Our annual family vacation turned out well. The outlook was not looking good going into the vacation. The forecast was looking like rain, but we ended up only getting a few showers. Most of the trip was spent fishing, relaxing and enjoying the time with the family.
I was pumped up with anticipation for our trip. I had a lot of plans going into the vacation fishing with my 5 year old son. I do not have a boat, so in the past I have had to rent one, use my father in law’s old timer boat that only has a motor and no electronics or trolling motor, or just fish off the docks at the resort. This year my brother let me use his boat. It is a 16ft Alumacraft fishing boat with the extras needed on it to do try and do some serious fishing.
We got there on Saturday June 19th in the afternoon, and spent most of the time unpacking and settling in. So we did not have a whole lot of time to fish that day. On Sunday we went out and tried to find some panfish for my son. Usually they are not too hard to find and can get on them to provide some action. This year was a little trickier with the warmer weather and water temps. We tried going around the lake to see if there were any beds left to try site fishing. There were a few gills on beds, but not many. We found that most of them were in deeper water along weed edges. The ones we found were good size ranging from 7-8 inches. I was a little surprised to find that the females we caught still had spawn in them.
Monday was the day I was waiting for. I had booked a guide trip for a ½ day on the lake we were staying at with Joe Scegura. I had seen and read his reports before on the site so I knew he would be a good guide to fish with. I was targeting walleye for this trip. My main 2 goals were to learn the lake better and to learn the techniques that were being used to catch them. All I can say is that Joe did a fantastic job of guiding. He showed me what I needed to know to be successful on the rest of my trip. I learned a lot of information and had a really good time with Joe on the water. I can tell he is very passionate about guiding and taking clients out and teaching them about the sport of fishing. We had several fish cooperate that day, but Joe wanted to stick with it a little longer and went over our time to help try and catch a few more fish. He also took time to drop me off at my dock and to get out of the boat and go to the fish house with me and clean fish. He is a class act in my mind and went way above and beyond. If anyone is in the Alexandria Area and needs a great guide Joe would be an excellent choice. Thanks again Joe for a great day fishing!
The rest of vacation I focused on what Joe taught me and put a few more walleye in the boat. I also hit the gills hard and had success finding the fish were we did on Sunday. You had to locate areas along the shore that had weeds in about 10-12 ft of water and focus on the deep water side. We had our best success bobber fishing using a #10 clown colored Diamond jig tipped with angle worms.
