And now for something a little different

[no1son]

Not really all that different, I chat with other fishermen quite a bit on the docks, but the two guys last night were interesting enough that I did very little fishing and a whole lot more watching.

First off my fishing partner was ill; so I decided to visit a couple of spots we don't much fish, a pair of public docks and proceeded to strike out on crappies. The first is a good deep dock that extends well beyond the weed line into deeper water. The sun was up and bright. I got one crappie to follow, but no takers; so I moved to another dock, a much shallower one that ended in the outside edge of the weed line in a shallow bay. I had one good bass on but he nicked the 2# line going under the dock on a run and then buried himself in the weeds, and as I was trying to ease him out the line failed at the nick.

So I ended up at another spot that has been unproductive for a while and stumbled on a couple of muskie fishermen offering creek chubs. They didn't take any muskies but they did manage 3 nice pike, one 30" and the other two 31" in the hour and a half I spent with them. I managed to pick up some 4 or 5 little crappies fishing part time, not wishing to interfere with their active chubs and enjoying the company in the process. The nearly full moon was well up in the sky before we all packed it in, since it was approaching 10:00 and our cars were parked on streets posted for after that. This pair of guys catches their own creek chubs and are totally convinced that they are better catfish and muskie (and obviously pike) bait than suckers. They way they do it is significantly cheaper, too. In the process I also found the crappies were using that area again, after being gone for a while following the worst of the heat wave.

The first fish took down a bigger bobber and never let up on that, the second took a free swimming, un-weighted, very active chub and just ran with it, the third took its chub without the fisherman even being aware of it. All three fish were in very good condition, deep bodied and all were carefully released. A real nice couple of hours results for that pair of fishermen, 3 shoreline pike at about 10 pounds each. I had a very enjoyable evening just watching the two of them and chatting with them. One of them also had a huge muskie slash up one of his offerings with out getting to the hook. We saw the tail of that fish; so we know it was a muskie and it would have dwarfed the pike they caught by quite a bit. There was some excitement over that, too, but the fish never returned to the cutup chub,and it was pretty badly slashed for sure.

I grew up under the impression that pike are not active and do not bite in low light or after dark. All three of these fish turned that idea on its head, the last one well after the moon was high in the sky. All three were also caught out of a lake deep inside the city limits of Minneapolis. There are some really nice fish to be caught deep in our Metro, and likely that is true elsewhere for those who seek them out.

[no1son]

This evening my fishing partner was still ill, so I went catfishing and got blanked there. too.

There was an extended family of southeast Asians fishing next to me along the river bank and having a ball catching carp, which they threw back. That's all they were doing fishing for the fun of it. It looked like uncles, aunts, cousins, nieces and nephews and a couple of ankle biters tossed in running around, all just having a good time together. They probably landed a dozen and a half carp up to close to 30" this evening with a double going a couple of times. Using medium to medium light spinning tackle they tied into some carp they just couldn't turn.

All they were using were doughballs made out of instant oatmeal and a very small amount of water and they held together real well. They showed me the secret which is to use as little water as possible and squeeze it real good to made a good hard ball and then that stays on the hook. They offered me a bit they had left over and said they were otherwise going to toss it; so I took them up and tried it out.

Once I figured out how to make a hard ball, it took about 5 minutes to get hooked up to a good fish. And about 20 minutes to land it. 26" carp on on a 32nd oz jig head with a size 6 hook on 4# ultralight crappie tackle is a fight, but that is all I had besides the big catfish rod. Special thanks to some generous people. From now on I will just keep a box of instant oatmeal in the car with the rest of the backseat tackle, but I think I will add a little heavier rod and line to fish it with.

I think I will go back there tomorrow afternoon and see if the carp still want to play.

[OLDFISHERMAN]

Am taking my colorado grandchildren.... 9 and 15 up to gull lake this weekend.... Any ideas for decent crappies and sunnie?