Light Bites & Short Strikes

After Monday’s trip, Norm & I headed back on the water today to see if he could better his personal best once more. The weather was a little different with winds out of the W/SW blowing on us at 10 to 20 knots. Overcast skies and light snow flurries also added to the already cool air temps of 34 degrees making it feel quite a bit chillier. The water temps hovered just below 41 degrees and never really changed throughout the entire day. I had a feeling that this one was about to become more difficult than the last trip out and instructed Norm to really be on his game. The bites were so subtle that feeling the pick up was next to impossible if the line wasn’t tight. Most hits felt more like a weed than a fish and we began setting on anything that didn’t feel right. Hook sets are free and we took advantage of them! In the early part of the day we were zero for 10 before we actually brought one into the boat and those are incredibly terrible odds by anyone’s standards. The fish were just barely picking up the baits and not moving. After we figured out what was going on and made the necessary adjustments, the game was on. From that point on we were really giving the fish time to tighten up the line and move off with the baits before we set into them. This proved to be a much better technique as our landing ratio began to climb. We were still missing plenty, but at least most of them were coming aboard. Norm even managed to land a couple of nice walleye that would have gone better than 5 pounds apiece! The best we could manage on the bass though was not quite 5 pounds and most were 3.5 to 4 pounds as well. Moving around seemed to be the best choice for us as I was never really able to find any concentration of fish in one area. We even foul hooked a couple and came in with scales from time to time as well. Before the day was done, there were a number of smallies, a couple of northerns and five walleyes landed along with numerous missed strikes and dropped fish and oh yeah, several bite offs. Not the perfect day, but it was still nice to get out before it’s all done and freeze up occurs having us resort to hole drilling for entertainment!!