Luck Runs Out

Darren fished with me today on the lake and what a beautiful day it was. Although we were still having winds out of the north, the sunshine and warm temps of 60 degrees made it feel a little more comfortable. Water temps were at 43.5 to 45 degrees with all the cold nights and I didn’t expect them to increase much more. We started the day with fly rods, looking for some sort of activity from trout or maybe even a roaming salmon but weren’t rewarded as usual. Downriggers were the next choice with controlled depth fishing and I thought with all the markings on the sonar that we were going to just crush them. Once again I was wrong as the fish seemed to be in a real negative mood and hookups were few & far between. I had set the lines at 30 & 40 feet in hopes of picking up a suspended laker but that never happened. Our next choice was to hit a few deep humps where I had been having some success with them last week but it turned out that the trout had left the area and we only managed a couple of small bass on jigging spoons in 40 feet. Eventually we went back to the riggers and managed to land 3 lakers trolling but all were slightly short of the legal slot limit of 20 inches and had to be released. Back to the fly rods for one more shot at a decent trout or possible salmon for the remainder of the day and as our luck would have it, nada. Oh we did manage to get a few more fish but they weren’t what we were looking for. Apparently the bass were also suspended over deeper water and we somehow managed to lock up on a few real beauties. It’s not often that you take a smallie from 60 feet only 5 feet under the surface! We had managed to cover a big chunk of the lake and had come up short today. I hope the weather turns around real soon and that the fish manage to return to a more positive state, eating instead of just cruising! Tough bite today!!