For those of you that live down this way you have probably heard or experienced the nice bite that is going on right now on some of the area lakes. When the water came up two weeks ago the shallow lake we fished on saturday turned on (I wasn’t here but that is what I have heard). I was able to make it out on Saturday and we had a nice trip. This lake is only about 5 feet deep and has very little if not no structure. We had four people in the boat and started out right away with 4 boards running different crankbaits. What we did best with for crankbaits were storm thundersticks and shallow diving shad raps, if you run these lures anywhere from 20-40 feet behind the board that seemed to set you up for some fish. We also did very well with bright colored crawler harneses about 20 feet behind the boards, in fact when the wind really picked up you could fish these right behind the boat without a board. We spent most of our time on the wind blown shoreline, it was amazing how every time the wind would kick up a little extra you would pick up some fish, as soon as it let up there would be a lull. All but one of our biggest fish came right along the shore on boards, you could stick further from shore and pick up larger numbers but the size was down not there. We ended up keeping a dozen fish for 4 people, and releasing a nice number of small fish and perch.
We also made it out last night for three hours and only managed four fish, with flat calm conditions and 4-5 feet of water this was expected. The one high point to the day was I finally used my Hummingbird side imaging unit to help out on some walleyes. I have used it alot while bass fishing but never seen an advantage while walleye fishing. While we were pulling boards we spotted a hole (no real idea what it was) about 130 ft off to the left, marked it and pulled up to cast on top of this little spot. We managed three fish in no time, it was very unique for me as you would never have seen this little spot (maybe 4 feet by 4 feet) without the side imaging unit.
With the dropping water level this bite has really slowed down. The lake is about 14 inches lower than last weekend and with that the bite has really slowed. It remains to be seen if the fish will continue to bite at the pace they are at now or if this bite will completely die with the water temp shooting up (already around 77 degrees). I will wait until the wind blows before I try it again and will report back.
On a side note, I am very disappointed to hear how some of the local people fishing the lake have been loading up on fish. I have heard so many stories about people double and triple dipping. One guy was telling us about the 60 pounds of walleye in his fridge from last fall. I hope everyone can try to keep this nice little fishery instead of trying to fill the freezer as fast as possible.
Good Luck, attached is a pic of our 4 fish over 20 inches on Saturday. 
