Fishing The Overton Arm (February 13, 2019)

By LOREN BROOKS

Sam, Rich, and Gary really got into the striper’s on Friday up near marker 19. They were trolling with lead line, using “crank bait,” alternating the speed and they brought home 23 nice fish.

Rich said it was such a good day, and such perfect weather, they quit by 1:00 pm, satisfied with a nice catch to share between the three of them.

That same day Bryce and I did some reminiscing about the Overton Beach area, back when there was water there. Lots of memories about fishing the Muddy and the Virgin when the water was about 80 feet deep directly out from the boat ramp.

I remember an experience at the dock back a long time ago while launching my boat with Stu Morley. He met me at the dock at 10:00 am. I had spent the night working on my boat trailer down at the Overton Marina.

The next morning I backed the trailer into the water. The boat floated off the trailer, but the trailer came loose from the truck and wound up in 12 feet of water on the bottom. Morley and the Park Ranger said they never seen anything like it.

I could see the trailer out close to the end of the dock, down on the bottom in 12 feet of water. I took the rope and anchor from the boat and lassoed the hitch. With a 100 feet of rope I connected the the rope to the back of the truck. The anchor made the connection and I pulled the trailer back up the ramp.

The Ranger wrote a story about it in the Park News and called the event “a rodeo on the boat ramp.”

I discovered the pin that held the trailer hitch to the truck was not in the hitch. Just imagine pulling that boat from the FUN & SUN Trailer Park, to the Overton Beach Marina. It did not come off until the hitch got wet at the ramp. The safety chains were not connected to the bumper or undercarriage, but were connected to the hitch. I had traveled that whole distance without the pin in the hitch.

I got a nice fishing report from Art and his wife Ardeen last week. They also got into some striper and she caught a nice 3 pound fish. They had 14 people at the fireside. They served us a nice plate of food around the camp fire.

Other reports this week were described as slow, some catching 7, some catching 6, some catching 3, and some anglers were “skunked”.

A local angler expressed concerns about catching and keeping large numbers of fish. He said loading up on crappie is a big concern by some anglers. He asked me to encourage “catch and release” after you get a couple of nice crappie fish. He said the numbers taken (in his opinion) are alarming.

He and a group of anglers have discussed how many crappie fish are being harvested out of the Overton Arm. He would hope that people would be satisfied with just a few fish and not seek for a limit. Rich agrees with that attitude and so do I.