How is the road in? Last time I went it was full of potholes.
Physion
How is the road in? Last time I went it was full of potholes.
Physion
I was there yesterday and it must have been graded recently because there weren't any potholes or washboards. Didn't catch any kokanee.
Hasn't been much chatter on here about Arrow Rock so decided to go check it out for myself this morning after fishing Anderson last weekend. I was surprised to see the parking lot full at boat ramp and plenty of boats out fishing. Wasn't great fishing, ended up with 2 decent kokes (17" and 18") and released a little guy, of course had a few squaw fish and 2 small rainbows. Didn't see much action on other boats and the few fisherman I talked to hadn't caught kokes. Not sure why Arrow Rock has been so poor past couple years, should have fished Anderson instead.
Reaper
2016 black and silver Lund Tyee with 150 hp Mercury
22' Custom Jet boat, Blue with American Flag waving. Blue GMC draggin'
The internet and over fishing, perhaps?
20 years ago, it was rare to catch a 14" kokanee in Arrowrock, L.P., or Anderson, but to catch a limit, without boats all over you was not rare. The quality of fish had steadily increased, which is a simple equation of the quantity in the fishery decreasing. As more people keep flocking and taking home multiple limits of big fish, something's gotta give. I know the lashing I'll take for stating the truth, as I've seen it before, but it's inevitable that eventually the bubble will burst. I know the fish are just going to spawn and die, so take em all seems to be the normal response, but spawn is a key piece of that ingredient. The same reduced number hitting your rods and heading to the smoker are the same reduced number going to spawn..
Last edited by voicebugler; 06-05-2018 at 02:05 PM. Reason: Add content
It may be due to over fishing and the internet but I am not sure on this one. Typically you will hear of great reports early in the season and then over fishing will follow as soon as all the pics are posted. But something is weird with Arrowrock. From my view it has not been all that great for about the last 3 years or so with little or no reports of any success (including my own time on the lake)
But 3 years ago as I frequented the south fork of the Boise in the fall there were a ton of fish in the river spawning.
2 years ago, not so much. And last year I saw a few...and by the way they were all huge. I cannot help but wonder if the numbers are there but they dong something different in that lake, like moving up the rivers much earlier in the season.
I think you hit the nail on the head. The immense pressure on this fishery has its consequences. Maybe the fish are moving into the rivers earlier than before....but that's a stretch. I remember late last fall saying that the pressure on both Lucky Peak and Arrowrock is too heavy.....and several on this forum just regurgitated the "three year cycle of the Kokanee" talking points. We can't expect to sustain this fishery with the number of anglers on the lake limiting out on fish from early spring until the reservoirs ice over. Fish and game needs to get involved and put the brakes on things...at least for a while. I think that we did this to ourselves.
Pauli
I would suspect the big fire to be the problem before anything else. Wasn't the big fire 3 years ago? If it messed up the egg survival, that would explain a lot.
What I heard at an IF&G lecture (at Cabelas last year) is the Kokanee in Arrowrock (and the whole Boise R. system) are pretty much all planted via IF&G stocking program. Another tidbit was that tagged Kokanee planted in Arrowrock and later caught and reported by fisher-folk have all been recovered in Lucky Peak. Thus loss of Arrowrock Kokanee are in large part due to water management, not over-fishing. Consider also that the limit is 6 in Arrowrock; whereas Anderson has a limit of 25. And we haven't seen a large drop in numbers at Anderson.
Last edited by pollackoke; 06-06-2018 at 06:57 PM.
F and G was doing fish samples at Anderson yesterday checking for male / female and weighing/measuring about 10 of our fish - I ask a lot of question about all three res. Pretty vague about LP and Arrow. said a variety of factors on low count . they have more control on Anderson due to natural spawn . did get around 20 good day saw boat with over 30
This is going to sound kind of weird but here it goes anyhow...
Last year I put a brand new Humminbird 999ci fish finder on my boat and I've had issues with it now and then and was just about to contact Humminbird when I realized it only happens when I am on Arrow Rock. I will try and post a photo I took of the display during the problem...the unit will display vertical stripes of blue on and off like the sensitivity is turned up too high (but the stripes are very clear appearing suddenly and disappearing quickly), and the depth read out will display wrong. The attached image shows the depth display says 4.4 feet but I am in very deep water and the display of the bottom contour shows I am in at least 70 foot water. I fished Arrow Rock twice last year and twice this year and experienced the issue all four times. I have fished many days on other water such as Lucky Peak, Anderson Ranch, CJ, Cascade and reservoirs in other states and never saw the same issue even once.
Anyone experience anything similar? Anyone have any theories on the cause?
