Copper Sulfate

Is there any other species?
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DarkShadow
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Copper Sulfate

Post by DarkShadow » Wed Sep 15, 2021 8:30 pm

Hey,

Fishing a tournament this weekend. We pre-fished the place last Saturday and it was absolutely brutal. This place gave up back to back 30 pound bags in April for a 2 day tournament. But, we got one keeper on a jerkbait off a main lake point and another fish came on a drop shot off a point, also deep.

Turns out, the lake was 'blue stoned' about a week prior. Now, I don't have experience with copper sulfate and what it does to the bass. But I do have a few working theories....

The lake is notorious for it's excellent frog bite but that was non existent. There was no life shallow and nothing was on top in the morning.

So, they treat the vegetation with copper sulfate. It starts dying. Water loses oxygen as the plant matter decays. Fish bail.

Should I be focusing my efforts on hard bottom and deeper water? It seems the fish have bailed from their regular summer pattern and it's gonna be tough figuring it out.

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Re: Copper Sulfate

Post by toddmc » Tue Sep 21, 2021 2:28 pm

It often takes a while for the fish to recover from a copper sulfate treatment. You can't judge a late summer bite/creel size based on what happens in the spawn. The fish may go deep after a copper sulfate treatment, if they have that option. The fish will often relocate somewhere.

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Re: Copper Sulfate

Post by DarkShadow » Mon Sep 27, 2021 8:43 am

So, as expected, the bite was tough across the board.

20 boats, half the field got skunked. 6 had one fish on the board. 1 boat had 3 fish, 1 boat had 2, and 1 boat had a limit.

The limit was caught fishing very oxygenated water (duh), in the form of an inlet that has rushing water in from our state water project. I had told my co angler that we shouldn't be focusing on the shallows, even though we saw fish there, but, we did manage 3 keepers before the sun came up, but then the bite died.

The boat who won were throwing deep diving cranks and A rigs along the current inside this inlet.

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Re: Copper Sulfate

Post by toddmc » Tue Sep 28, 2021 10:56 am

I didn't notice before that you are in Los Angeles. Do you mind sharing what lake this was. We use copper sulfate regularly on our state reservoirs this time of year.

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Re: Copper Sulfate

Post by DarkShadow » Tue Sep 28, 2021 9:18 pm

toddmc wrote:
Tue Sep 28, 2021 10:56 am
I didn't notice before that you are in Los Angeles. Do you mind sharing what lake this was. We use copper sulfate regularly on our state reservoirs this time of year.
Probably not blowing up any spots, but this was Lake Skinner, down near Temecula.

And yes, copper sulfate is regularly used, since it has been 'proven' to not cause any detrimental effects, and i use 'proven' in quotes for a reason. Even our local pond got the ole Bluestone treatment a few weeks ago, which caused the *same* effect on the fish as did Skinner.

Fish pushed away from their regular haunts and retreated to deeper water for about 2 weeks. It's just a few days ago that I've gotten to catching them again at this pond consistently.

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Re: Copper Sulfate

Post by toddmc » Wed Sep 29, 2021 12:14 pm

DarkShadow wrote:
Tue Sep 28, 2021 9:18 pm
toddmc wrote:
Tue Sep 28, 2021 10:56 am
I didn't notice before that you are in Los Angeles. Do you mind sharing what lake this was. We use copper sulfate regularly on our state reservoirs this time of year.
Probably not blowing up any spots, but this was Lake Skinner, down near Temecula.

And yes, copper sulfate is regularly used, since it has been 'proven' to not cause any detrimental effects, and i use 'proven' in quotes for a reason. Even our local pond got the ole Bluestone treatment a few weeks ago, which caused the *same* effect on the fish as did Skinner.

Fish pushed away from their regular haunts and retreated to deeper water for about 2 weeks. It's just a few days ago that I've gotten to catching them again at this pond consistently.
I've seen copper sulfate used on a lot of various California state reservoirs and golf course lakes that I fish in SoCal. I don't ever remember it helping the fishing immediately. What eventually happens in a lot of golf course lakes when vegetation is removed is the bait no longer has as many places to hide. Eventually the bite catches fire because of all of the bait that has no place to hide is easy pickins for the bass. The bass get real aggressive like they do during a normal fall die off of the vegetation.

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