Fishing with Underwater Lights

today on an outdoor Oklahoma it's lights out as we discover not just bugs are attracted to outdoor lights in the summer fish love them too and we'll try our hand at some nighttime crappie and sand bass fishing that you follow using underwater lights right now on outdoor Oklahoma the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation outdoor [Music] well hello and welcome to outdoor Oklahoma I'm Todd Craig head I will be the first to admit that I'm what you would call will a fair-weather fisherman when it's beautiful outside like today I'm the first one on the water but in the middle of the summer when that mercury rises well I don't enjoy being out in the heat that much so I kind of avoid and miss that great summertime fishing I'm like a lot of folks however today we're going to feature a couple buddies on Lake Eufaula that have found a way to still capitalize on the great summertime fishing and avoid the heat of the day they're fishing at night and this is not your typical fishing in the dark kind of situation they're using underwater lights and well it's quite a spectacle to see [Music] you know today we had temperatures that were 98 degrees you know when we gaiden you have a lot of clients that can't go this time of year because it's too hot so we get out early in the morning or we get out at night but we're gonna do the knots put the lights down crawl the bait fish in here and try to draw the the crappie in here course will have multiple fish in here we want to make sure I've got four poles on the right side here my partner has four poles on the left now this pole is gonna be about a foot off the surface of the water as this one so on and so forth we're gonna try to get as maximum amount of spread between each bait so we're going to stick this pole straight out we're gonna stick this one straight out and make sure we get the same length same spacing away why because if we get four fish on at one time and they go different directions then we're able to deal with a lot less mess so as far as the baits we you want the same the same weight on each one whether that's all quarter ounce or all half ounce or all 3/4 ounce that way if we do move if the if the boats waged on one side of the other the weights they move with each other they're keeping your spacing and that's that's very important when you got multiple poles because people don't want to go out and have all kinds of tangles okay one of the rig's that we that we use typically when we're men efficient spider rigging or hole sitting or fishing brush fishing timber or fishing bridges whatever you're doing and tonight we're fishing open water is the Kentucky rig which is a I'll slide this first hook on and then I'll slide the second hinkle hook on because we're using double hooks and then the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to tie this weight we're using a half ounce sinker because we're not gonna be fishing no deeper probably than 12 to 14 foot tonight and I'm gonna tie a loop knot on the bottom I just made a loop with the two main lines I'm sorry sometimes I do this fast I slide the line through I'll make a loop with the two main lines and I take the weight in and out of the loop four times I pull it down because I wanted a half inch away from the weight and now I've got my loop knot on top bite off the excess or I'm not really you're not really supposed to bite if you got a knife handy it's it's a lot better deal but I want this first hook this bottom hook to be exactly a foot away from this just wait so I put my left hand here and I'm going to tie what they call a blood knot I'm gonna put the hook in the middle of my hands I'm gonna wrap make a loop with the main line and I'm gonna go around an even number of times so I'm gonna go around seven eight don't take the hook put it back through the loop make sure it's an inch away from the main line and pull this one up here I'm gonna do the same things if I wanted eighteen inches away from the main line when we fish shallow into to six-foot we probably tie the hooks a foot apart the deeper we go the further we spread the hooks out so this is going to be 18 inches we're going to tie that same knot a blood knot will make a loop with the money line we're gonna go over an even amount of time and we're gonna stick it back through just like that and that's your Kentucky rig that right there will fish through a brush pile [Music] the most crucial thing tonight it's gonna be dead whether we're catching Santa bass or whether we're catching crappie whether the kitchen big crappie is depth is crucial so let's figure out first our little fish unless you know where they want to be [Music] right now the conditions that we have we have a water temperature that's above 85 degrees when we have that we the lake develops a thermal climb the thermic line is where the warm water surface temp will be 90 degrees meets the cooler water and it's the oxygen bill in which the fish live so what we do is we try to take these submersible lights we put weights on the bottom and this is a small one and we try to put it down right on top of the thermicon so right now the thermic line could be typically a normal year and you fall it would be somewhere around 18 foot probably no deeper than 20 because you follows considered somewhat of a shallow lake unlike maybe Tenkiller broken though it's a lot deeper but we have a foot long summer supply and we also have these right here which are 2 foot long that obviously they put out a lot more light and we will have six different lights of these around the boat control as many bait fish as we can get in around us [Music] [Music] [Music] dropping swing engineer position right here is typically say he he wanted it thing is you got to keep an eye out or I'm all time because just so just when you look away is wherever you get hammer yes sir there's one swinging a little better that's probably a ten inch fish now the white crappie we're looking for those 12 to 14 inches tonight that's that's probably all probably a nine inch pitch right there typically most like snow coma you've got to be teenagers to keep on course when you follow we could keep heinous we were fish hungry so but he's pretty small we'll let him let him grow usually the wind stirs up the the plankton and the shad feed on the plankton and the and and not only the shed but the juvenile fish when we fish