Posted by Capt. Duck on December 31, 2007 at 02:46:14:
In Reply to: blue back herring life cycle info? posted by bill hartley on December 30, 2007 at 20:01:58:
There are several similar looking fish such as the Alewife, Hickory Shad & Skipjack Herring. The Blueback and Alewife are almost indistinguishable to the untrained eye. All of those mentioned have dots just aft of their gill plates and are often confused with each other. The Skipjack Herring and Hickory Shad grow much larger than Bluebacks.
Blue backs can live up to 8 years and may grow to be a little over a foot long but this is not common in the lakes in SC and GA that I normally fish. A 9 inch blue back is considered extremely large and when larger one are reported it could very well be a Hickory Shad instead of a Blueback
In the late Summer/early Fall, blueback herring concentrate in the deeper cooler waters near the thermocline in the deep lakes like Hartwell, etc.
In the spring April/May they will be close the the bank in various parts of the lake, they usually migrate upstream to spawn at this time.
Other times they are spread around the entire lake in schools.
You can find most of the references to "Blueback Herring" on StriperBoard using the following URL/Link:
Google search for:
"Blueback Herring" site:striperboard.com
http://tinyurl.com/yocbdx
You can perform a similar Google search for basically anything on striperboard.com or any other domain by including the site:domainname.ext in the search. A good tip is to set the results on the Google search to 100 so you want have to open as many pages to see them all. You can do a similar search for "bluebacks" or just herring and probably get a lot more hits.
You can find a ton of info on herring in this (Click Here) search result.
You can also find more info at the link below. You can use Google Advanced Search to search a specific domain like striperboard.com or the entire world wide web for various words and phrases. That is how I learn a lot of the info I post on StriperBoard.
Good Fishin' & Happy New Year,
"Duck"