A Real Fulfilling Day

Rich, Kristine & Chabil joined me this morning for a full day of fishing! We would be doing a bunch of different things including deep drop shotting. I expected better results than the last couple of days, with this one being a longer trip!

I decided to try trolling once again at the start, hoping to get them a few walleye to bring home. Well, it didn’t go as planned though, with only one being caught. Kristine boated a real big one and we had to settle for only the pics. There weren’t even many northerns from the area and I pulled the plug earlier than usual. We were heading to the deep!

After making a long run to a smallmouth area, I instructed them on how to fish the rig, vertical. Not having ever fished this way before, I knew it would be a learning curve for them but felt confident that they would fend well.

Kristine was expected to be the first one to hook up and she didn’t disappoint. We hadn’t gone 100 yards and she was into a smallie. In fact she boated three fish before any of the others even had a bite! They were having a tough time figuring out if they were on bottom or not and not remaining vertical. Once I corrected the problem, they began to get bit!

Our first drift produced over 10 bass and Chabil even managed to land a nice keeper walleye that immediately went in the box. Kristine was doing most of the damage however as she caught over 75% of the fish! Plenty of others were missed or lost as well. including a real giant that Chabil had on his line. Although we never really saw the fish, I knew it was big by the way it was digging. In the end, he snapped the line and was left with only the swivel. You really need to play these big ones and he tried to bring it in way to fast! Inexperience also caused him to snap one of my rods earlier, when he tried to bring another bass to the net. Instead of using the entire rod to drag the fish over he accidently reached out and grabbed the middle of the rod to pull it to me. Instantly I heard the snap and he lost the fish too!

Once the deeper bite slowed, I thought we’d try a little shallower and headed to another area to fish. They would be tossing soft plastics and hopefully the guys would have better results!

Rich was feeling more at home with this method and within the first 5 minutes, boated 3 bass. They were all good ones but two of them were bigger than anything he had caught so far today! He was in the zone as many more followed!

Both Kristine and Chabil weren’t having as much luck but they were hooking into plenty. Unfortunately their landing percentage wasn’t great, as most of them were coming off before the net. Rich however was putting on a clinic, boating bass after bass. I really don’t know how many he caught but it was a lot!

After scouring the area for quite some time, I decided to move out slightly deeper and Rich hooked into a real giant. Not being overly familiar with fighting a fish this big, he tried to land it way too fast. In the end, the hooks just pulled out and all he was left with was memories of the one that got away!

Time had passed by so fast while they were catching fish and I realized that I needed to make a move if they were to have any chance at getting more fish to bring home. I began sliding out to deeper water as they ate and managed to put a couple more walleye in the boat. Too bad that was all she wrote!

One more stop in open water for a last 15 minute shot at fish had them swimming instead. It was so damn hot that even with the roof up for most of the day, they needed to cool off again! I packed everything up while they were in the water and readied the boat for the run back.

Today was a much better one filled with plenty of action. By having the full day, I was able to make the necessary adjustments that kept them on fish throughout. We fished deep and we fished shallow when the time was right and the results showed. They had learned a few new techniques that hopefully will aid them in their future shore fishing. If nothing else, at least have them losing less lures to the rocks! Overall it was a great day for fishing!