Thread: Two reports for the price of one. 1-9 & 1-10

When I work, I work hard and will work 7 days a week if necessary. When I fish, I fish hard. This is one of those fish hard times of the year for me.

I returned to Holland Lake yesterday to do a little more "scouting" for the winter jamboree. I went with my neighbor, Capt. Sinkie, the guy who forgets to put the plug in the boat. We got on the lake about 8:30 am and headed back to the same area Steve and I fished on Saturday. The weather was better, +28 rather than -4. The sun was out and the winds were light and the fishing was hot.

We were in 20-24 FOW and at times the bottom 6' was solid fish. Two hours into the day I had 12 fish towards my limit and Capt. Sinkie was keeping pace. My brother-in-law and a friend showed up and we got them set up in a couple of hot holes. Neither of them had electronics but they still managed to catch a few. After watching my BIL struggle to catch fish, I had him move into a hole I was using and fish under my Vexilar. After a short lesson on how to read it he started catching fish like an old pro.

We caught a lot of throw backs but managed to scratch out a 3 man limit of 7-8" bluegills and 4 nice crappie, the biggest right at 11".

Today I went back for one more shot at them. Again, we got there about 8:30 and the fish were clearly affected my the weather change. We were marking fish and could get them to come 6' up but the bite was very light if they bit at all. After a couple of hours I had no fish on the Ice and had caught maybe a dozen throw backs. I drilled a line of holes in an area we hadn't fish yet and when I dropped the transducer in one of them I marked a lot of fish suspended 12' off bottom. I dropped my smelt stick to them and got a bite right away, a nice 8" fatty. I hooked and landed 7 keepers in about two minutes, including a nice 10 1/2 crappie. That was the pattern for the day, check holes till we found suspended fish then fish fast and furious till they moved on. By noon I had my limit of 22 gills and 3 crappie and played catch and release for the next hour and a half. I think Capt Sinkie had close to a limit, also, and the average size was better today, more 7 1/2-8 than yesterday.

Can't see the vexilar very well but the left side, 6 0'clock to 12 o'clock is the bottom lock showing the bottom 6'. It was consistantly so full of fish I couldn't see my smelt stick. I was trying to show one of those times but it didn't work. I took yesterdays catch out to my sister and she was tickled pink.