James got Game!!!!

Well those that follow the board might know that I went out fishing with our host James Holst yesterday!…. It would be impossible to say enough great things about the experience, so I will just try and elaborate on the day…

I met James at Roscham park in Lake City at 7 am…. Just our luck we had a cold front pass through recently and the May fly hatch was in FULL swing, people at the gas station I stopped at in Lake City were talking about “shoveling” the “flies”….. I wonder if they make mayfly plows or blowers?

We jumped in the boat and were tearing north, since James had been south on Monday and the bite had turned off down there, and the lake bite just has not been hot for a while…. sure was a beautiful morning… cool, calm, clear…. *eek*.. what am I saying? horrible conditions!! for nailing Eyes! and they were no doubt packing in the mayflies that were scattered all over the water…..

when we got to the north part of the river we worked cranks and jigs/w crawler on some wing dams and closing dams, but did not even get bit…..(deer flies dont count!)…. but pretty soon we started working a shallow (less than 8 feet), sand flat/clam bed…. and thats when the action started… it did not take James long to dial in just exactly what was working…. and soon we were nailing eyes with regularity…. for us on that day, they wanted bait on 3 ways…. leech or crawler… with maybe a slight perference for leech…. anyway it was amazing to watch James in action as he set up 4 rods for the 2 of us, kept them all in the fish zone and untangled, while we nailed fish after fish……

thanks to the raindance that killersquid did for me, I was featured in a wet t-shirt contest later that day!…. and even though the rain killed the fishing for a little while they turned right back on afterwards….. James kept tract of our “totals”

we only kept 2 fish for the day…… and James did not count anything that was under 15 inches…. our final tally for the day was:

45 walleyes over 15 inches

including

12 over 20 inches

including 2 over 24 inches (fat fish, probably weighing 5 #’s or so)……

I dont know how many smaller fish we tossed back… the bite was MOSTLY fish 17″ and larger…. but we might have tossed up to 10 smaller ones…. and the fish were sometimes subtle and finicky (walleyes finicky? whats the world coming to?)… so we missed lots of fish and lost plenty of others…. including a dandy that straighted the hook for James…..

how he can handle his rods, do the boat control, and keep up with my conversations all at the same time… I just dont know!!

Anyway.. its the mark of a professional to make the difficult look easy…. it takes a magician to make the impossible look easy…. and Im thinking James is a magician!

what a day… I will never forget it… possibly the best day of dog day summer fishing Ive ever had….. I definitly recomend anyone who fishes walleyes on the river to take a day and hit the river with James…. let him work some magic for you… and learn a TON in the process…. I know I learned years worth of info in one day….. between that and this board, who knows.. maybe I will be a great fisherman someday? or at least I wont have to cut the PUP up for fish bait!! LOL……

Wet T-shirt? LiverDance? James! Tell me you didn’t go blind! EWE! Talk about shudder!………………SHAKE IT OFF!!!!! UGH!!!………………………….*whimper*………………….It’s stuck! :O( Scarred for the rest of my doggy days! Time to go walk in front of a bus…………….I can’t handle this…………..

hmm. Dustin has been getting fish on the North end on Clam beds too hasnt he?

Steve Hougom – FTR Webstaff

Hougie

About the clam beds and walleyes….

Yeah, that what his report says. The pattern holds true in many locations as we proved yesterday. The spots that Dustin had been hitting hard a few days ago didn’t seem to hold the fish anymore but they seemily just moved (they tend to do that!) to different areas and stuck to the same pattern.

James Holst

Moving Waters Guide Service

http://www.movingwaters.net

Sounds like a terrific day there R-eyes…..I am jealous. Next time I manage to crawl outa the stifling heat of the mid-south, may have to give James a call. My next trip to MN will be boundary waters, 3rd week of Sept…..glad you had fun. I hope you took some notes so Stillakid wont get too embarassed during the get together…lol

W

You know, if he took lots of notes and gets real lucky and actually pulls more fish than I, I’ll just tell everyone how many times he motored over my line to accomplish that!! LOL! ( I just hope the number isn’t “0”!!!)

I have to ask: All the RCL articles indicated that the DNR thought that fish realeased wouldn’t make it if the water was above 70 degrees. What is everyone’s perception of this?

Does this apply to carefully handled fish as well, or only those that spend time in the livewell? Some more insight and information would be good here.

I read a DNR study a few months ago that said the greatest threat in warm water fishing is taking fish from deeper water. The transfer from cool to warm water can harm and even kill them. Also, keeping the fight as short as possible and a quick release to the water is also beneficial. Livewell fish showed a death rate around 80%. That includes the fish that swim off and die days later from the trauma. That’s the info in a numt shell that I read over the winter/early spring.

I was wondering if anyone would comment on this….. James is very concerned about the resource and releasing the fish quickly and unharmed….. many of our fish were released without bringing them into the boat or out of the water….. we only netted two….. we were as quick as possible removing hooks and restoring them to the water….. when the water temps are high and the metabolisms of the fish is high they are more easily stressed…. placing fish in a livewell is also stressful, one problem is that surface water is usually the warmest water, and this may even warm up more while in the live well, the warmer water gets the less O2 it holds and the more O2 fish consume… its very easy to stress fish in these conditions… then the fish gets to ride in the livewell for hours, I doubt they find it relaxing…..

anyway, Ive dont recall any numbers for mortality of catch and release… but, if done correctly I think the mortality is low…… anyway… I will query my sources and see if there is any good info on this…..