A No Flow Day

Peter & his son Luke accompanied me today for another fish filled outing! We met up at 7 and were fishing not long after in deep water again. I had noticed something strange this morning, despite the lack of wind and soon realized that we had almost no current. What usually runs about 1 knot was now down to less than half. Not great for drifting these flats! I thought we would give it a try regardless and made the best of it. They both had never used this technique before, but with a little instruction they were soon into fish. Bass & walleye were being landed and we kept a couple of the eyes for their dinner tonight. After several drifts, due to the lack of current, I decided to head somewhere else to troll. We set the lines and almost immediately a reel fired giving them the first pike of the day. Shortly after another and soon after that another again. Too bad they were all on the small side or I might have focussed more on this area! With no current at all here, it was difficult to work the baits properly and after about 45 minutes of catching only small fish, we changed it up once again.

I shifted gears completely to bass and headed over to a shallower area to cast soft plastics. I couldn’t believe it when I arrived as there were two paddle boarders camped directly on top of where I wanted to fish. One of them was snorkeling and they were anchored. Who the heck anchors up a paddleboard? I tried fishing further from them and although Luke had a few fish on, he wasn’t able to land any of them. I eventually just gave up and ran somewhere else to fish!

We stuck with the same pattern but focussed on slightly deeper water and both Peter and his son managed to catch a bunch of bass. This place was loaded and it wasn’t hard to bring the numbers up as they casted the area. Luke was definitely hooking more and after several practice losses, he began keeping them pinned! I guess we remained here for over an hour or so before moving once again. I had decided to fish a few humps nearby and they caught several more fish before we made a long run to the next spot to fish.

I slid in shallow and they began hooking up immediately in the new area! In fact there were so many fish here that they could miss one and on the same cast hook another. Peter & Luke beat on the fish pretty good and we fished it hard for almost two hours before returning to drop shotting again.

With the current the same and no wind at all, the drifts took forever to complete. Scorching heat & humidity with blazing hot sun didn’t help either! On the first pass, Peter hooked into what I thought was a big walleye as it dogged deep just like those ones do. Eventually I realized that it wasn’t one and must be a musky due to how it was fighting. When it went airborne we all knew for sure! It may not have been the biggest fish, but it was his first. Peter fought it for a little while and I eventually was able to net his catch. I didn’t want to stress the fish out anymore than it already was so we released it as quickly as possible. It swam off no worse for wear and returned to the depths. We continued to fish for about 30 minutes longer and they both landed several more walleye and a couple of bass before we called it a day. They were roasting and so was I, and it was almost time to leave too.

This day had turned out to be another interesting one again as you never know what to expect when you get on the lake. A loss of current flow from gates at dams being either closed or reduced caused the fish to position differently and change d

my plans for fishing. They may have landed all kinds of fish today, but it was from making several adjustments on both presentation and location. If the flow remains the same for a while, I know exactly where to be. If not, I will be adjusting just like I have been doing almost daily. Either way, clients will be catching all kinds of fish on all kinds of different presentations once again. Another great day of fishing!