An early venture, we met writer Michael Vandenberg at 5:10 a.m. sharp at Dow's Boat Rentals, finding the shop open, Michael buying a fishing license and hoping for fresh hybrid striper fillets, the three of us getting rained on the moment we began to move our stuff to the boat. I wasn't messing around this time; before I lifted anything, I put on my heaviest winter coat, and the rain jacket fit tightly over that. My black pants in the photo below are wool, and they proved to be very comfortable.
We motored directly to a spot I thought promising. I've experienced countless outings anybody might think would be a slam dunk that turned out to be slow fishing. We caught 10 hybrids, most of them big, in the rain the other day. Rain again, so ditto, right? It rarely is so easy, but Mike caught a hybrid of about 15, 15 1/2 inches just after we had turned around for our second trolling pass. In the photo it does look like a keeper, and I should have measured it, but at the moment my patience was short, since the plugs of my son and I had already got tangled twice, and I felt certain we could get that problem right, and in fact, we did.
We must have made six or seven more passes before I judged the fish weren't there. Nothing but one fish had marked on the graph, and on Wednesday it was lighting up like a penny arcade gimmick. We swung out and motored full speed all the way to Byram Bay. Water temperature read 60. I had
noticed that temperature again after two trolling rounds and nothing. The same place is alive with warm water fish with that temperature at 70 or higher, I'm very confident about this.
I began to notice a pattern I didn't expect, since hybrids and walleyes are "supposed" to be in shallows now. Well, some are, but we were marking fish on herring clouds at drop-offs, mostly 14 feet down or deeper, many of them big.
Soon, we were back out towards the main lake and I was casting a Mann's Little George, and then we trolled diving crankbaits; eventually I resorted to a Binsky Bladebait, a favorite fall selection, because we found hybrids and/or walleye stacked from 35-38 feet down over 45-48 feet of water well away from shore and on herring. Big ones. Carp and, as far as I know, channel catfish, don't ride herring schools. As you might expect, nothing hit, and besides, during the fall, vertical and diagonal jigging is a meditation involving lots of time if you want to catch fish. We said the heck with it and went into Great Cove, the walleye weighing more than six pounds caught on a trolled jointed Bomber recently serving as a little incentive, but in the back of my mind and with a little more weight of realism, I was thinking maybe we could hook a pickerel a little shallower than running over the 14-foot depths preferred for hybrids probably suspended over bottom.
We first ducked into Dow's to use the john, and as we walked back to the boat, I mentioned something to Michael about maybe hooking up during our last hour, though I didn't say this with any conviction, just as the sort of floating possibility that does sometimes pan out. Most of my readers might not care a whole lot after three-and-a-half hours of very early morning fishing and couple of fish. Michael had caught his, and I haven't yet mentioned that I caught a largemouth in Byram Bay despite the chilly water. Why ask for more? Well, because when you play a game, you only enjoy it as you give it your full focus and intent, and this means you're looking to score.
And after we caught four pickerel, Michael losing another as it jumped, that lake came alive to us as it hadn't yet all day. I began musing about the light changing relative to cloud density, how some patches of trees were rendered a light green for a little awhile against others darker, and I even came through the windows of my skull and verbalized this to Michael and Matt, just before dozens of sailboats suddenly appeared. Wind actually increased then, and sun came fully out for long seconds at a time. I said, "Nothing else gives you the rhythm of life like a lake," and as I write, I still feel the boat rock. The point of a game is to get transported somewhere else from where you began.
And it had rained, off and on. Spits and splats. We didn't get soaked, though.
We had trolled eight, 10 feet of water when I began to get pickerel on the brain, in the form of an unuttered complaint, when Matt reared back about a minute later as the boat gained a small weedy flat six feet deep. I threw the outboard into neutral, the boat slowing when I felt a knock, and I began playing the second pickerel, both of these small, about 15 and 16 inches. Matt's smaller fish took the plug whole and the rear treble seemed all the way in the gullet, but that couldn't be; no, it was caught on the last gill raker, and my having performed a little surgical operation successfully, perhaps, that fish might live. My son felt no hope at the attempt, but he didn't mess it up.
Meanwhile, I kept a slant eye on the fact of our drifting perfectly back over the flat to our starting point, because I certainly wanted to make another pass. Once again, Matt hooked up, I threw the engine into neutral, and then four or five seconds later as the boat had slowed, I hooked up, this time into a nice fish that gave that respectable pull of definite weight I so enjoy, although, of course, not stripping braid from the reel as the drag would scream for a long time. Those hybrids the other day fought like crazy trains.
The pickerel went fully air-born once, and I knew it weighed about two pounds, though we didn't use the net, 15-pound braid sufficient...at least, given that the fluorocarbon leader wasn't nicked, so I had taken a risk.
About 21 inches.
We made a few more passes, Michael having lost his fish, before we headed to Lee's Cove, exploring more shallows, Matt catching a pumpkinseed sunfish on his Finesse Sinking Rapala that might have placed in Knee Deep Club's panfish derby held today. (I did slow down the trolling speed from that little flat, forward.) We're Knee Deep members, at least I think I chose the family membership again, though I'm getting old and tend to make little mistakes like that would be, but I've got to get trolling plugs in before it's too late for this. So about the derby, which Matt could have entered even as a non-club member, I just never considered that maybe....
http://littonsfishinglines.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-matter-of-tuning-in.html
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