Another North Blow

Steven & Mark accompanied me this morning on this almost perfect day. The winds were still blowing out of the north though and would build up to 15 knots a little later in the afternoon. We can’t catch a break with the cold fronts and the fish were definitely feeling the same. They weren’t too active at the start as we saw when we set up for a little trolling. With hopes of getting a few walleye to take home, I moved into a zone that had produced only yesterday. Water temps had fallen overnight, back below 65 degrees and I knew the bites wouldn’t be loud. The first fish only made a couple of clicks on the reel as I hammered the gas to lock her up. Mark was first, but unfortunately into a northern of about 5 pounds. When the second fish hit I had to do the same thing as they weren’t crushing the lures like they wanted to eat. This time Steven brought a nice walleye to net and shortly after it was swimming in the livewell. It had made the cut and was on their menu for dinner tonight. A few more northerns and one more walleye were caught in the next hour or so but I wasn’t satisfied with the results. After Steven landed & released one more over I decided to pull the lines and try something different. We changed it up and were heading for smallies in hopes that they would bite. Mark was throwing a crank bait and Steven a spinnerbait to create vibration in this muddy water. The north wind had turned this normally clear water into coffee, with three cream! It didn’t take long for a confirmation as I hooked up immediately on the demonstration cast. Mark would continue the trend with the same crankbait and hook into many of his own afterwards. Steven had several as well on the spinnerbait but the action wasn’t fast & furious under these conditions. It seemed like every time I mentioned leaving, someone would hook a fish! This prolonged the departure several times until I finally pulled the plug and left. We headed to another area to try for a few more eyes and began the troll all over again. Unfortunately the bites here were about the same as they were previously and I really had to listen to the reels in order to lock the fish up. We missed several short strikes that I’m sure were a percentage of walleye and landed only pike from this area. Too bad too as there was a good roll on the water, only from the wrong direction. By now we had the 15 knot blow from the north and waves were at 90 degrees to the actual current flow. Time to relocate again and off to the shallows for largies! This didn’t work out as I had expected though and was short lived. I figured that the water would have warmed up considerably but was shocked to see under 67 degrees. Although Steven did have a shot at one big largemouth, it wasn’t to be. After about an hour of just seeing the bass cruising the area, we decided to leave. A couple more smallmouth spots and a little trolling for walleye all came up somewhat disappointing. We manages only a fish here & there and I was on the move once again. One last try at walleye on a new area had better results as they managed to put 4 more walleye into the livewell in the last hour. A few smallmouth and a couple of northerns were also landed before we called it a day. It was an interesting one to say the least with all the scrambling we did to find active fish. Oh yeah, the winds died off completely as we headed to the boat ramp signaling that "Mother Nature" is definitely a woman! Who else would have a sense of humor like that? All in all a pretty good day with lots of fish landed!!