More Weekend Warriors

Karen was back again today with her father Richard and son Liam. Her dad loves fishing and looks forward to their annual trip with me each year. Hopefully they were going to have a good time today!

We began a bit later than usual but were into fish almost immediately. I had stopped on a shallow area and Richard was tight to a nice bass on the first drift. He also followed it up with another one soon after and things were stating to heat up. The weather was also beginning to warm with a slight NE wind and bright sunshine. With each pass, someone was fighting fish and we even had a couple of doubles as well. Karen managed to land a walleye that fell short of the cut and was returned to grow. Liam was also getting bit and finally managed to keep a few nice bass pinned. He had missed the first few, but these ones made it to the net!

I had made several passes with the aid of the electric motor, due to the slight breeze from the NE and things had slowed down. It was time to make a move! I ran to an offshore area in deeper water in hopes of getting a few walleye for them to keep. Richard wasted no time locking up but it turned out to be a nice smallie instead. Not what we were after, but fun to catch! In the next couple of hours there were several walleye landed including one big over and a few keepers. Plenty of smaller ones were returned, along with a bunch of perch and more smallmouth bass. It wasn’t easy fishing this area as we had literally no wind and floating weeds were everywhere. Keeping the lines clean was becoming more and more difficult so I decided to pull the plug. We were going to try for sturgeon instead!

I had planned on fishing the usual area but kept going when I counted almost 15 boats anchored up for sturgeon. I decided to try another spot instead as this weekend parking lot was way too busy! At least we would be alone where I decided to fish. With lines in, we waited for the first bite that never really happened. Not long after we were anchored, the wind got stronger from the NE, rotating the boat sideways. W were now rocking from the waves and this made it almost impossible to see any bites. I relocated a few times and each time marked plenty of fish. Too bad we couldn’t remain positioned to take advantage of them! At one point, we were actually turned around 180 degrees with the electric motor holding us in a downstream position. It was then that I pulled the lines and threw in the towel!

I decided to finish up the day closer to the ramp area and was pleasantly surprised to see only a slight wind from the NE when we arrived. It would be a slow drift but at least it was fishable. The last hour saw several smallmouth and a few walleye caught before we were done. It had been an interesting day to say the least! Despite the difficult conditions, they still managed to catch a good number of fish today. In the mix were a few walleye for them to take home as well. Overall, it was a pretty good day of fishing!!