Gosper County fishing report

I was finally able to get out and try Elwood Reservoir Friday afternoon after not fishing it for about a month. The water is high enough now that you can use the concrete ramp, but don\’t back in too far-the end of the concrete is not far. I didn\’t back in far enough to find it, but with a roller trailer, I had no problems at all. Don\’t be afraid to use the temporary ramp right now either- it\’s in good shape. We actually used it to put in, concrete taking out.
My Dad and friend Tracy went out and tried to troll up a few walleyes, or at least find some wipers. We ran planer boards right up near the weeds (the first 7\’ of water has weeds in it around the entire perimeter of the lake right now), as well as some out suspended and deeper, with no takers at all. Not even a hit. We trolled the main lake, down the Elwood arm on both sides, and around the dam. Nothing. We did see wipers come up and hit the top a few times, but they were real sporadic and the eating episodes were short lived. Hard to get to them on a 5mph lake. Later on, we drifted blood and fresh shad for cats and ended up getting 8 in the boat. Would have been 10 if we would have been quicker with the net. Biggest cat was this 7 pounder that ran with shad. Every fish was caught on shad, none on blood, which was strange. They were real aggressive and hard fighters. The water temp hung right around 77 to 79 all day. We fished till about 12:30am.

On Saturday, my friends Quint and Roxann brought their boy Quint III with them and we all headed for the Tri County canal, where fellow IDAer Greg (walleye4) and his brother were trying for crappies. They had a couple, so we decided to join them. The crappie action is still real slow, but I expect it to be going real hard about a month from now. We decided to try some trolling, so we headed for the north part of the lake where the wind was blowing in. It didn\’t take us long to find some nice white bass, including this 16\” beauty that Quint got on a Cabela\’s jointed rad shad in the clown color.

Clown turned out to be the hot color, so we also put on a clown Flicker Shad, which also started producing white bass. A gold sunset Flicker also produced this nice sauger that went almost 18\”.

You may not be able to see it real well, but if you look closely at this white bass, you\’ll see two clown rad shads near his mouth. Turned out he hit Greg\’s first, but I think he was fighting hard as we passed each other, and two of our lines became tangled. Not the best time getting it undone either, as a board was involved. Even though we were trying to troll for more saugers/walleyes, the whites still provided some fun for Quint, Roxann, and Q III.

We were running cranks up real shallow on points in about 3-6 FOW and the whites were hitting them right before or after they went over the points. Same with the sauger. Water temp was also around 76-77 all day Saturday.

After everyone left, I went down the road to Johnson Lake for about 45 minutes and trolled a point and the area in front of the inlet with no fish. It\’s real shallow in some areas, so you really need to watch it if you go. The lake is down about 4\’ right now, but it\’ll be back up by October, probably sooner.
Not sure where I\’ll be this week, but there\’s a good chance I may be back in the canal.