I don’t see many fishing reports on here, and as I’m getting around a little bit I thought I’d post up what I find.
Was out yesterday morning right as the park opened and fished until 10:30 am. Pre-dawn light entering the park and just hitting dawn as we got on the water. Planned on targeting bass and northern – just wanted to get the line wet and have some fun.
If you aren’t familiar with the lake (and we weren’t either), the shoreline drops off very quickly with very little structure down to 80-100 ft. There is significant cabbage and reed beds in the shallow areas on the perimeter of the lake. We used the trolling motor to move along the outside edge of the weedline and cast into the emergent vegetation while also allowing for us to pull cranks if desired.
We saw a significant number of fish jumping before 9am. Most of those breaking the surface were suspended over 30ft of water. Trying for these fish with shallow running cranks proved fruitless for us.
My boatmate and I decided to target weedline related fish as our best bet. He tossed green/silver Senko’s and I pitched a brown/silver powerbait minnow on a green jig. This resulted in a fine pike bite, netting a good number of fish over a 3 hour timespan. The minnow presentation outfished the Senko, but I think that’s just because I’m a better fisherman :).
The highlight of the morning came in the south end of the lake in a sheltered bay. I noted a patch of vegetation over a submerged rock and called it… “There’s bound to be a fish lurking right there.” I pitched my jig and it immediately got blown up by a fine pike.
Overall, we kept two fish for some lunch and left the rest there for you all to find!
One note – we hadn’t realized that this was a county park run by Washington County and figured we were good having our state park passes. The Sheriff was kind enough to give us a warning and told us to pay on the way out, but note that the daily pass is $7, or an annual pass is $30. Overall, I’d happily fish this lake again, knowing that state record musky are present as well as a quality eater fish population.
