Thread: Tried some new water today, 8-26

After the front passed by this morning and took the drizzle with it, I loaded the gear and headed off to try my luck on a new lake. This water has a lot of boat traffic but I figured it might not be too busy due to the weather and rolled the dice and the tires. Air temp at 71 and the water just about the same when I pushed off at 9:15. Once I cleared the shallow weeds I tossed out my lines and within 5 minutes had landed 2 small perch. I had a contour map and had a plan to stick around the 15-20' contours toward the shallower end of the lake and just row around and get a feel for things. I'd been going along for about 30 minutes and had a solid hit and grabbed the pole. Something good was on the other end and after a good fight, I was surprised to see whiskers followed by a nice 12" brown bullhead! Was not expecting that.....nice solid fish.



The clouds and front had really pushed by and before too much longer the first power boat pulled away from his dock and started circling around. He was actually very good about not coming too close; from what I could see it may have been Grandad with a couple of youngsters at the front of his boat, both with their life jackets on. I couldn't begrudge them their fun as they circled around. A small pontoon boat showed up and began to drift with the wind over toward the launch area, well away from where I was. Looked like they might have been fishing, too.
I trolled around for quite a while with a few more perch and bluegill caught, including this poor fellow with only one eye.



He went back along with all the others. None of them were picture worthy, being small perch and your average 'gill of 6 1/2 to 7". Clicker reports I boated 9 fish total, pretty even split between the perch and 'gills, other than the bullhead. Wind was building and boats were coming to life so I pulled the lines in at 11:40 and called it a day on this "get acquainted" trip.

Nice catches