

Well, I will write the ugly along with the good on my fishing at night for this thread. Had no problems getting shad but big fish just weren't around. Tried two different shorelines and managed to catch one large white bass. Had four rods out with two shad near the bottom and two with shad suspended at 15 and 20 feet. In the 2+hours of fishing I might have gotten six bites. So here's a few pics of last night:

The water was very clear and you can see down a good 10-feet:


You can see the shad lined up at the 10-15 foot level on my fish locator.


I had two nets out (3/8 and 1/2) and these are the kind of shad I was catching. That small one is about an inch long and could just swim through the 1/2 inch net. I hook the bigger shad in the mouth but on the smaller shad, I run the hook through the eye socket which leaves the mouth/gills clear for breathing.


And my take for a little more than two hours of fishing:



And to add insult to injury, the wind kicked up to 15-20mph at the last place I wanted to try and the anchors wouldn't even hold. So I took that as a hint and gave up and went home.

Cheers.....

The light I am using is a LED thing that I got from China for about 21 bucks. It has a 5-meter cord (16 feet). The reason I like LED over incandescent or florescent is that I like to flash the light on and off which shakes up the shad and they flit everywhere and get into the nets quicker. If you tried that with a florescent, you'd blow the ballast and incandescents take too much out of the battery.

Yeah, hybrids really love those shad. We have a ton of shad on Norfork, mainly because the really big stripers have pretty much died off and while the lake has plenty of 5-10 pounders, they don't eat as many as a 30-pounder would. So shad are easy to come by. If Greers is clear water and it has shad, then a light and a net will easily catch them. There is a bit of a method to it: hang the net 5-10 feet down when the water is 70 or below but hang it 15-20 feet down is the water is above 80 degrees. To use the nets, the boat has to be perfectly stationary so you have to tie off to a tree and drop an anchor on the back or use two anchors to do this. If you get a big hybrid or striper on, it will go where it wants to go for the first couple of runs and a lot of times that's around the net or tangling up all the lines in the water so that can become a PITA. But all in all, it's a very effective way to fish and sure beats sitting home and watching TV.

Tonight, I am going to try uplake around the bridges and we'll see how that works out. That is if it don't rain.


Cheers.....

While I am hiding from rain storms, I thought I'd kick out a few lines about underwater LED lights. You can easily just buy one on eBay at: under water fishing lights for sale | eBay. Some are now cheaper than what you can build. You want the brightest (rated in lumens) that you can find.

But if you want to build one, it fairly easy but like I said not much cheaper. Get yourself a 8-inch of 2-inch PVC and connect a piece of wire to it like this:


Buy a LED strip and wrap it around it like this:


The LED's strip you want should be rated IP68 to be fully waterproof. The LED's should be SMD-5050 or SMD-5056 which are the brightest they sell. You can buy these strips at eBay at: ip68 greeN LED strip for sale | eBay. The strip will be 5 meters long with 300 LEDs so you can cut the thing in half and make two lights with 150 LED's each on them. The very best strips are solid green only and not the "rgb" ones. RGB stand for red/green/blue which means each LED has three little lights on each LED that will fire one of those colors. So essentially, it will fire with 1/3 of the power on green compared to a LED that only fires green. A typical strip will cost your about 12 bucks. The PVC and wire is maybe a buck and then the 16-feet of wire or so with clips or plug is another 4 or 5 bucks with the total being something between 25-30 bucks.
Now the light above is "open" with no cavities so it will sink straight away without any weight attached.

Now you could buy something like this for 23 bucks from China on AliExpress: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/2255...rch-mainSearch&gatewayAdapt=glo2usa4itemAdapt. This is what I use and as I said, it cost no more than making one yourself. The problem with this things is is a closed cylinder and it takes 16 ounces (one pound) to sink that sucker. Also, being from China takes a month or so to receive it. If you'd like to see more from Aliexpress take a look at https://www.aliexpress.com/w/wholes...ater+fishing+light&spm=a2g0o.detail.1000002.0. You will see the Chinese are very serious about underwater lights and they have them up to three or four thousand dollars.


Cheers.....

k9gold said:

505 this one ain't on my food list but he's sure on my fighting list!

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Jayepea said:

I was wondering about aliexpress. They sale boat gas tanks and hoses for dirt cheap. I thought it was a scam.

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No, they are not a scam. I've been buying from them for maybe 10 years. Recently I received a two-piece ultra-light spinning rod and the handle portion was broken in two. I took a picture of it and sent it back to the store and they sent me a new handle. In the 10 years I have had maybe two or three transactions that didn't work out and I requested a refund. In all cases, the refund was put back in my credit card account within a couple of days. Aliexpress is a subsidiary of Alibaba which is the largest retail store in the world making Amazon look like Dollar General. The problem with Alibaba is that you have to buy in the hundreds whereas Aliexpress you can buy pretty much individually and it also caters to English speaking customers. Their mail times are a bit slow but considering the distance, that is to be expected. But some stores now get stuff to you in 15-20 days which is much better than the 30-60 days of the past. A lot of the stores will offer free shipping but unfortunately U.S. taxes are cranked into the cost. Everything they do is in the metric system which can be a bit of a PITA when buying lures but I've gotten used to it.


Cheers.....

Well here we go again. Looks like another night of sleep instead of fishing:


That blue dot is where I am hiding.

Cheers......

I have a remote control switch for my LED light which I find very useful. When you have a lot of shad around the light, if you turn it off for 10-15 seconds and then turn it back on, the shad flit all over the place and easily get hung up in the net. Also, this remote control allows you to dim the LED light which can sometimes be very effective. The circle of glow from the light can be 50-feet wide which is great for attracting the shad but a lot of the big fish stay out on the parameter of the light and will not come in under the boat. So by dimming the light, the parameter shrinks thereby bringing the fish closer to the boat. The remote control I have cost all of 5 bucks on eBay but unfortunately, they don't seem to make them anymore. But there are still a tone of other 12V remote controls you can buy on eBay that are a bit more expensive but will do the same job. This one looks to be a great candidate:

It looks to have a lot more bells and whistles to it but for sure will turn the light on and off plus dim the light. These are simple "in-line switches" that you connect between your battery and the LED light. The one above is listed here: 12V RF Wireless Remote Switch Controller Dimmer for Mini LED Strip Light NF | eBay . If you'd like to see all the types of remote controls eBay has for sale, click on: 12v remote control switch for sale | eBay

Now you can flash the light by just lifting one contact off the battery and then putting it back on. Easy to do if you are using battery clips on the LED light and not overly difficult if you are using a plug in a cigarette-lighter socket. Would like to emphasize again that flashing an incandescent light would work the same but don't try flashing with a florescent because after flashing five or six times, you'll be buying a new light. The florescent ballast does not like intermittent DC voltage applied to it.

They are predicting rain again today but maybe it'll quit before dark so I can go fishing.

Cheers.....