A Birthday Fishing Day

A slight break in the action today, so I headed out with Alyssa. We would be spending her birthday on the water doing something relaxing, for a change. Although a 7:00 meet time seemed early to her, she arrived awake and ready to fish. The winds were blowing pretty strong once again, so I decided to pass on any possible sturgeon action as I wasn’t sure if I would be able to anchor. We headed out to open water instead, to drop shot some walleye and smallmouth. The action was really slow but I figured it would improve as the day went on. We made multiple drifts over the best areas and although I was marking fish, they seemed in a negative state and not very cooperative. A few bites were had and a couple of small fish were landed but it was slow! I made several location changes with similar results at each stop. We did manage to get a fish here & there and one really giant smallie made it to the net on the second spot. I had hoped for some walleye for Alyssa to have for dinner and really needed to pull out all the tricks in order to get anything. Frequent drifts across specific areas yielded a few more fish with only one keeper walleye. Several other fish were landed but they were either bass, pike or short eyes. I made a decision to completely vacate this area and opted for a move closer to the channel. We were still fishing drop shot rigs but casting them instead of drifting and covering a steep break. I missed a fish on my very first cast and a couple more strikes a little later. Alyssa may have had a couple of bites as well but between the waves and the damn wind, it was hard for her to tell if they were actually fish. I moved once again and decided to try jigging while she continued drop shotting and before we knew it, she was locked up. Too bad it was a smallie and not a walleye though as we threw it back! I managed to miss a couple of good hits and land only two high end keepers. I couldn’t get another bite after and scrambled to many other areas looking for a few more fish. All we ended up landing after were short walleye and some perch. One of the perch was big enough to keep and it went in the livewell with the walleye. As we were both wanting to get off the lake around 3:00, we called it a day. Regardless of how the fishing turned out, we still had a great time relaxing and catching some fish. Alyssa was just happy to be in fresh air on the boat & enjoying a day off while fishing. We parted ways at the ramp and I headed home to fillet the fish. We would hook up again in a couple of hours at a restaurant, along with many others to continue her birthday celebration. It would be the perfect end to a great day of R & R!!