Finiky Bites

With a break in the weather and sunshine, I thought we would head back to where we ended our day yesterday and see if we could score again. It was a little nippy this morning, but with no wind and sun I knew it could only get warmer. The water temps on this lake were barely 54 degrees and the air temps were around 45 and climbing steadily. No wind allowed us to troll easily as we covered water for almost 2 hours without a touch. That’s muskie fishing I told him and we reeled in the lines to try for smallies. I slid into the first area and as luck would have it, spooked a big muskie of at least 45 inches in the shallows. I’m sure he had been feeding on the bass in here, as we never moved a single fish. I jumped to another area nearby and on Takeshi’s first cast with a jerkbait he locked up. He also brought in a school of smallies with this fish and I took advantage with a tube and also hooked one. Doubles are always good when you are into schooling fish! Tak released this fish and immediately was locked up once again on the very next cast. This one was just bloated and crapped all over my carpet when he brought her aboard. I don’t think she was 20 inches, but she looked just like a football with that girth! We took a couple of pics and let her go so that he could get back to casting and immediately was tight lined on the very next cast. These fish were either really stupid or just hungry, but I wasn’t going anywhere as long as he was hooking them. Another big fatty and a few pics and back to business. Eventually, the school became wary of his jerkbait and he began to have more followers instead of takers. He did manage to persuade some of them into eating the bait, but they definitely slowed down. Time to hit another area and lock up some more! The same thing happened in this spot as he caught a few before they developed lockjaw and just swam around looking. We could see the huge fish just cruising, showing absolutely no interest in anything we had to offer. Tak tried drop shotting right in their faces and all they did was swim the other way. I think they had fed heavily before and by the looks of them, they were just plain full! We saw plenty of other fish all along this area just cruising as well, including lots of sturgeon up to 4 feet in length. The sun got up high and it warmed enough to be able to get into T-Shirts with absolutely no wind at all! The water was barely moving in the current areas we were fishing and this shut the fish right down. I tried other spots later, as well as trolling for muskie again, but nay a taker showed any interest. We caught a few more bass up to almost 5 pounds during the rest of the day, tried unsuccessfully at muskie once more and then called it quits. Tough day on the lake with quality fish, but not any quantity!