Lets see if I can untangle my memory. I have reports from Mon into Tues and Tues into Wed’s.
But First a True Fishing Tale from the early AM Wed the 21st(this morning).
I had made my first couple of passes on Indian and had two hits but hadn’t caught anything. I was marking a bunch of fish off “the spine” or far end of IP which is Shad Rap country with most of the depth being 9′-13′. On my first pass in with the Shad Rap I came in a little too far and got into the first significant cluster of shallow rocks; I snagged. I was running the Shad Raps back about 150′ where my Fireline gives way to the backing. I was not quick enough in getting the boat turned as the drag was peeling out and the line got to where the Fireline and mono connect and my knot gave way.
Naturally I was not happy and to complicate matters the other boat was coming up the reef and was getting close to the area the Fireline would be in. I tried to quickly rig up another rod with a deeper diving bait and run across the reef before the other boat passed. They must have been wondering what I was doing as I quickly sped up and passed about 50ft directly in front of them.
I could tell the crank I chose wasn’t running right and I didn’t catch the line. I did notice however that as the other boat passed the area I thought my line would be in that they turned and slowed like they had a fish on. I yelled over and asked if by any chance they had caught my line. Sure enough they had and so I motored over and got my line back, retied and reeled it back in with Clown Shad Rap still attached and unsnagged. Whoever that was, a huge THANK YOU!
But that is NOT the end of the story. So I got retied and repositioned. As I came up on “the spine” again, WHACK! A chuncky 25.5″ hit the #7 Shad Rap so hard that it got wedged in the fishes mouth, keeping his mug wide open with the belly and rear hook haging completey free. Amazing, and when a fish hits it that hard you know that the feed might be on and she might have friends.
Now for my Double Report
Mon 10:30PM until Daybreak 7AM- Indian Point the whole time.
There was a near perfect wind out of the SW and a bright moon, so the fish should have been stacked and smacking, Right?
Well they may have been stacked but they sure were not smacking. It was S L O W but consistant. Woth the wind being as it was I expected them to turn on big time at some point but they never did. My biggest was 26″ and I got two more in the protected slot including a chunky 25.5″ on my last pass as the sun was comming up. I got two in the 14inch range and I kept a 21″ and got a couple of Rock Bass.
Next
Tues 10PM to Wed 2AM. I had to get gas and batteries so I headed up to the holiday in Garrison. On a whim I decided to start out of Garrison Public even though I’ve never fished this part of the lake and had no lake maps with me. I started right out from the access and headed north, but it was too weedy. So then I went down to St. Alban’s and found the weeds there to be a little less of a problem. I got 3 fish and a couple of missed hits from midnight to 1AM (16,16,22) and then the spot died. It was pretty much dead calm.
It was so nice that I decided to pack it up and trailer down to IP as that the weather.com said a SE wind was supposed to start up around 3AM and sure enough it did.
Indian Point from 3AM to 8AM-
As I said before there was one other boat out there. Kind of a surprize as that everyone is usually gone by that time on a week night. On my long first pass out I had a solid hit that came off, but that was it. I went all the way out to the end and came back in with nothing, but I was marking lots of activity in a couple of places. The other boat seemed to be circling in one of those area’s, the same general place where I got my hit. On my second pass out I got another hit that came off in pretty much the same exact spot, and nothing else out to the end. I was trying various stick baits every half pass and now it was time to try Shad Raps on “the spine” where I was also marking a lot of activity.
After the incident with the line it was AWWWWWWWWWWWWWNNN! From about 4:30 to 7:30Am I pulled in 20 eye’s of various sizes from 14 to 25.5″, a rock bass, and even two small smallies after the sun was up. I had many other quick hits that didn’t hook up or came off imediately and lost one that was a real horse that just would not come up; It was a fairly long fight and, my guess would be that it was a 26-28 class fish but I never did see her.
That was the best fall trolling action, in terms of non-stop action, since my very 1st year of hitting this bite 4 or 5 years ago. It is really amazing how the action can change from one day to the next. I believe they were there the night before, as that I was marking a fair amount of activity, but nothing I tried seemed be the thing even though I worked through my full bag of cranking tricks and the shad raps on “the spine” produced nothing.
I may have to wake up early tommorrow and give that late bite a try.
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! I’m headed to ND to start my Monster Buck quest this weekend. 
