Lake Roosevelt 13 2012

Very tough bite for us today to say the least. We made it to the lake about 0645 and then headed to Windy Hill Bobcat ramp to launch. We went directly to the back of Salome Cove, set up our rods and started bottom bouncing minnows in about 20 FOW. We caught two fish really quick (by 0745) and though it was going to be a great day. Needless to say we were wrong! We left Salome about 1030 after searching the whole cove for fish on the SI. We had a very hard time figuring out if what we were seeing were Gizzard Shad or Crappie schools. But before we left Salome Cove I decided to refresh the water in our minnow bucket and when I went to do so the lid came off and I released about 3-4 dozen of our minnows. I have done this probably about 1000 times before and the lid has never came off. We went straight to the Marina to see if they had any minnows......nope, the place was locked down! Good thing this did not come into play for the rest of the day, I know I won't live it down for quite some time! We then went to the west side of the lake and searched for schooling fish. None were to be found in any of the usual spots so we went to the east side of Windy Hill and looked there. Once again we found fish but were unsure of what they were. We caught our third and final Crappie out in 40 FOW suspended at 16'. After we fished that area for another hour with no luck we went back to Salome Cove and tried to duplicate what we had done earlier in the morning. Needless to say we didn't get another Crappie so we called it quits at 1400 and got off the lake.

So we spider rigged/bottom bounced with minnows all day. This is usually a great technique when the fishing is tough and fish are hard to come by but obviously it was not the ticket today.