Wetern Metro Panfish

Todays fishing adventure was the culmination of promises to get out fishing with Nate Olson of Mound. Nate and I fished together on the River this Summer, and we vowed to get out one of his "Honey Holes." And that we did! We hit a small body of water that looked small enough that seagulls would pass over it and not give it a second look. But a small crowd was gathered nonetheless, and comments like "Boy, they sure are biting light" and "I don’t know where they could have gone" were heard as we set up. Nate was not detered, and opted to head away from the crowd towards a small pile of rock that he knew of and commenced to make Swiss Cheese of the ice.

I followed Nate around with the Marcum LX5 to check depth, and Nate followed that up with a look below the ice with a Marcum camera. After about 8 holes, Nate found the rocks he was looking for. And a pig of a perch to boot! So we set up camp in that area, and Nate drilled a bunch more holes for hopping. I fished out of my Otter Lodge…the heck with hopping!!! LOL! Nate made the rounds however and did quite well. Me, I stayed in the Otter and was mesmerized by the fish under the ice! Large bass, crappie, sunnies and perch! They would come and go, occasionally sniping the bait as they went by. The bass appeared to be acting like cowboys keeping the herd moving.They would roam the outside of the school like sheep dogs. Schools didn’t hang around too long with them around. There would be about a half dozen bass in the area when they were on screen. The sunfish would often times scream in for the meal beating the bass who were more methodical on their approach to their dinner. We did catch quite a few bass, but others overpowered our 1 and 2 pound test lines.

At first, it appeared we were set up on the dead sea! We stared at the bottom, hoping for signs of life to appear. But around noon it was like someone flipped a switch! The fish were inhaling Diamond Jigs and small white Ratsos from Custom Jigs & Spins. In this picture it was all diamonds and gold! The gold DJ and a waxie was a hot number for me for quite a while, but I think they may have gotten educated. So I popped on a Ratso with no bait, and found the bigger bulls much more apt to hit that than anything else I had down the hole! School after school were now coming through with regularity. The camera made it nice because you could select the bigger fish out of the school by pulling it away from the smaller fish. The camera was an AWESOME tool today. Many hooksets were made by watching the fish bite, and not by seeing the spring bobber moving.

We have had some talk here recently as well as last year about Reel Weeds, and if they work or not. Today it was QUITE obvious that the majority of the fish were coming from my camera cord which has a weed attached to it. Many fish would sit around the camera weed and just hang out. It was kind of getting obnoxious because they were getting in my way from seeing bites as my jig was behind them!!! We caught quite a few perch as well as the sunnies today. Nate and I split one limit of sunnies as neither he or I needed more than that. It sure was pretty out there with the snow coming down in waves today! Nate AKA mrwalleye, Thanks for having me out today! I really enjoyed it!