Activating The Fish

After a hateful day of rain & thunder showers yesterday I was back on the water with Hugues & his family this morning. They were on vacation & wanted to spend the day fishing for whatever wanted to bite. We launched the boat in fairly decent conditions as the air temps were in the 70’s and water temps were 73. Winds were out of the S/W at 10 to 15 knots and a good roll was on the water. As with most windy days, the floating weeds were once again going to be a problem and frequent cleaning of the rods was needed. Although it was a little slower than I was expecting, we did manage to land a decent smallie of close to 4 pounds and three walleye a little smaller. We tried casting a couple of areas for bass and only had a few follows and missed opportunities before I decided to make the long run to calmer waters. Hugue’s wife Carole and his other son Etienne decided they had enough and we dropped them at the dock before travelling to greener pastures. Hugues was fishing a spinnerbait and Olivier was throwing a soft plastic when we began fishing the new area and a few bass just hammered the blades. About 5 or 6 decent smallies up to almost 4 pounds were taken here before another relocation was in order. This was to prove to be the right decision as it didn’t take long before Hugues was into smallies on the blades once more. I managed to convince Olivier to switch to the blade as well and he too soon began hooking up. We were fishing quickly as a storm was looming in the distance that threatened to shut us down. You could tell that the fish felt it as well as they were in full throttle just crushing the lures. I tucked in closer to the main shore when I felt the rain begin and then came the thunder. It really didn’t take me too long after to make the decision to call it quits when I saw the first lightning bolt strike. Not a big fan of electricity when on the water! The shoreline was blocking the full system and as I rounded a corner to cross the main lake, I realized that I should have left 5 minutes sooner. It was a wall of water and headed straight at us! “We’re going to get wet” I said! At one point I was running solely by GPS as we crashed through the main system and eventually passed right through it to a clearing. We weren’t quite so lucky when we arrived at the ramp and found another boat attempting to take out, blocking the only spot available. If I hadn’t needed to wait over 10 minutes, we would have stayed dry. Unfortunately the storm caught up with us and when it was our turn, it was just pouring down on us again. The ramp became a river of water and the auto bilge was working overtime! Along with this monsoon were the swirling winds as well and we were glad to be off. Overall we had to cut the day a little shorter than we had wanted, but the fish had cooperated in the last couple of hours. This will definitely be a day to remember!!