I took a little road trip today to fish with Curt & Eric on a lake for smallies and lakers. They wanted to catch some big bass & oh how they did just that! We hooked up just after 7:00 A.M. and were on the water shortly after. The weather began a little misty in the clouds but soon cleared to just cloudy conditions for the rest of the day. Air temps were in the 70’s and the water was at best, 64 degrees where we fished. The bait of choice was definitely the jig as several lures were tried without success. Curt was just hammering the bass from the back of the boat as Eric was watching in envy until he finally joined in and the game was on. From that point, they were both hooking into smallies in the 3 to 4 pound class on a regular basis and loving every minute of it. I think the largest was one that Eric caught that weighed 4 ¾ pounds after Curt had caught one slightly smaller as well. I wouldn’t say there was any competition going on, but there was a lot of needling as each of them just kept catching fish for hours. I’m sure there were at least 50 or more of these big bass caught & released before we switched up to lake trout somewhere after 3:30 P.M. Neither of them had ever actually seen or caught a laker before and wanted to spend a little time trying, so we set the riggers down and began. Although I wasn’t marking any bait in this area, I was seeing some fish on the sonar and set the lines in those zones. We had a release on one rigger over 200 feet of water shortly after and Eric was tight to his first lake trout. This one was over 23 inches and made it into the live well for them later. We trolled for another hour or so with only one other fish on the cheater. Curt landed this one that went just over 19 inches and it was returned unharmed. A couple of other hits on the sliders but nothing to show was what we had for the remainder of this fishing. We were unable to troll through the zone I wanted as a boat moved in and anchored as soon as they saw the first fish come aboard making it impossible to troll around the shoal from where it was taken. These fish were suspended beside the hump 30 to 40 feet down adjacent to a bump that tops out at 26 feet of water. Although we had taken fish with a depth of 200 feet under us, shallower water was very close by. We called the day somewhere around 5:00 and packed everything up to go. It was a great day by anyone’s standards, but an incredible one by ours as plenty of big bass were landed by all. The lake trout was just the icing on the cake!!

Jim was in town on business for a few days and thought he would try the local fishing with me today. What he didn’t anticipate was just how incredible it was to be! We began under cloudy skies for the first couple of hours but were soon in rain and drizzle for the remainder of the outing. Temps weren’t too bad with mid 60’s above the water and just about the same below. As for winds, well that was a different story. They pretty much switched direction about every half hour or so. I would have to say that we had just about every compass direction that there was! The fishing however was worth every bit of misery that “Mother Nature” dealt us. Pike of all sizes up to 5 or 6 pounds were caught on a multitude of baits and they weren’t what we were after. The walleye were the quest for today and they bit equally as well. We had fish mostly in the 4 pound or better class with several over 5 and a couple topping 6 pounds too. Rods were firing all day long with the longest wait about 10 minutes at worst. With the low clouds and rain falling they bit throughout the entire day and that’s what it’s all about! We had non stop action that you just dream about and by the time it was all over there had to be somewhere around 60 fish landed, or better. Fifteen of them were walleye and Jim was happy to take a couple of the smaller ones home with him for a dinner. Although it was a wet one, I wouldn’t have traded it for the nicest day of the year, for anything. I think I’m just going to fish on rainy days from now on!!

Norm was back again today, for the first time on this local lake and really looking foreword to catching some smallies. We had a beautiful day in the forecast with sunshine and temps in the 80’s predicted, along with a slight breeze from the east of about 5 knots. The water temps were about 64 degrees in most areas and actually hit 70 degrees in some others. I thought the top water bite would be hot so we began throwing lures on the surface for a while with only a few takers. I switched up to a jig and started catching just about everything that swims, but they were nothing to brag about. It wasn’t until Norm started throwing a shallow running crank-bait that the bigger bass started to come aboard and this was great to see. We refined the areas afterwards with some soft plastics and began catching even better fish with the largest going somewhere around 4.5 pounds. He caught a real mix of fish today with everything from perch & rock bass to smallies, walleye, pike and even a gar pike. Some of the smallmouth were post spawn while others were definitely in the pre spawn mode. I’m sure that if we had of been able to fish everywhere that I wanted today, we would have had plenty of big fish. Unfortunately with the tournament scheduled for this weekend, there were bass boats all over the lake and I was limited to the areas I wanted to fish. At least the season started a little early with the special “Catch & Release” fishing bumping the opener regularly set for this coming Friday. Overall a pretty good day with our best five fish going in the high teens. Can’t complain with that!!!

