Another Roller Coaster Day

Darren & his friend Gary joined me a little late this morning as we met up about 9:00. This was the third straight day with a big blow happening and I wasn’t sure if we would be able to anchor for sturgeon. In fact it was howling so bad yesterday that I had to reschedule a client! This is the way the entire season has been going with either flat calm or hurricane like winds. There’s been no in between! Well at least the anchor eventually held today, but despite all our efforts, we never really got bit. The gobies were out in full force but the sturgeon just didn’t seem to want to eat. Shortly after 12:30 we switched gears and headed to deeper, open water in search of bass & walleye. Darren hooked up first with a nice eye but it was an over and had to be released. Dave was having a difficult time getting into the drift thing but eventually caught on and hooked his first fish soon after. It turned out to be a northern though and we put it back as well. Although I was marking plenty of good fish they weren’t hooking into as many as I would have thought they should. I made multiple drifts over the area in hopes of better results but they just picked at them here & there. I even made several casts to see if it was just them and hooked a few, but missed more than I caught. The bites were terrible and the fish weren’t staying pinned for long. Throughout the afternoon over several areas, they did manage to catch a bunch but the results were definitely lower than usual. Darren finished the day off with a nice big smallie that fought like a champ. It wasn’t the largest bass, but it had plenty of attitude! They may not have caught the sturgeon that we wanted but pike, walleye, perch and bass were landed through the afternoon. By 4:15 we were done and called it a day. I was surprised that the waves were as bad as they were and cut through a 45 degree angled roll back to the ramp. It felt like ship waves and looked like 3 to 4 footers as we made the run. Darren even had several good keeper walleye to take back with him that they had both contributed to. Although a tough one, it was successful and fish were caught. More giant winds scheduled again for tomorrow! Go figure!