A Slow Morning Bite
August 24, 2019
John, Scott & Nathan were with me this morning, all looking to catch their very first northerns. I wasted no time and headed right to where they had been biting! Surprisingly enough, the fish were a little lethargic and it took some time before the first reel fired. In fact, the fish didn’t stay pinned and it came off almost immediately!
After trolling around for a while, I finally stumbled onto one little area that began producing. It was here that they all managed to land several fish each, but I couldn’t get bit elsewhere. I just had to keep driving over the same tiny spot multiple times and in different directions to see the rods load. Many of the fish didn’t even make a sound on the reel. These pike were really not active this morning!
Sometime before 10:00 I decided to pull the lines and we went in search of the smallies. These guys were all good fishermen and I was sure they would just slaughter the bass!
Our first stop saw zero action in the shallows and after trying unsuccessfully, we switched it up and headed deeper. I set them all up with a drop shot rod and they once again had no bites! In fact, I wasn’t even marking the fish on this shoal at all and opted for another move once again.
Our next deep water spot only produced one fish and it turned out to be a walleye. Ironically I was marking all kinds of fish on the bottom and made several drifts, with the same results. Eventually I just pulled the plug and headed shallower one more time in hopes of salvaging the day.
Fortunately with the sun up higher now, we began to have some action. They were all throwing soft plastics and a few fish were seen, giving us hope. After a couple of missed bass, Nathan finally hooked up on a really good one from the back of the boat. It turned out to be his only bass, but at least it was big! The others managed to miss a few and catch a couple of small ones from the area. We knew the fish were here but most just didn’t seem to want to bite. They would follow the baits and just turn away!
I thought that a jig might change their attitude but it only managed to hook up once and it was a fouled sturgeon. I jumped around to a couple more spots before we had to leave and they boated a few more fish from the last one.
The morning bite hadn’t been what I expected and we had to work hard for each fish. With overnight temps dropping every night, so has the water. The fish seem to be more active, later in the day now and a much slower approach is needed to catch them.
Despite the slow fishing today, these guys still had a great time on the water. They all managed to get their first pike ever and got to play with a bunch of smallies. In the end, they managed to catch 4 different species and almost 5 with the perch that fell off at the boat! I’ll be back out again tomorrow for an afternoon trip and am curious to see what the results are, later in the day. Hopefully the fish will wake up and become more active again!
