Defensive Fishing Again

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Darren was back again today for another shot at some big smallies. I knew he would get into them as the weekend traffic was over, leaving more water for us to fish. Hopefully not too many fish were relocated again!

Our first spot produced several decent fish for Darren, but nothing really big. It wasn’t until we were a few hundred yards away that he managed to get into a couple of nicer ones. When I realized what was going on, I switched techniques and for a while, the action was nonstop. Bass after bass came aboard and more of them were quality than not. As much as I would have liked to refine this area, I was forced to keep moving due to two other boats moving in. They had seen multiple fish come aboard and slid over to where we were. Time to move on as I wasn’t about to educate them!

We were completely off the spot now and covering water thoroughly for a while when I noticed the two boats leaving. They hadn’t caught a thing from what I had seen and got discouraged quickly. Once they were gone, I moved back to where we were getting the fish and it started all over again. We began catching more smallies of various sizes and I realized we had made the right decision to have left. Lately there has been so much pressure on these waters that I have to fish in a defensive mode almost all the time. A small price to pay for quality fish, I guess!

With the sun hitting the water all over now and temps rising nicely, I decided to give the shallower waters a try. In fact, I thought I’d make a few casts as well just to see if anything had moved in! Immediately I was tight to a good fish but didn’t realize just how big it was until it was right beside the boat. It was a giant! Now I wish that I hadn’t made that cast!

I had wanted to leave some time for Darren to catch a few walleye and around 1:00 we switched species and made the move. For the remainder of the day, he hammered walleye until we were done. They may not have been big but there were plenty. He finished up by catching 3 more, just while I was prepping the boat for the run back.

Today was a pleasant day on the water with light winds as well as boat traffic. It was finally nice to be fishing when it wasn’t a weekend of insanely summerlike weather. The past couple of days saw everyone taking advantage of the Indian summer we were presently in. I’m sure that after this heat wave I’ll be seeing much fewer boats out. Bring on the cooler weather please!