After a long, cold winter, I was finally able to drag the boat out to the river this weekend. With a forecast in the 70’s, it was a prefect weekend to dust off the cobwebs and get everything organized and running.
Saturday morning found me working on getting the boat ready. I charged all the batteries Friday night, so basically I had to put all the pieces back together. I didn’t get on the road till probably 10am from Aberdeen and I didn’t get to Chamberlain until 1 or so. Cedar Shore’s marina was still iced-in leaving only 2 usable ramps in town, American Creek Marina and American Creek campground. We opted for the marina due to the breezy conditions. The ramp was very, very busy and parking was difficult at best.
We got the boat in the water by about 2:30 and spent the next hour or two, just cruising around trying to burn up some of last years fuel. We motored up to Fort Thompson which is about a half hour boat ride. We fished up there for a couple hours before calling it a day. We vertical jigged breaks and ledges in the 15-20′ range and found a good amount of fish in the area. After sorting through many short fish, we were able to box fish in the 15-20″ range. It felt good to jig up some walleyes, that’s for sure!
Sunday found us on the water by 8am. The ramp was busy as heck again. We ran back up to the dam to check on our spots from Saturday. Luckily they hadn’t gone anywhere. The bite stayed pretty consistent until about noon when the wind died. Once it became glass calm, we decided to call it a day and get an early start on the road home.
We used VMC Hammerhead jigs in 3/8 oz UV Pink/White tipped with a large fathead and a single-hook stinger. Treble hook stingers seemed to drag up too much mossy junk from the bottom (seems like a lot of it this year).
It was a great first trip out, albeit short. Next weekend I’ll be back out there with everything ready to roll. Remember, walleyes on Lake Francis Case need to be 15″ minimum to keep, and only one fish daily over 20″ per person.
Andy
