Another Great Memorial Weekend on Rainy

We made our annual trip up last weekend and even with a few days of questionable weather and rain, we did very well.

The eyes and pike were no problem at all and we also did find some nicer crappie.

Largest pike this year did not make the 40″ mark but was a nice plump 37 incher.

I did lose one pike I wish I could have seen b ut no, he decided he did not want his photo taken.

We never fished any deeper than 7fow.

I have not fished a lake in my life were the eyes are so plentiful and we always do so great on the fish.

Already planning my next trip for this summer as I took my nephew up for his first time and he fell in love with the scenery and the wonderful fishing.

Great job Tom

There were lots of guys struggling those days. Sometimes I feel I’m a bit guilty of giving the impression fish jump in the boat up here. As you well know Tom guys have to remember this is a vast fishery. Although the fishing can be flat out awesome the reality is it also can be pretty darn tough if your aren’t on the right pattern. With over 220,000 acres of water at most times of the year a large percentage of this lake is dead water. Elimnating the unproductive fishing areas effectively will make or break your trip. In talking with many resort customers over the weekend I was astonished with the overwhelming mass of guys that did not do very well at all. Congratulations Tom on another great Memorial Weekend!! Aren’t those Crappies Beautiful!!

Yes, I agree Chris that many had a tough weekend to say the least.

I saw many boats in the area’s we were fishing that were having very slow days yet we produced fish. I also talked with many in the resort that were also have 1-3 fish days.

I noticed that boat speed was huge and I tried very hard to not over fish one area with running the boat over the same piece of structure to many times as we were fishing pretty shallow. On the calmer days with little wind, I did not want to push the fish away going over the same spot 20 times.

I would also fish one spot only so long as 3 times we were fishing a small piece of structure and after catching 4-6 fish, we had boats moving in on us. Then I could not fish the way I wanted to with so many boats in a small area.

Then it was simply off to another area of the lake where there we not so manmy other boats.

If I would finds a piece of structure with a nice group of fish, I would work that area with many different lures and change my speed until I had fish coming into the boat.

There were times when we went from jigging to trolling blades to crankin to figure the bite out.

I believe our best crank was a Rapala Shallow Shad rap in the crawdad pattern. We cleaned any fish thast had crawfish in thier stomach so the switch to the crawdad was made. It did pay off.

I started to troll at 1.3 MPH with not much success and then once I fouled on a weed and while pulling the crank back to the boat, a fish hit. OK, I thought if they want a faster baitt, we will speed the trolling speed up and from then on out we trolled at 1.8-2.1 mph and it was game on for 4 days.

I told me nephew maybe we are simply getting lucky but after 4 days of great fishing, I think it had moree to do with how we were fishing.