Cascade Disappointment
 

Drove the 10 hours all night and arrived to Cascade Lake Idaho around 6 AM, but couldn't sleep so grabbed a coffee at Stinker Stores along with three packages of Night Crawlers in Donelly. While there two older fishermen were headed back to Wisconsin and it sounded like they were headed home after catching not much of anything. That wasn't what I wanted to hear but was confident we would find them and catch them no matter how slow it was. My brother and I headed down to the Poison creek ramp which was all snowed in this year. Very limited parking. Got all loades up and headed out with great excitement. Travel conditions were perfect. When we punched some holes there were fish on the Marcum right away... but nothing was happening. Jaw Jackers sitting untouched... no bites. Just swimming by. We picked up a few and decided to move. We explored a few spots and ended up back at the first spot. It was a long day after probably being awake for 36 hours with especially slow and disappointing fishing. Didn't get many perch on video but stick around till the end to see some nice pictures we got of some giant slobs. The biggest fish of the day was still 15 1/4" and 2 pounds 3 ounces. Hardly terrible fishing. Just worse than expected.

Next video is much better I promise.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SItb5SB2HV0

End of Winter low oxygen perhaps?

This happens on a lot of our trout and perch lakes in late March / April.

O2 drops and the fish are sluggish because of low oxygen. Tell tale is fish way off the bottom.

Never been there to Cascade Lake , but I have seen this happen many many times over the years elsewhere.

Could that be part of the problem Brandon?

Now I won't upset a certain Board Member who is only upset by someone mentioning "Finner Duramax Lake", but I know a place where the fish aren't too sluggish as long as there is no East Wind Blowing.

Sea Hawk's wife caught a true "kneel down and worship" walleye there recently. It had to go back but I was afraid she was going to swallow her ears the way she was smiling.


Drewski

You know I am not sure about the dissolved oxygen levels in the lake. I suspect with it being a reservoir, quit large and having some stream inflow that its levels shouldn't drop to much. To tell you the truth it seems more like a weather pattern effect. I talked to a guy who fished there on the Saturday before we were there. Like two days before and he caught 100. I saw pics. He told me exactly wear to go. We fished it on Wednesday and didn't even mark a single big fish. Just caught a few 3 to 6 inchers. During the days we were there, we were lucky to even mark 20 fish on the Marcum a day. Super slow. Sure oxygen may be coming into play. But seems something else changed and the fish dispersed. Where we were finding the best like was right smack in the middle of the lake, a deep water flat, no structure and they were just wandering around down there.

Really like reading your posts! What is this lake like for fishing in open water? Can these big perch be caught trolling bottom bouncers as if fishing for walleye.