I setup camp at Pine Point on Thursday night so I could get an early start on Friday. Wasn’t long after I got camp all setup and ate my late dinner when an intense storm rolled through and bent up my awning supports. The fabric survived though! It was kinda scary for a while.
Friday was a mostly rainy day, but proved to be to most productive. I left the TV tuned to 13.2 so I could periodically check radar and know to be off the water for the thunderstorms. I pretty much had the lake to myself and covered a lot of water. Of my 25-30 crappies, only two little dinks were found in shallow water, with the rest in 12 to 15 feet. Finding clumps of brush/wood at the bottom of dropoffs (some marked from previous years) was a fairly consistent pattern. The one exception was the middle of one large bay where I caught a bunch of fish in one small area but I couldn’t find anything unusual they’d be relating to. In addition to the crappies I also caught the usual variety of gills, perch, walleye, and pike. I was chilled and wet by dark when Kathy and the (reluctant) daughters joined me at camp.
Saturday was Kathy’s day to go fishing with me. Since it was predicted to be really windy, I got her going early so we could hit the more open areas before it got too rough. One advantage of a partner is we can cover more depths with a better variety of lures. The first spot yielded some gills and perch, but the wind kicked up before long and caused us to retreat. Once she insists we must stay out of the wind, our options become limited. I still caught fish here and there, but there was a lot of moving to find them (and take potty breaks) and avoid the wind. I did do well on a couple of piles I have marked that also happened to be in calm areas. I used that opportunity to try teaching her to use sonar and jig on a pile, but that was too frustrating for the both of us, so I let her go back to what she was doing. Feeling adventurous, we went up the river to the northeast and hid in a protected bay up there. She was excited to finally catch one there. But it was slow and we only got a couple more. The real adventure was getting back to the campground going against the 25mph winds and waves. She wasn’t happy with me about that. By the end of the day we boated a dozen crappie, again with the typical assortment of gills, perch, and pike – all in deeper water and nothing in the shallows.
Sunday was a nice morning, but I slept in. I did get out for a couple hours before having to go home. Got one crappie, a slot-size walleye, and a couple of pike on one of my (deep) bluegill spots. Darn snakes…
Water temp throughout the weekend was 57-59. Sure were a lot of very pretty Ranger and Skeeter boats out there.
