After a hectic couple of days at the state track meet; fishing partner, Ken, and I decided to give Johnson a try. Our hope was not to have the massive numbers of walleye tournament fishermen that we knew we would run into if we went to Sherman. To our surprise when we hit the dam at Johnson there were three packs of boats looking to be about 30 boats in each pack.
Neither of us is much for ‘combat fishing’ and we would try to keep from these ‘herds’ as much as possible. We had heard all of the rumors and read all of the posts about the fishing, but were not ready for the numbers of fishermen on Johnson.
We decided to fish a favorite mid-lake hump and were able to boat a couple of legal 15+ fish there before ‘the rich and famous’ drove us off of the spot. What has happened to fishing and boating ethics???
A move to a nice bit of wind blown shore line and 6 -8 foot of water played out to be a positive. We drifted leeches on Lindy rigs and crawlers on jigs down the shoreline. All of these fish were just 15+ but nice healthy fat fish. We probably caught 3 or 4 shorts to every legal fish.
We then decided to try to find some larger fish by trolling. We set out our boards and side lines with Berkley Flicker Shads and Rapalla Glass Shads in the smaller size. Seventy-five to eighty-five foot of Fireline at 2.4 mph seemed to be the right combination. We spent a couple of hours on that same stretch of shoreline away from the massive herd of boats and were able to catch walleye in the 16″-17″+ size.
As the day wound down we decided to cross the lake and try over by the island to see if that side held any bigger fish but it didn’t. The interesting thing that did occur was that we picked up several legal size walleyes on the way across with our lines and boards set at the same depths in 32 foot of water. These fish had to be out chasing schools of shad as you could see the fish down 10 – 12′ on the locator.
All in all it was a nice day on Johnson and we caught in excess of 50 walleyes on the day and were able to take a nice group of fillets home to enjoy. The pain of the sunburn from the 86 degree cloudless day will be gone in a couple of days.
The cabin at Sherman is calling and I can feel the bite coming on. We will have a couple of weeks of no tournaments and that may allow me the solitude that is needed.
Congratulations to the Grand Island girls for there second place finish at the State Track team and to all of the competitors that make it one of the greatest shows in all high school athletics. Congrats also go out to the Grand Island boys for the State Championship in baseball. It was a great week to be an Islander.
See ya on the water
jorg