Thread: 10/9/17 Secret Lake fishing report. Sssshhh

Being self employed has some huge benefits, one of which is the ability to make your own work schedule. I knew my two neighbors had today off and were going fishing so I worked Saturday and Sunday and took today off to tag along. Most of you know who Jeff is but only a few have heard about Lee. Fishing with Lee is usually an adventure and today was no different.

I co-own a fishing boat with Lee, a Sylvan Explorer 1600. The last time he used it he got rained on so had to dry the boat out when he got home. The first "son of a *%#@$" came yesterday when I went out to charge the TM batteries. Apparently he was in a hurry to get home because the boat and trailer were both covered with mud from our gravel road.

When he showed up this morning I "calmly" asked him why he didn't spray the mud off when he got home. "Yeah, I should have, I didn't think about it".

5 minutes later, while I was getting some gear out of the garage, he jumps in the truck to pull the boat ahead. "Hey" says me. "did you take my coffee cup off the nose of the boat". "No" says he, "I didn't see it". SOB #2, coffee spilled on the boat carpet.

We jump in the truck to head out and I say, "hold on I think I left me rain jacket on the nose of the boat. "No, I saw you put it in" he tells me. I know, I know, I should have known better. 30 minutes later, heading down I-69 at 70 mph he informs me that I may have been right because something is flopping around in the boat. You got it, there was my jacket caught on the trolling motor by the hood. SOB #3.

The rest of the trip down to "secret lake", ssshhh, was uneventful. We launched and headed a short distance to our first spot. We trolled jigs and plastic and put a few decent crappie in the boat. I was in the nose of the boat, running the trolling motor, enjoying the early morning on the water, sort of lost in thought when I hear "hey, where's that water coming from". Yep, he didn't put the plug back in the last time he used the boat. We never pull the plug, so checking to see if it was in never crossed my mind. SOB #4. 45 minutes of running the bilge pump got most of the water out.

Our 2nd stop was at a well known crappie hot spot to check if they were still there. We made a few passes and caught some fish, then moved to the other shoreline to make a pass. We picked up several fish, again on 1/16 oz jigs and plastic.

We decided to change tactics for a while so we dropped anchor in 9 fow along a weed edge and fished red worms 4-7 feet down under bobbers and picked up some real nice bluegills.

We knew that we were going to do some exploring so with 20 or so fish in the box we went searching for fishy looking water. We found a 9 foot flat with scattered weeds and an occasional larger clump of weeds, so down went the anchor again. We started catching a few good size gills right away on Hali jigs under a bobber and a plain gold hook under a bobber, both baited with red worms. We hopped around on the flat and caught good fish every place we stopped. Biggest gill was right at 9" with most of what we kept pushing 8".

We called it a day about 3 pm with 59 fish, mostly gills, but also kept 15-20 specks. Despite all the problems( SOB's) we had a real enjoyable day on the water. Water temp was still in the 70 degree range.

Love me a good couch burning! Love me some Josey Wales and Jeremiah Johnson, too.