Mixing It Up

I was back out this morning with Reda & his dad for another mixed bag day. They were also joined by Guillaume allowing me to run a four rod spread. Overnight temps were chilly and I knew the morning wouldn’t be the best time of the day. Water temps were around 57 degrees and the bite started slow. We had to resort to working soft plastics on the bottom to entice the few fish that wanted to eat. Several walleye and perch were caught, along with a couple of incidentals. When the skies finally cleared the clouds away and sunshine was upon us, I switched gears completely. We were going for pike as that was what they had requested. Unlike the usual method however, they chose to cast instead. It took a little longer to locate them this way but when I finally did it was game on! In just a couple of hours they managed to land plenty of post spawners and had a bunch of others follow or just get off. They also managed to hook into and land a sturgeon that would have gone about 20 pounds. Sometime in the afternoon they took break and I set up offshore for the troll. It didn’t take long before the first reel went off and Guillaume was bringing in the reward. It was a nice walleye over 5 pounds and well worth a photo before the release. Back to the troll we went and about ten minutes later another reel fired. It was a clone of the first. Guillaume managed to land the two largest walleye of the day in less than 15 minutes of trolling. I can only imagine what the outcome would have been had they chosen to troll earlier! The skies weren’t looking too good so I decided to get a little closer to the boat ramp in case of a storm. I had checked the radar and noticed that we were directly in the path of some rain and wanted a quick escape should it become electrical. We set up in a few areas I had nearby and drifted jigs over a flat. Many more fish were taken in the last couple of hours with this method and the rain stayed minimal. One more quick troll to see if we missed any fish and one pike & a walleye later we opted to pull out. They had caught their fir share of fish and were taking a few perch & walleye home for dinner. Despite a rather slow start, they ended with a bang. Overall it was a great day to be out and amazingly enough, the boat traffic was light. I can only hope for more days like this one in the weeks to come. The fishing will only get better as the water warms and high number days will be the norm!!