Lake Orange

Lake Orange is a 134 acre lake in orange county that contains large and smallmouth bass, bluegill, redears, a few pike, white perch, yellow perch, channel cats, bullheads, gizzard shad, grass and common carp, golden shiners, black crappie, walleye, green sunfish, and redbreast sunfish. We (my little brother and my grandfather) decided to take the kayaks out one day to try for some yellow perch for the frying pan.
   We arrived on the lake at 7:30 and I asked the tackle shop manager where to fish for yellows and how because I had never fished the lake before. He directed us to some fallen trees in 10' of water and told us to use red wigglers. I fished with worm for a while and only caught bluegills so I switched to a trout magnet (my go-to artificial for panfish) and fished that really slowly near the bottom, I caught one keeper crappie and a few crappies that I released but no perch. I hooked into something really big on the magnet and it was shaking its head like crazy and taking some drag, I brought the fish to the net only to realize I had caught a 16" channel cat, but catfish taste very good so I put that one on the stringer. 
      I headed down to the dam of the lake and fished for perch in the deeper water with no sucess. The bass were busting on gizzard shad everywhere so we bought some shiners and caught 5 or 6 bass in the 2 pound range, releasing all of them. I also found a brush pile and caught atleast 30 golden shiners topping 9 inches in about 20 minutes there before getting bored and leaving.

    Towards the end of the day I set up back at the tree in 10 feet of water to try for catfish, I took the dead shiners out of my minnow bucket and cut off the head and tail to leave the ribcage, guts, and the back of the shiner, my favorite piece of cutbait on small fish. I dropped it down in front of the tree and left it in one of my rod holders, and fished with a trout magnet for bluegill and crappie. After just a minute in the water, the rod bent over and I pulled up a 17 inch channel cat. I put that one on the stringer and rebaited, and after 2 minutes, landed another cat, I repeated this process two more times before hooking a really big fish, after spinning my boat in a couple circles, I felt the fish swim into a tree, I could still feel the fish on so I spent 10 minutes trying to un-snag it. With no sucess, I backed my kayak into the center of the lake and pulled really hard in an attempt to break the line, but I felt something break free, and still felt weight on the line, so I reeled it in. Immediately I saw a large stick on my line so I grabbed it to untangle my rig but when I lifted it up, the stick surged downwards, and I saw the big cat on my line, I managed to net the fish which turned out to be a 20 inch channel weighing in at 4 pounds. At the end of the day, I ended up with 6 catfish over 15 inches, I would highly reccomend this lake to anyone in this area. The rods and reels I used were: Catfish-Shimano Symetre 3000 spooled with 8 pound bass pro shops excel line, on a 6' light action shimano rod. Panfish- Shimano Sahara 1500 spooled with 4 pound excel line on a 5'6" Field and Stream ultra light.     These are the 7 catfish we ended up with, I caught 6, and my little brother caught 1.