More Hateful East Winds

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October 8th 2018

 

I was back on the water again today with Rick & Danny in another hateful east wind. I think it was blowing even worse than yesterday! We were going to have to settle once more as we headed to the first area to fish.

For over an hour we tried to troll for walleye, but despite marking fish on the bottom, never had a hit. I even had them drop shot the same water, with the same results. These winds were not going to make it easy today!

After a couple of spots not producing, I chose to try a different place further away in hopes that the smallies would cooperate better. Fortunately Dan’s first cast gave him a well deserved fight as he finally locked up on a decent fish. We held here in the big winds and they both managed to hook into a bunch of good bass in the next hour or so before it just went dead. I think they stung them all, but only landed a small percentage of the ones that they had hooked.

I continued to cover water and tried plenty more areas with similar results but couldn’t fish the ones I really wanted to. The waves were just too big in the open water and opposite the current, making a drift impossible. All I could do was settle for areas that were slightly less rough and spot fish them. At one point I even tried searching for sturgeon but never marked anything that looked good enough to set up on.

Sometime in the afternoon, after covering plenty of water, I decided to head to a small area that had produced a good fish for Rick yesterday. It was far away and well off the beaten path but for some reason, there was a boat anchored right on top of where I needed to fish. It amazes me every day when I see this but what can you do!

I made an even longer run to some rock shoals and idled over to the place I wanted to start. On Rick’s first cast, he locked up on a nice fish and fought it all the way to the boat before losing it. We never even got to see what he had! Figuring there would be plenty more I didn’t worry about it and they kept covering water searching for others. We probably went close to an hour without another taker before pulling the plug and heading somewhere else. I decided to try deeper water in hopes of better results.

Our next spot wasn’t even worth setting up as I idled over the entire place and barely saw a fish on the screen. Time for one more change and hopefully for the better!

This was to be the last area we would fish for the day and I made a long run to open water and big waves. I was going to attempt to drift over another shoal but opposite the current direction. As luck would have it, I was marking all kinds of bait and plenty of good fish as well. I finally had more confidence despite the opposite direction drift!

With limited time remaining, I decided to make a few casts as well, looking for some walleye for them to keep. On one of my casts, I felt a hit and came up with nothing but slack line. Cut off by something with teeth! They both had a couple of hits and hooked up but it was only Dan that managed to bring a nice smallie to net before we were done. It had started raining pretty good and we unanimously decided to leave. The fishing wasn’t that great and the weather was turning miserable!

This was definitely one of the most hateful days I had seen in quite a while and although there were fish caught, it wasn’t great. I know that everywhere we went held fish but the rising water and east winds didn’t help much. Tomorrow is their last day and bigger winds are predicted making it impossible for me to get out again. We will have to take a road trip just to be able to fish somewhere! Hopefully the bass will cooperate this time, unlike what happened to us today! It couldn’t get much worse!!