Report; 7/13/18

Yep.....we can really pick 'em! Friday the Thirteenth no less! LOL! Oh well, Walt & I launched around 7:20 am this morning - regardless of what day it was. This is what it looked like as we pulled away from the dock this morning:

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Picture perfect! Air temp was 63 degrees at that point, with the water at 76. The weather folks said it was going to be a bit breezy today, with wind out of the southwest (usually a perfect direction) at 5 - 10 mph.

They lied....again! Here's a shot of what it looked like at 9 am:

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And again at 11:00 am:

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Where's the 5 - 10??? I think it was in their imagination. With the sun high in the sky and near bluebird conditions, it got hot - real fast! Most of our fish were taken within the first 2 hours of fishing. By 9:30 the bite slooowwed way down. When we pulled off at about 11:20 am, the bite was ridiculously slow.

We side pulled cranks & jig/plastic combos; the cranks didn't get one tap for the first 1 1/2 hr. of fishing, so I switched it off for another plastic combo. Wish I'd have switched sooner, but hey, that's why they call it fishing and not catching, right!

We did not mark any decent schools of fish or bait today. One or two here & there and that was about it. I think most of the sound-minded crappie had gone into air conditioning. LOL! Here's a couple sonar shots of the "sparce" markings we had:

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We did manage to catch & release a few however. By 9:00 am we had 80% of today's catch already! When we pulled off at about 11:20 am, we had 46; 37 were crapppie with 9 bluegill. Like I said, not a "bad" day, just very uncomfortable with the heat.

Here are some shots of some of our fish today:

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Big hitters today were Slider paddle tails and the "Joker", along with the "Gray Ghost" RR doing it's share as well. We tried various weight jigs and plastics, along with cranks and grenades. Even the grenades didn't do well today!

We side pulled almost 90% of the time with motor moving us along at between .9 and 1.2 mph. I believe that we could have done much better with a broken surface (wind) and/or kicking the TM up to top speed. But then the battery would have drained completely and we would have left earlier than we did. Maybe next time we'll strategize a bit better.

Before we left, an old buzzard (turkey vulture in this neck of the woods) was eyeing us with a drooling beak! Reminded me of the old TV western, "Death Valley Days"!

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"Yada...yada...yada.....that's all Folks!" :)