Ashurst Lake Pike

[Atypical]

The Gunner worked 30 minutes to land this 19lb 40.5 inch pike at Ashurst Lake this weekend. He used a top water lure from the shore and it was around mid-day. A few other big ones were caught that day, but not a lot of action. Woohoo.

[Coach]

Nice Pike!

[mr.smith]

Looks like he was taking a break from turkey hunting. Thats a good one. Must have been sweet to see it crash his topwater plug.

[Red Rabbit]

Looks like the pike's high protein trout diet had results.

[WadeNAZ]

Catch them Trout Eatin SOBs. I remember going up to Ashurst as a boy and having some awesome trout fishing experiences. Those days at that lake are gone and don't see them coming back.

 

I am going to be up at Lake Mary Memorial Day will the Pike still be catchable then?

 

 

[coues krazy]

I can remember when there were dolly vardens in Ashurst at one time. I also caught a 16" brookie way back when.

I also remember when the game and fish poisoned the lake because shiners had gotten in. My grandfather told the warden that those shiners were the best trout food they could get. The warden told him that trout wont eat shiners! We had a good laugh at that and watched as the killed hundreds of 19 to 24" rainbows. The lake has never been the same since.

[The Coues]

Nice!!!

[Snuffer]

I go back when Ashurst was a beatiful blue lake that had rainbow , brownies,brookies and kokonee salmon. The lake was full of fresh water shrimp with no crawdads, catfish or pike. It was this way until the game and fish decided to kill the lake off. wasn't the same since. One day on the lake with a friend of mine, trolling with flies, we caught and released over 200 trout that day. It was quite common to catch al least 50 a day. ooh for the good old days on Ashurst.

[coues krazy]

I stand corrected. They were kocanee salmon and not dolly varden.

Is it the crawdads that make that lake muddy nowadays? Seems I heard that somewhere.

[ac guy]

I thought craws cleaned water.

[mr.smith]

Crawdads muddy it up pretty good. They kill and eat everything. Plants, animals, everything. It destabilized the substrate and creates a silty muddy mess and creates a lot of crawdad poo. In lakes like Woods Canyon you don't notice the dirtying because it has a rocky bottom, whereas Ashurst is volcanic ash mud

[ac guy]

Interesting. I remember the rice farmers in La and Ar would use them in the rice fields to clean the water, but it makes sense that the mass of vegetation in that situation would keep them from disturbing the silt.

[Red Rabbit]

Besides the crawdads, some also credit the cattle for stomping and denuding the shoreline also causing the muddy water.

Noticed on the G&F stocking report that they are feeding the Ashurst pike with 6580 stocked rainbows.

[coues krazy]

They will never get the pike out of there. They should let the pike have it, and stop stocking trout. It just doesnt have the feel of a trout lake anymore. Way to muddy. Maybe stock it with catfish. Looks like a catfish lake.