This seems to be the year for having to reschedule guests for the show but so far it is working out great. I hit the water today with my friend and neighbor Bill White and Luisa Seftel who is here from Berlin, Germany , on a six week internship with Rogers TV. Bill is an accomplished angler and Luisa is a novice angler whose only prior try at fishing occurred when she was five years old on vacation in France.
The air temperature this morning is at 10 degrees with a forecast high of 26 to 28. Light winds out of the north are forecast to switch to the west by midday. The lake temperature was a nice balmy 21 degrees. Luisa was impressed with both the size of the lake and the lack of boats. Being from Berlin the waterways are always busy and the lakes run on the small side. As we started to get the boat ready to launch she had a look at her first Bald Eagle as one soared by the launch. A little quicker with the camera and she would have had a nice shot.
We got everyone buckled up in life jackets and headed up the lake. Our first stop was a weed line that dropped off at about seven feet deep. Bill opted for shallow running crank bait and I picked up a big X Rap Pop in Mossback Shiner. I had this rigged on a 6’6” Crucial with a 2500F Stradic and eight pound Siege green monofilament. This was a dream to fish with and the medium action rod would really put the lure out there. A feisty smallmouth hit the topwater on the second cast, what a great way to start the day. Luisa watched Bill and I fish for a while and then we rigged her up with a 6’8” Cumara and a 2500 Symetre spooled with 20lb Power Pro Super Slick and a surface frog. I took a few minutes and worked with her on casting and she caught on to that very fast. The bite was tentative with numerous fish taking a run at the baits but not hooking up. Bill was working his crankbait down a bit and then letting it float back up to the surface and he had some violent blowups on the bait that didn’t get hooked up. The same with my topwater, it just seemed they didn’t fully commit to the strike.
There is a shallow weedy channel between two lakes that has a lot of Chain Pickerel in it and we thought that would be a good place for Luisa to get into a fish quickly. We moved the boat into the channel and she started casting the frog into the shallow grass and pads. You could see the fish charge and hit the bait but they would not hook up. Out of twenty or so blowups she finally did get a fish about fourteen inches long. She was thrilled to land her first fish and it was really neat to see her reaction. We fished about two hundred yards further into the channel and then moved into the second and smaller lake. I haven’t been in here for a couple of years and Bill said it was at least fifteen years for him. We were working along a grass flat with scattered pencil reeds when Louisa said “what’s that”. We looked around and there was a deadhead out behind us. I swung the boat around and headed out towards it. Louisa spotted it so it was only right that she got to fish it. Bill told her where to place the bait in relation to the log and she landed it perfectly. In less than a second there was a big boil and the rod was folded over. We had one very excited young lady on our hands and she had a very ticked off Smallmouth ripping around the boat. We netted it and got some nice pictures before we released it back to the lake. It turned out to be the biggest fish of the day.
The wind switched to the west around this time and from then on the fishing got a bit better. We fished a weed flat with a creek channel running into it and got one more bass to the boat. We also saw some followers that we didn’t catch. Bill pointed Louisa towards some rocks in the middle of the grass and she picked up three quick fish by taking Bill’s advice on where to place the bait. Bill is a pretty gracious kind of guy and he would rather sit and guide a novice angler to fish than to catch them himself. I contented myself with running the trolling motor for a bit while she got her lined pulled some more.
We moved up the lake to an inlet stream and tried around the outside edges of the grass for Bass and ended up with a few more Pickerel and that was it. We started back down the lake around three and made a few stops on likely looking spots and got one more decent Smallie and a few more Pickerel.
Time to go back to the ramp and load but before we do I drop the guys off to get the truck and I took Luisa for her first real bass boat ride. As soon as we cleared the rocks I kicked the throttle down on the Rude and we did a high speed run down the lake and back. From the grin on her face I am pretty sure that she liked it.
Rick Greene
Recent Comments