Full Boat

After being shut out the last couple of days due to heavy rain & high winds, I finally made it back out this morning. Nice to see" Mother Nature" was back to her usual self as I had to cancel 3 different bookings! Apparently I wasn’t the only one happy to see the change in weather either, because the ramp had an unusually high amount of traffic at 7 A.M. One "Big Ass" cruiser was dropping in and blocked pretty much everything for almost 25 minutes and caused me to launch way off to the side. Luckily I had just enough room to maneuver the boat to the outside & tie up. It was a full boat this morn as Stephan brought along his girlfriend and Martin did the same with his wife. Not usually a big fan of four on board but we’d have to make it work! I decided to start with a troll due to the number of bodies and set the lines in an area holding, prior to the weather change. I had lost almost 5 degrees since the last time out and now saw 61 as an average. Air temps were barely 60 degrees at the start but expected to reach about 80 by mid afternoon. Although not much wind was present, it was out of the NW making the air a little chilly to begin. The girls were new to this and were going to have the first rods that fired. About 10 minutes into the day one of the reels started to sound but I had to hit the throttle in order to lock it up. It was really a light bite with this water temp and was barely hooked once in the net. Stephan’ s girlfriend had caught her very first dore ever. Being from France, she was excited to finally see what they looked like & a few quick pics were taken. Into the livewell it went as they were hoping to bring a few home to have for dinner tonight. The second & third fish were also walleye and now almost everyone was on the board. Stephan was the last up and when the next reel fired, it went off hard. This fish seemed quite large and I had visions of another lunge. I immediately cleared all the lines and awaited the visual. After many good runs and a decent battle, I was surprised to see that it was actually a northern. It was a rather large one though and went just about 10 pounds! Several pics later it swam off and we continued with our fishing. Weekends are never my favorite days to be on the water for various reasons but people moving in on me are number one! That hateful cruiser that had blocked the ramp had somehow found where I was and decided to set up right next to me. I hadn’t thought he would be fishing but soon saw several rods being prepared. I immediately trolled out of the area never to return! Unfreaking believable! The next couple of locations also saw slow action due to the cold water temps but we did pick away at them nonetheless. Knowing that Stephan wanted to cast, I waited until 11:00 for the water to warm before heading shallow for bass. It was here that they managed to all catch several largemouth and a couple of them were decent sizes too. I believe both Martin & Stephan managed to land 4 pounders along with a bunch of two to three pounds as well. The girls also landed several smaller fish of their own, all on soft plastics. When the bite slowed down, they thought another troll was in order and I willingly obliged! I went back to an area close by that was extremely slow earlier in the day and was immediately locked up. Mostly pike were caught now but a couple of nice walleye were also taken. I had one more area I wanted to fish before they called it a day and decided to head over to see if they were active. I had briefly fished it this morning before the cruiser moved in and wanted to try it once again. As if on cue, the fish started to bite and they were almost all walleye! Everyone had a couple of rotations in the last hour but it was Stephan that managed to land the largest walleye of the day. Unfortunately for him, it was an over and had to be returned after a couple of quick pics. We ended the day on another fish as I was bringing in the lines and the last one bent over heavily. Stephan had caught a pike and the last fish of the day. Despite the surprise number of bodies this morning, they all managed to have a great time while catching many fish. On top of that, they were taking several walleye home for a great dinner! Another great day of fishing and nobody got hurt! Who could ask for anything more!!