After trying out a local lake on the weekend with my wife, I was back on the water once again today. Ira, Marcus & Bert joined me in hopes of catching a few fish for their dinner and I knew just the place. By 7:30 we were trolling and well on our way to a very eventful day of fishing. When the first reel went off, it was a little disappointing as the fish only ripped line out and somehow came off for Ira. He did recover though when the second one fired and landed a beautiful 4 pound walleye. I was pretty sure there would be more to come aboard and continued in anticipation for the next one. It didn’t really take long before reels were screaming about every five minutes or less and all were fighting a mix of walleye & northern pike. Two more decent walleye of around the same size were landed before Ira topped all the others with an even larger one of five pounds plus making their total, four in the livewell. This went on for several hours before we relocated to another area nearby when it began to slow. There weren’t any more walleye landed, but there were plenty of pike caught on just about every lure we put down there. Even a few bass were taken in the afternoon when we switched up the day to casting! With the big tournament coming this weekend, there were boats everywhere and that made it difficult to pursue the better spots that I knew. For a change today, the weather was really cooperative with warm temps of 76 degrees and a light N/E wind of 5 to 10 knots. Sunshine was with us pretty much all day with an occasional cloud moving in from time to time. Water temps were around 63 degrees in most areas and on the rise in others. We really couldn’t have planned it better with the way that “Mother Nature” provided this spectacular day on the lake. All in all a very glorious day to be on the water and a few fish were caught as well!!

Well, after an unsuccessful attempt at booking up this week, Norm was back for another round of catch the lake trout! Everyone that was suppose to fish with me for these last outings had to cancel for one reason or the other and I wasn’t ready to head home quite yet. The fishing was just too good and Norm knew it after Monday’s unbelievable numbers day, so we hooked up around the same time and hit the water almost immediately. Although the weather wasn’t anything like it was a couple of days earlier, at least it wasn’t like yesterday’s monsoon and I was thankful for that. We were literally in the clouds with a misty rain falling and the lake blanketed with the foggy cloudlike system. The air temps were in the 50’s and there was no wind when we set the riggers out and began our troll. As with Monday, we had a quick hook up and the first fish of almost 22 inches was soon swimming in the live well for Norm’s dinner. He didn’t take any home earlier in the week and really wanted to try one or two from today. I wasn’t too worried about filling his request as this place was just too easy to fish! Shortly after the first fish I gave him a heads up before we went over the killer zone and he was ready. Just like each troll over this area, the rod popped and Norm was quick on the trigger. This fish however felt a little heavier than most and I thought we might finally have a really good one. To our surprise it was two fish with lips attached to each lure! They were a little shy of the slot size and both of them were returned unharmed. In a few short hours we were able to land at least a dozen of these lake trout and actually had another double header on the same rod once again. I kept one more trout due to the hook job as I was pretty sure it wouldn’t survive. I was right as it went belly up in the live well shortly after and died. When we had our fill of this, we decided to try casting once again and headed to another area a little further away looking for the browns. Oh they were there, but all we could do was look at them as nothing even attempted to follow our offerings even once. Norm even tried flies for a while with nay a touch! A few lake trout did come up from the deep water and a couple of them were taken on jigs but not the brown trout. They were just uncooperative and I didn’t like it! Off we went to another deep point and Norm hooked a real biggun from over 20 feet of water and I thought he might finally have one of those ghost browns. When it was close enough to the boat I caught a glimpse of the fish and it was definitely brown. Too bad the brown was the color from a smallie and not a trout as I slid the net under an almost 6 pound fish. A quick pic and back she went to the depths from where she came. She was a big pre spawn female and I didn’t want to interrupt her cycle by keeping her out of the water too long. We had to leave this area after we realized that the only thing here was bass and hit the other side of the lake and colder water. There we were having follows but only from lake trout and after an hour or so of this, just got fed up and also left. I spent close to an hour or so finally refining Norm’s fly casting skills enough for him to feel comfortable in his ability to present the fly and then we went back to lake trout trolling for the last hour of the day. This fishing is just too easy as we landed another half dozen lakers and missed several others before we called it a day. The last hoorah saw us leaving the lake around 6:30 P.M. totally satiated with the day’s outcome and Norm finally felt good casting with a fly rod. Overall a really great day despite the messy start in the clouds and plenty of fish were caught.