Another Great Battle

Karen & her father Richard joined me today for a slower than usual outing. We wanted to try for sturgeon after last year’s bucket list fish, but unfortunately found no concentrations to anchor up on. We would have to settle for bass & walleye I guess!

I jumped around and hit various places, hooking them up on mostly smaller fish. A couple of good bass were lost after the jump but that’s not uncommon when they shoot for the sky! With the winds non-existent, I required the electric motor to move us along in many places. The current was minimal too and several times we were barely moving!

They had both landed bass, but Richard was the only one with a few walleye. Too bad they were all unders and needed to be returned! I made several passes over the area that he had hooked them and on one pass he locked up on a really big fish. We were drop shotting and I actually thought at one point that he might have a musky. This fish beat him up pretty good with its runs and I had a rough time keeping it off to the side for him to fight. It’s never easy on light tackle, but we were finally able to bring the fish up and to our surprise, it was a sturgeon. Although considerably smaller that the behemoth from last year, it was a great fight on the rod he was using. To my amazement it had actually eaten the bait as well. I guess he was dragging the bottom or something!

Having the big net with us today was a blessing and made landing the fish all that much easier. A few quick pics later it was returned and we went back to drifting & drop shotting for the targeted species.

Karen managed to land a couple of nice walleye in the next several drifts, along with more bass but the bite was slower than I had hoped for. I kept moving to many spots and each one seemed to be holding some fish for them to catch. At one stop, Karen put a third keeper walleye in the well and I knew she would be eating good tonight! She also managed to catch a decent bass that became photo worthy too!

We jumped around plenty for the remainder of the afternoon and picked at the fish the entire time before we were done. Although we weren’t able to find any sturgeon to anchor up on, Richard did manage to catch another, completely on his own! They had also landed a good number of bass throughout the day and Karen was bringing fresh fish home with her, for a family dinner tonight. Overall I consider that a very successful day!