Some things never change

This time of year brings me back to my younger years when my dad would wake me up early in the morning to bring me up to a lake near Alexandria for the fall panfish bite. I remember going to bed the night before so excited that I swear I slept with my eyes open because I could see him coming into my bedroom to tell me it was time to wake up and get ready to go.
So now, 25 plus years later, it was time to revisit this lake so a buddy and I drove up there this past Sunday to try our luck at finding some big sunnies and crappies. As soon as we got to the lake and got out of the truck I heard the familiar sound of guns shots echoing over the lake and I knew it was going to be a good day on the lake. My dad always told me that when the duck hunting season opens it is time to go to this secret lake and catch some giant panfish.
It’s funny how after such a long time you still remember the landmarks along the lake that you used to locate the hot spot from previous trips. Well, the A-frame cabin is still there and that is where I made my first stop. Not sure if the fish were even going to be here I decided to slowly troll along the weed line and toss out a tear drop jig and wax worm under a bobber and see if I could locate any fish.
It didn’t take too long before the bobber went under and I hooked into a 9 inch sunny. I told my buddy that this felt like deja vue then we proceeded to slowly troll along the weed line and toss our bobbers out. We would get a fish here and there as we moved along and it seemed like each fish was bigger than the last one. We finally hit a spot where the bobbers would go down as soon as they hit the water so we anchored and sat there for about 5 hours.
Where we were anchored we could see about 15 boats a couple of hundred yards away hovering over a hump most likely walleye fishing but we never noticed anyone catching anything. Now if they were watching us they would have seen us constantly catching fish.
We ended up catching at least 60 sunfish over 9 inches with the largest almost 11 inches long. We even got three crappies that were 12 inches long. Towards the end of the day my buddy was reeling in a sunny that was easily the largest of the day and he tried to lift it out of the water by pulling on the line and it got off. We were thinking it was over 12 inches long. It looked like he was pulling in a dinner plate with fins.
I am glad I decided to try out a lake from the past and I think I am going to bring my kids up there this weekend so they can experience a fun day on the lake like there dad did when he was their age.

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Nice

What are the coordinates

Sounds fun. I don’t need the coordinates just the name of the lake.

Those are some round gills! Very nice.

thank you for the story and im glad you can have that experience again and maybe even share it with your kids! Always love hearing old time stories like that, reminds me of good times with my late grandpa.

thats a great story.

This too is that time of year where nostalgia kicks in big time for me. My father is not a gung ho fisherman. He was a casual fan but as a minister was always looking for ways to connect with people. Well one gentleman at our church loved late night walleye fishing on the mississippi. So my dad started going with him thurs/fri nights. When we were small. well it turned into a normal thing for him and eventually he would take us on those nights (usually just fridays)…

i remember walking into the tackle store and picking out a few of the jigs that i was pretty sure was gonna catch me a fish.

lock and dam 15 is a bit unique in that its on one side of arsenal island, the other side of arsenal island is a long man made slough with another island with 2 power dams on either side of it. we would park and walk over a bridge onto the smaller island and then take the pitch black trek across it to other side, where it was lit up like a christmas tree with lights along the dam walls. you could smell the leaves beginning to decay, we would build a fire if one wasn’t already built. there were times where there were 20 guys down there all lined up but always would open up for another.

whenever i fish it now (every once in a while with my father) its just a flood of memories and joy. the smells, the sounds…

Great story, thanks for sharing!

I think this lake is NE of Alex…. Keep it quiet.. we call it Lake X

Yum

hnd, Is the bridge open again?

What an awesome day, love hearing about honey holes like this, gives people hope that they can find their own :).

Would love to see some more pictures of your springer. I have 2 springers and had 3 total. Great dogs.

Cute Springer pic on your profile. I had one that looked almost exactly like yours. Great dogs.

big_g wrote:

I think this lake is NE of Alex…. Keep it quiet.. we call it Lake X

There are a lot of Lake X’s in the Alec area.
DT

I made it back up to Lake Z on Sunday and even though I could not fish in the same area as the previous trip due to the strong winds I did manage to locate more hog sunfish and crappies. The crappies were all 12 inchers and the biggest sunny was 10 inches. I am thinking of trying it one more time this Saturday so look for the red Dominator heading up 94 if you want to find the secret hot spot.