John
2016 black and silver Lund Tyee with 150 hp Mercury
Hmmm.... That's a tough one. Probably the best way to go about figuring out this thing is to start ruling things out what it's not. I know it would be a pain in the rear...especially now that the lake is getting busier..... but, next time you're up at Arrowrock, leave a little early and on the way down the hill, stop off and do a quick launch at Lucky Peak. See if the problem manifests itself again on the lower reservoir. It may help you rule out a few things. Seems to me it is probably an electrical, or radio interference on the boat itself. Is there an antenna or radio mounted near the unit??
Pauli
Last edited by Pauli; 06-22-2018 at 01:00 AM.
GrimReaper, does your unit correct itself? I'm experiencing the same problems but the only way to get the screen cleared is to reboot the unit. I called Humminbird and they want me to make sure all the software updates are current and try resetting all the default settings.
2006 Dodge Ram 3500 Dually, 21' North River Seahawk
SuperD,
What I have seen is my Humminbird will usually vary between having this issue and then it will temporarily go away on its own, but sometimes once it goes crazy it doesn't seem to recover and I have to reboot the unit - it comes back up OK but will go back to having the problem, usually doesn't take too long. I have also reset defaults and again the problem still re occurs. Again it seems I only see the problem on Arrow Rock.
Does your unit only have problems on Arrow Rock or on other waters as well? I just got back from 4 days on Flaming Gorge and never had an issue even once while there. I fished 2 consecutive days on Anderson couple weeks ago and never had a problem.
I will be on Cascade this weekend and will see if it happens. Even though fishing has been poor on Arrow Rock I'm tempted to put the boat in there for couple hours just to see what happens and then pull out and put back in on Lucky Peak - just to try and verify it really is only on Arrow Rock.
I also have a 899ci for my bow, and last year hooked it up to my console (using the 999ci transducers) and if my memory is right I still saw the issue, so if true that would rule out the unit itself (but they might use same firmware or firmware that has same defect).
John
2016 black and silver Lund Tyee with 150 hp Mercury
John, We have fished AR for 7 years. We have had 5 different fish finders and every time we leave the ramp and head to the Dam our finder will go nuts just like yours. We have tried to do all kinds of adjustments and its the same thing every time. We don't even think about it now. good luck.
Earl
I have a Humminbird fish finder and have the same issue at Anderson. Blue vertical specks. I am wondering what plankton looks like on the screen. By the way fished Anderson Friday and caught 5 Kokanee and one 20" rainbow that was packed full of cicada.
Thanks everyone for the replies and information on sonar issues while fishing Arrow Rock. Sounds like I am not the only one experiencing strange fish finder issues at Arrow Rock, and furthermore sounds like some people have similar humminbird issues on waters other than Arrow Rock. For those of you who said they see similar blue specs while fishing other waters I want to point out I have seen lots of blue specs while on Anderson but I'm pretty sure that was plankton and/or other things in water making it more turbid and what was different with that versus what I experience on Arrow Rock is the blue specs did not appear and disappear in well defined columns on my display and also when I turned down my sensitivity it did reduce the blue specs.
Last thing I will say is I fished Cascade for 9 hours Saturday and never had a single issue with my humminbird. Not sure what is different on Arrow Rock but for some reason my sonar only exhibits the odd behavior there.
John
2016 black and silver Lund Tyee with 150 hp Mercury
I tried several Humminbird units up there and had many issues...in Auto depth mode it would lose the bottom and say I was in less than 2 feet of water when it was really 80 plus....then I called Humminbird and their tech guys did some research for me...
They claim that Arrowrock has a lot of lava rock on the bottom and it tends to deflect the sonar signal similar to what a stealth fighter body does...co fuses the computer...I switched to Lowrance units and its better...but still lose bottom quite often..the saving grace...is if you turn off auto ranging...set depth at 40-50' ....it will show the water column clearly even though it loses the bottom on its depth line...may say 2 feet and flash...but the screen will show bottom clearly...
We camped and fished Arrowrock last weekend and part of the issue with fish numbers could be directly related to the crazy amount of squawfish, err northern pikeminnow.
We caught a few kokanee, which a couple of were tanks, and a boat load of squawfish. They need to put a bounty on them.
In 2011, there was a Bull trout census taken...they caught and killed like 10000 pounds of squawfish...its been way better in that dept. since then...the kokes they planted a few years ago were dumped in at the boat ramp...then soon after they had a high water flow event that flushed the majority of them into LP...they've been trying some different strategies to get the fishery back on track...but it takes time.
Thanks for the info Jimbo, that makes a lot of sense and probably explains the issue I am having at Arrow Rock. I manually set depth range do not use auto depth mode and you are right that most of the time when the display reads the wrong depth the unit still displays the bottom correctly.
Thanks again to everyone who chimed in, I think I understand this much better now and don't feel the need to contact Humminbird.
John
2016 black and silver Lund Tyee with 150 hp Mercury
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