Adjusting to Conditions

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July 18th 2018

 

After countless Emails to juggle a scheduled date, Mark & I were finally able to make it work! He brought along a couple of friends/co workers and we hit the water by 7:00 this morning. When asked what they wanted to fish for, their reply was, « anything that is biting »! I love those answers too!

I was going to start out by trolling for walleye & pike and see how it went before making any alternate decisions or changing up. It had been really good lately and I hoped it still was as two of the three had never fished for either of these species, being from Florida.

I set the rods and they were in awe at how I trolled on this water. In fact, they said they might even give it a go back home next time they encounter similar conditions! With rods in & lines set, we awaited our first rip!

I had gone about ten minutes without a strike and wondered if the cold front and NW winds had something to do with it. The water had muddied up some as well and temps had fallen to 72 degrees. I covered plenty of good water before I finally heard that lovely sound and we officially had the first pike of the day! It took a while before we managed the second one, but when we did, it was a double header! One nice northern and a good eye were what they landed and now our confidence was building.

We trolled over all kinds of depths looking for active fish but the bites were only here & there. I couldn’t get a handle on their location or they just weren’t very active, yet! Eventually I moved to slightly deeper water and changed my trolling direction and this is when our success also changed! I had finally cracked the code and big walleye were being landed. In fact, they went three in a row in just seconds apart! We were now landing fish every few minutes and with only one other boat in the area, far away, they had to move on in. Apparently they had seen the net too many times and decided to get theirs. Boy were they in for a surprise!

We were now on good fish and hooking up on a regular basis with both pike & walleye. The other boat however wasn’t as fortunate as they never hooked into a thing. Despite them being almost on top of us at times, I just stayed out of their way and continued firing the reels. Right location, wrong presentation I guess! Eventually they just trolled out of the area in a straight line, barely visible in the distance.

As we were only out for a half day, I really wanted to get them as many fish as I could and made shorter trolls over the most productive areas. Plenty more good walleye & pike were landed in the remaining time and I eventually pulled the lines by 12:15. They had arranged a pick up for 12:30 and I didn’t want their driver to wait.

I don’t think any of them they had expected such a productive morning of fishing. What had started out a little slow, turned full circle when I made a few adjustments. By paying attention to detail I was able to refine a small section that was holding a good number of quality fish. They also got to see just how productive this technique can be and hopefully will be able to utilize it when faced with similar conditions. They left with good intentions of coming back, possibly later in the year. Hopefully when the big sturgeon are biting! Great day of fishing with a big fish bite!!