Swanson Reservoir Wiper and White Report

What a great weekend it turned out to be. I got to go see my best friends new baby girl, celebrate him and his sons birthdays and get some wiper and white bass fishing in as well. It was a beautiful weekend with just a slight breeze most of the time and plenty of sun. Just what a person needs during these dog-days of summer.

Swanson Reservoir is one of my favorite boadies of water to fish and it always seems to treat me pretty well. As a bonus, since it’s in the southwest part of the state there is little to no fishing pressure which can be hard to come by this time of year. I got out on the water around 6:30am or so on 8.3 and there was a bit of a south breeze. I set up on a point that we fish a lot and started with my 1/8th ounce marabou jig. I will tell you riht now that it is amazing that I was able to catch a single fish with all of the bait in the lake. When you looked across the water it just shimmered with bait. I had never seen anything like it before in my life! A few casts in I was able to hook up with a decent 21″ wiper which really go the blood flowing. A few more casts later I hooked into a huge wiper but about 5 minutes into the fight he broke me off and I was unable to land him. A nice school of whites then moved in and by 11:00am I had boated several nice whites and one more wiper and decided I was going to go back to the house, pick up Kelli and Ryder and head to Red Willow.

Well, by the time I got back to McCook the wind had picked up even more and a little crappie action at Red Willow was going to be out of the question until it died down some. The wind ended up blowing pretty hard the rest of the day so instead of fishing we put up a ceiling fan and a garage door. Not exactly what I was hoping for but our wives sure were pleased with us.

Saturday morning Jeremy and I got out to Swanson about 6:30 or so and again there was a slight breeze out of the southwest. We set up on our favorite point and the action was slow. We struggled to find the fish and it wasn’t until Jeremy’s dad Rex got there, that we were able to locate the wipers. I consider myself decent with a feather jig, Jeremy is really good and Rex is amazing. I think it was on his first cast that he landed the first wiper of the day and he spanked us for a while. I think Jeremy took acception to the fact that his dad was taking us to school so after a lot of different jigging motions he was finally able to figure out what it was going to take to get the wipers to go. They battled back and forth with me sucking my thumb in the back of the boat trying to figure out what these guys are doing. To spend time with these two in a boat is a leason second to none and all in all I would say that we ended up boating 10 or so whites and 10 or so wipers. None of the wipers were monsters but they were nice 20″ – 22″ fish and we had a lot of fun. There was a boat that was live baiting in slightly deeper water with bluegills that did pretty good on bigger wipers. If you are a live bait guy, find some little bluegills or big shinners and tie on your circle hooks. Good Luck!!

Oh, sorry about the dates on the pics!!