no matter what we're doing it it's always about the bait fish so if you could educate yourself about movements of bait fish you would be a much better fisherman [Music] when we're beta now we in and you you don't know how deep the crappie are or how deep the Sam bass out whatever you're fishing for you have eight rods out so you can you can stagger your baits out your depth so you could have I've got two rods at eight foot and I've got two rods eight to ten foot and I've got two rods it at twelve to fourteen foot now if the fish are showing you how deep they want to be on the sonar then you just put your baits down there at that depth we we like to hook them through the lips and we go bottom up through when it flows we want the the minnow to swim up right now if we had went from top to bottom he would be swimming upside down and you would kill him some people if they're stationary they'll hook them through the tail or to look like a a wounded wounded fish getting away for fish night rods we at least like to bring a pound a minute it's really good to run two hooks and his mane you know four rods piece whenever you're first looking for them especially now if you've got a lot of people once you can get them found then you can just go with a single hook on and you just get everybody in that depth and you're in pretty good shape number one rule in crappie fishing is we never beg them to bite you know this deal right here we're actually drawing the baitfish in and waiting them out any other techniques we do we they don't bite the first five or ten minutes we go we're going to a different place but the second rule is it's here catching fish don't leave don't leave fish to find fish so we live by those two million rules the three months popular you're gonna catch his a you know crappie usually quite a few Sam Bastion and an occasional catfish or two remember one night was out till 3:00 in the morning and what we had we had an ice chest full of crappie and we could have kept an ice chest full of same bass fact the only reason we left we run out of minutes we had to go home sandy down me guess what saying bastardy cute little beauty saying bass in the summertime our lakes can stratify then that means that we have warm water at the surface and we have cool water at the bottom of the lake the cool water is at the bottom because it's more dense that area in between the the warm water at the top which is fully oxygenated it stays oxygenated by wind action and wave action that that middle section is called the thermic line and there's a drastic change in temperature fish can often be found around this area because they need the oxygenated water but they don't necessarily like the warm temperature that's associated with it so they'll ride that line between the the upper portion of the lake and the lower portion around the journey part the reason that underwater lights can be so effective at this time of year is fish predatory fish unnaturally feed on on prey fish those price fish feed on things as well microscopic organisms like plankton or phytoplankton at night time when there's no sunlight and you introduce an artificial light those plankton can be attractive to that light which then in turn attracts bait fish you know a lot of times I hear non fisherman saying that fishing is mostly just luck well have you ever heard the expression that luck is where preparation and opportunity come together and these guys today have certainly made their own luck with their preparation by creating a great opportunity to catch fish at night let's rejoin them down on Lake Eufaula [Music] we're right over the main channel it's just something that it's just one then things that I had fished you know the last two or three years being over the main channel we haven't had too much experimentation the only thing that we do like is the water clarity you use it typically at night it's got to be somewhat clear they don't like to fish muddy water per se at nighttime not that you can't catch them I mean they do when you fall on different parts of the lake but you know some guys prefer anchoring on drop-offs and some guys prefer you know anchoring on different depths different times of the year depending on how much you fish it this way but most people you know we're going out to the bridge we're going to anchor up in one of the piers and put the lights out and see what we can catch [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] we're hit everybody sing [Music] I get two big crappie their pain take you so I got a big crappie [Music] that's what we look that's what we live before right here big black copy patting about 13 inch black crappie right there that's that's typically what we want to catch that's what you're fishing for right there but a nice fish [Music] we put two jigs on now we're just digging around because we've had waves at the way that the wave of fish there's been so many same passion here tonight that you know we're catching everything that's a drum so we've caught we've caught white crappie black crappie sand bass channel cat blue catfish and now a drum we are getting bit if you go out and do this and you've got your kids out or family it is fish catching action that's what it is whether you want to fish with minnows or you want to fish with your favorite color cheeks we would like to catch those big crappie and I think those they kind of come in here in spurts you know we then the big could be here the next 15 minutes load the boat up with them you're getting bigger their stripes are going the wrong way from what we're looking for tonight [Music] you know fishing at night with lights is not necessarily something new to Oklahoma people have been doing it for generations with things like lanterns and and car headlights floating on styrofoam but technology has changed making it a lot more fun and frankly a little easier to weed encourage you to maybe try something new this year maybe it includes some nighttime fishing for all of us such a Wildlife Department thanks for joining us we'll see you right here next time on an outdoor Oklahoma [Music] [Music]

Channel: outdooroklahoma

Views: 715,436

Rating: 4.6751561 out of 5

Keywords: underwater lights, crappie, underwater fishing lights, submersible lights, Eufaula, sand bass, Fishing (TV Genre)

Id: lwsHDp23VSI

Length: 21min 25sec (1285 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 21 2014