Here’s KJ Queen’s (finally) first keeper, along with a view of the screen of the Humminbird Helix 12 in Andy Crawford’s camera boat. That’s a school of baitfish, likely the lake herring, that are the key attractant to the area around the U.S. Hwy. 212 bridge over Lake Oahe.
The key to the fertile fishing are the smallmouth on this lake are more like pelagic saltwater fish. They favor the water column where baitfish are located at a given time.
Of the smallmouth foods in Oahe (rainbow smelt, lake herring), the latter are high in lipids or fat, which promotes fast growth. The smallmouth can bulk up in weight quicker, and thus the reason why the better quality of fish sought by the anglers are in that region of the lake, where the herring are concentrated.
On the downside, lake herring grow fast in Oahe, and become too large for predators like smallmouth within a few years. Lake Herring were introduced by the state fisheries department in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
