Convergence '18: There and Gone

 For three days the herring run seemed to be at its peak. The fish were in thick. The third day they were in the riffles so heavy I could feel them bumping against my legs the entire time I waded across some stretches. Kayaking through deep spots I saw some real cows, fish in excess of 40lbs, but it would turn out that these fish would never leave areas where they couldn't be fished for, at least not while I was there.

Fish were caught. The smallmouth that tended to be the filler species between stripers weren't as prevalent as they were last year, which has been disappointing, but there was a larger number of stripers around. I caught a lot of fish Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, mostly on clousers and double deceivers. Of those days, Friday (the subject of the last Convergence post) was the most spectacular, with stripers everywhere, herring everywhere, and a lot of action between predators and prey. But the fishing was lacking something notable. But the night spawning and feeding that made the 2017 run so spectacular didn't materialize.

On Saturday, after dark, the bite essentially ground to a hault after dark. Noah and I switched from actively fishing to just observing. There was an immense amount of life outside of herring and stripers around: juvenile eels were migrating upstream, some climing wet rock faces to pass barriers. Spotfin shiners with bellies full of herring eggs were in the shallows. Tons of tessellated darters were plastered on the bottom. Trout, carp, walleye, smallmouth, and catfish all made appearances. We even found a wood turtle.

On Sunday, though there had been more herring than I had seen in this river before in the afternoon, by dark virtually all of them, along with all of the stripers, turned tail and left. And on Monday there were none all day.

This concerned me. I could see signs in the weather and water temperatures that may have been responsible for this mass exit, but I really wasn't sure what was to come. The looming question: Had my chance to catch a big herring run striper come and gone?