Gary and I got on the water early this morning thinking we might find a few fish before the heat, the weather, or the traffic chased us off. We weren’t disapointed.
We started trolling a backwater area that produced well a couple of weeks ago. We hadn’t gone 20 feet before Gary annouces “Fish on!” and a few moments later we net a beautiful 25 inch fish. I also noticed a lot of baitfish jumping out of the water and big swirls right on the shore line. Smallies? Time to get out the 8 weight fly rod and throw some top water flies. They didn’t seem to be very interested in my offering except for this chunky 16 incher than ran us around for a while. We caught several other Smallies on Paddle tails too. Trolling and pitching turned us up a few more fish but we never seemed to find more than one nice Walleye on a spot. For example I caught a nice 25 incher on a Ringworm on the second cast, and then nothing else except for small Sheephead. It paid to keep moving around.
And finally a fish story….We anchored up on a wingdam and I threw a #5 Bomber over the top of the dam. Just as it cleared the upstream side of the dam, BANG something hammered it, made two or three big head shakes, and then headed down river. It steadily pulled line off the drag for at least a solid 30 seconds with out a pause. (Time that for yourself. That’s a lot of line). It was almost as though I’d hooked the bumper on James new truck or something……and then the hooks pulled out and he was gone. I don’t mind losing fish. After all, if this really is a sport then the fish gets to “win” once in a while. But I sure hate losing them before I see them!
I hereby choose to believe it was a foul hooked rough fish that I lost and not an enormeous Walleye.
Rootski
