Turtle Fish

[Pete Collin]

We were anchored off the mouth of Oak Orchard yesterday evening.  Slow bite but we managed a couple nice male browns.  The weird thing is that we kept seeing what we thought were breaching trout and salmon, but after snagging several, discovered that they were these big 2+ pound herring!  Could these possibly be alewives?  They had sawlike bellies the way alewives do.  No adipose fin, so they weren't whitefish like I initially thought.  I know seagoing alewives can get pretty big, but these things were mutants!  The first one we brought in was snagged in the tail.  It looked oval as Steve cranked it in, so he thought at first he snagged a turtle.  We started calling them turtle fish.  There must have been a jillion down there, becasue we could feel our spoons scraping their sides from time to time.  At first they were sort of interesting, then got a bit annoying because the browns wouldn't bite, finally we relocated to try to get away from them.  The turtle fish gave us something to talk about until we finally hooked some browns!

[UNREEL]

Gizzard shad?

[Pete Collin]

6 minutes ago, UNREEL said:

Gizzard shad?

Looked it up.  You may be right.  Didn't know the great lakes had them.

[kayaker919]

https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2022/08/i-speak-for-the-fish-jarring-look-gizzard-shad/

[Pete Collin]

2 minutes ago, kayaker919 said:

https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2022/08/i-speak-for-the-fish-jarring-look-gizzard-shad/

Cool article.  It has been years since I caught a fish and did not know what it was.

[Jm1984]

In the mid 90’s on Lake Huron we used to see large numbers of them coming in shallow to spawn.

[LongLine]

Definitely a Shad.  Years ago, I caught a Northern Pike at Port Bay that had over 20 of them in him.

[UNREEL]

On Irondequoit Bay in the spring, there is a large die-off of the gizzard shad every couple of years. Hundreds line the shoreline ranging from 1-3 lbs. The winged rats love it. 

[ifishy]

11 hours ago, UNREEL said:

On Irondequoit Bay in the spring, there is a large die-off of the gizzard shad every couple of years. Hundreds line the shoreline ranging from 1-3 lbs. The winged rats love it. 

I hate launching those years get the slime and rot on the trailer and I usually just wade to crank it on the trailer and sticking my feet it that is brutal nasty

[UNREEL]

I hear you. Wading in that cannot be fun. And how about the smell after they ferment for a week.   🤮