No Holiday Traffic

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Dominic & his son Justin joined me today for another outing. After the last 4 days of fly fishing, we were going to be doing a mix of other things. I decided to give an area close by a quick stop and see if they could drop shot up a few fish. Although it looked decent, the scum line was right where I wanted to fish and we had to move after only few minutes. It was just impossible to fish!

Our next stop was further away and here there were a couple of bass landed and a few others lost or missed before moving again. I was jumping around to try and find active fish for them to catch and not spending long in areas that weren’t holding.

Well, two spots later and still no active fish, I decided to switch gears and try a troll. I set the lines and within 5 minutes, one of the reels went off. Justin landed a nice walleye and we had our first fish on the troll. I continued to cover water and change up baits for more bites and both pike and walleye came aboard. Although it wasn’t fast & furious, at least we were getting bit!

The weather was quite overcast and eventually it began to rain on us while we trolled. I decided to raise the roof and continued to fish comfortably, instead of getting everything wet. It was nice having a roof over our heads instead of a hood from our rain gear!

With zero wind and no boat traffic anywhere, the water was like glass. The only issue I had was all the floating grass weeds clinging to the rods as we trolled. I was forever cleaning the rods to ensure the lines were free form them. It was like a never-ending chore!

We continued to cover water in search of more fish and I managed to hit one area loaded with bait and big marks. I knew they were all walleye and adjusted the lures running depths before getting hit. We instantly had a double header! As it turned out one was an over and the other was a keeper. Figuring that I was on to something now, I reset the rods expecting more bites. To my surprise, that was all she wrote! Although I still saw plenty of marks on the sonar, they soon became fewer & fewer. Too bad the floating grass wasn’t the same!

I didn’t want to end the day with only the fish they caught so I opted for a change back to dropshotitng again. After packing everything up, including the roof, I headed to where we had started the day. The scum line was a bit further away allowing us to fish, but there wasn’t anything to catch. I jumped to a couple of other spots and the same thing. Finally on the last one Justin locked up on a nice bass and I was actually marking fish here as well. Several more walleye including a nice keeper and we were done. Oh yeah, his father landed a big perch too!

Today was an interesting one to say the least. We hit so many places, trying to find active fish, but never really keyed into anything significant. With the water temps still about 10 degrees lower than they should be, these fish really aren’t moving much. What should have them in a summer pattern schooled up, still has them scattered all over the place. Hopefully soon this will all change so that I can get back to catching instead of searching. The dropshot bite should be in full bloom by now, making for easy fishing. Instead, I have to do a mix of things every day in order to get into the numbers. Regardless, I still managed to get Dominic & Justin into enough fish to make this day enjoyable and they will be having fresh fish tonight!