Only Brown Ones Today
August 5, 2021
Val was back out with me again looking for some information on where the largemouth hang out. We would be fishing heavy cover and hopefully encounter some of the big green monsters today!
I ran into the shallows and started him off on a buzzbait looking for aggressive fish. On his first cast, he had one try to eat it 3 times and the blow ups were quite spectacular. Unfortunately largies don’t miss and I knew this was a pike!
We covered all kinds of good looking areas and saw several large bowfin that didn’t even want to eat as well. At one point I showed him how to pitch jigs to heavy cover and this didn’t work much either. I did have one fish grab a bait and it was in deep! Too bad it turned out to be another northern and I had to go far into the jungle to get him out. Sure glad I checked first before lipping what was buried in a thick bunch of weds!
We tried a bunch of baits in the shallow water and covered plenty of area too. All without success! One final ditch effort saw us entering a small narrow cut and we pitched to both sides hoping for a big bite. I had caught 5 and even 6 pounders from here in the past and wanted to show him why we were spending so much time doing what we were doing. On one of my pitches to a piece of cove, I finally got hit. To my amazement I had hooked into a 23 inch walleye and flipped the lost puppy into the boat. It’s hard to believe that the walleye was in a foot and a half of water but it was! This was the final straw and we idled out and decided to go for smallies instead.
It didn’t take long once we arrived on the rocks before the first fish came aboard. There were bass all over this flat and by tossing soft plastics we were able to salvage the day. In less than a couple of hours we had multiple catches of good smallies coming aboard. I hadn’t planned on taking any pics of the brownies but Val managed to land a really nice one and I needed at least one pic!
Once we finished pounding on bass Val asked that we go for some walleye, hoping to bring a few home for dinner. With limited time remaining and flat calm waters, I decided to give it a try. We hit several areas in the short time remaining and although we did manage a limit of walleye, only one of them was worthy of the cut. It turned out to be the fish’s lucky day too, as it ended up being returned to where it had come.
Although today didn’t turn out exactly how I had hoped, Val did get to learn a couple of new techniques for a different species. The fish may not have cooperated but now he knows what to do and where to look for them as well. Hopefully the next time he’s out there, they will cooperate for him and he’ll have more confidence fishing in heavy cover. At least we had a backup plan with the smallies to salvage the day and there were many! With the weather finally getting back to summer temperatures, I expect the water to warm up again bringing the fish to where they should be. Lately these cold fronts have moved many of them all around causing me to fish deep. A much slower presentation but still very productive and rewarding too!
