Shrimp
 

So you quad into a remote unnamed lake in search of humpies. With much anticipation you punch your first hole. As you pull the auger out, 100's of freshwater shrimp come with it. Do you bother dropping a hook?

Or is that a sure fire sign of winterkill?

Your there, why wouldn't you drop down a hook???

this is a common occurance on pine lake and it has been said that the more shrimp the better the pike fishing. I have seen this to be roughly accurate statement ?

shrimp
 

when Joker used to be a great lake before it winterkilled, that used to be the case there when we dug our holes. The shrimp seemed to be up against the ice. The jumbo perch fishing was crazy there too. now its dead. , so to answer your question, it didn't matter at that lake anyway.

B.

Don't they gather under the ice later in the season even if oxigen is not low enough to winterkill the lake?

I have caught a decent number of pike through a hole from which tons of shrimp came up with the auger. Not sure what the relation between the shrimp and winterkill might be, but I for one have not noticed any hampering to my catch corelating to shrimp up the hole.

How does it affect perch fishing?

Thats exactly what was happening to me at Lake Isle when I drilled holes last January. Thousands of shrimp would come up, and no bites whatsoever...

Interesting.

Where the heck are you fishing through the ice for Pink Salmon?????

Duffman, thanks for coming out!

yep. but this has also happened years before last year at isle. interesting sure, but in my opinion not related to the recent kill/partial kill at that lake.

Dace

I drilled holes at lake isle last year too and tons of shrimp came up. I also punched a bunch of holes at hasting lake and the same thing happened there. Seems lakes that have alot of shrimp have winter killed.... Not sure if its proven but weird occurance

I have ice fished all over AB and into sask. Never seen more then the occasional shrimp. The other day, I have never seen shrimp like that before, and it was in a small shallow lake that I would call prone to winter kill.

So my experiences tell me that it is a sign of winterkill. It seems the shrimp have no predators and have been multiplying freely.


Interesting to hear your guys thoughts...

I do know my dugout is full or shrimp, and that my trout havent winter killed.
Always been that way. So I would have to say that just becuase there is shrimp doesnt mean there isnt fish.

guys i've drilled up shrimp out of holes at many, many lakes over the years. isle, la nonne, st. anne, babtist, mons, island, orloff to name a few off the top of my head. have any of these waters winter killed recently? i haven't heard or fished some of these lakes recently as i don't live in the part of the country any longer. usually fishing shallower water in the spring, chasing jumbos and eyes. no one else experience this?

Dace

The reason for lots of shrimp is typically a shallower lake full of nutrients/weeds. Shallow lakes do have a tendency to winter kill, but no relation between winterkill and shrimp. Hope you kept fishing!

Not to argue, but ive ice fished every lake you mentioned and never seen any amount of shrimp worth mentioning.

Shrimp and potatoes
Shrimp and steak
Shrimp gumbo
Shrimp and steamed rice
Shrimp stirfry
Shrimp lasagna
.................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. ...............................

shrimp
 

was at phlis monday loads shrimp in hole lots fish thru hole Rigby you should let those little deer go and just go for the big ones....:sEm_oops2::jawsmiley::jawsmiley::jawsmile y: man thats a n amazing deer ....:test:

I know you dont want to give the lake away,but if you did mention the name of the lake i'm sure someone on here could tell you if it got winter killed bad.that or drop a fish camera into the water,and if there are no fish then theres a good bet its a dead lake.

I've fished alot of lakes for various species of fish that have had thousands of shrimp come out the hole and there was always ok fishing there.I've noticed that the shrimp change the color of the fishes flesh.

on another note I always believed that catching fish in polluted shrimp filled lakes is tough because the fish have full bellies from the shrimp,so they dont bite as often!...... thats just my hypothesis,not sure if its true?

Unnamed lake with no tracks going into it this winter. Had a camera and didnt see anything on it. gave it a quick but honest effort. Tried 15-20 spots with no bites.

I remember reading a old Fred Noddin article in AO about bushwacking into remote brook trout lakes. With him saying something along the lines of the first hole drilled is the most important, because if its full of backswimmers there would be no fish in it. Wanted to see if others had the same expereince with shrimp.

IC...Well thats very interesting and good to know about the back swimmer's incase I move up north someday.The only bushwhacking that goes on around Medicine hat is me cutting my lawn in the summer :)

Shrimp stew
Shrimp salad
Bourbon Sesame shrimp
Sauté shrimp
Shrimp fritters
Shrimp and grits
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no problem. there’s better things to disagree on than successful shrimp through the ice sightings. i can say as well i’ve punched more holes into the ice of the above mentioned waters and had no clouds of shrimp come up onto the ice, but on occasion it has happened. i used to take some home at the end of the day and fed them to my cichlids. they loved them.

bubba rig, go hard. it’s your turn.

Dace

backswimmers
 

Funny you bring up backswimmers. I was fishing Pigeon lake this morning and several of my holes had quite a few backswimmers in them. I could see them down 2 or 3 feet plus the ones up the hole. Only saw 1 whitefish. I thought of trying a backswimmer fly but was not prepared to use them so they weren't in my tackle. BEL

Went looking a few years ago in that area he was writing about, backswimmers and bugs galore but not a single rise (summer time) friend that had been in there the winter before said when he punched holes, found tons of boatmen and some jaw dropping brookies basically swimming right by the hole. He estimates some brookies were 24-30"s in length... which i find hard to believe, but you never know!

Live Shrimp = Big Perch
 

I have fished Tucker for a number of years, the first thing I look for is "SHRIMP" (bait). Use the smallest trout hook you can find, the thinest line you can get and a split shot up 9". a few years back, me and 4 buddies, 5 hours, we had our limits of humpies. All the fillets were as big as my hand. if the lake is not dead, shrimp are as go as it gets. we probably released 250+.

:thinking-006:

going to have to look that up in the regs, I have been told in the old days this was the way to fish pine by red deer .the old fella telling that story suggested micro wave a tupperware container full of shrimp to kill them made them legal to use off to find my regs

Isn't it a little early to be winterkilling? I don't know the lake so it is possible that it winterkilled last year but without knowing the lake or fishing it hard to say what is happening. Good part about that is though that if it did winterkill whatever left will reproduce like rabbits with all the food!

I have seen that happen on 2 different lakes, one was winter killed and one wasn't.

The one lake winterkilled about 12 yrs ago. I tried it about 6 yrs ago to see if it came back and all the holes we drilled had a few hundred shrimp come out of each. I thought if there was fish they would eat the shrimp, sure enough fished all the old favorite spots and didnt catch or see any fish other than one tiny pike.

The other lake was cross lk last yr, the few holes we drilled only had a couple shrimp come out, fishing was good and a buddy decided to drill a few holes shallower, the water looked black when he lifted the auger, there was shrimp everywhere.

I was thinking if there is tons of shrimp then there is probably no fish, but after last yr i think otherwise