Another Personal Best

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Today’s trip saw John flying solo and up for just about anything. I planned on fishing a variety of species in several areas and hopefully they would all work out!

With very little wind present, we began on an open water spot in deep water for walleye. Once I marked them, all you had to do was drop down and get bit. In theory that is! John managed to catch several, including a couple of keepers, before the school shifted and I had to find them again.

We spent the first hour or more drop shotting these fish until another boat decided to just move in on us. He had idled by slowly to see what we were doing and set up above us to make a drift towards where we were fishing. I didn’t want to educate him so we just unlocked the anchor mode on the electric and drifted away.

I made a few passes over adjacent areas just to draw him out and apparently it worked. He caught nothing and decided to troll out of the area completely. Mission accomplished! Now we could resume our fishing comfortably!

When the bite slowed on the walleye, I decided to make a long run and see if I could get John into a few big smallies. After setting him up on the soft plastic, I showed him how to present the bait to the fish in the current and it didn’t take long. He was tight to a big bass that immediately took to the air with several spectacular leaps. This was the one I was hoping for as it was a true giant! I eventually netted his fish after a lengthy battle and took a few pics before the release. As it turned out, this was his personal best smallie too!

For almost an hour, we remained in the same area, but John only managed to get into a couple more bass. Time to relocate once again!

The next few places weren’t as good to us and we scrambled just to get a bite. I thought we’d try a little trolling after and ran to an area to set up. With no wind and high sunny conditions, I wasn’t sure how we would make out, but we were going to try.

After the lines were in the water I raised the roof to give us a little comfort from the scorching heat. If we weren’t catching, at least we would be comfortable!

I had spent about an hour trolling and all we had to show for it were a couple of northerns. I’m sure that if I had of started here today that the results would have been different! Time to make another move!

Thoughts of trying for sturgeon again were on my mind so I decided to do a little searching for these beasts. I headed to an area to search for them and spent about a half hour just scanning the bottom with the sonar. Without any real concentrations anywhere, I soon realized that this wasn’t going to happen, at least here!

Another long run to open water with less boat traffic and I was once again searching for more sturgeon. At least there was life here, both on the bottom as well as a few fish breaching. I decided to give it a try and set the rods up to fish.

The floating grass like weeds were a real pain with the lines and we had to clean them often. Less time spent in the water meant less chance at a hook up! We were constantly moving as well, when we stopped marking fish and it wasn’t looking very promising anymore. Time to try something else!

With only about an hour remaining in the day, I move off the sturgeon and decided to try for a few more walleye again. By drop shotting, I hoped for better action and a couple more fish for him to take home.

We made as many passes as we could and held in the areas that showed concentrations on the sonar. It may not have been the action I wanted, but some fish were caught and a couple more walleye made their way into the livewell before we were done.

With all the nice weather we’ve had lately, I wasn’t surprised to see heavy boat traffic on the water today. I am not looking forward to the weekend as I’m sure it will only get worse! Add to that the fact that we are in the construction holidays and it’s going to be a zoo! I guess today was as good as it gets!