Weekend Fishing 6/20

[MuleShack]

I had a 3 day trip from Thursday thru Saturday night on the pond. Thursday afternoon it was calm and warm and kind of slow...fished graveyard and only seen a few fish caught while only catching 1 myself.

Friday tried the graveyard and Banana early and caught 6 keeper size fish...depths between 25 and 28'. Later morning moved out to the flats and it started to get windy so I backtrolled the edges and off the deep edges. The bite did not seem to be as good as it was the previous Saturday, but still managed to pull about 7 eyes up out there. I noticed on my first fish that they didn't seem to be inhaling the bait very quickly, so i was trying to time it where they would have the hook in their mouth, but not down their throat. This caused me to short strike (I pulled up a half a leech) about 15 more hits, but it is less dead fish IMO. The fish i did catch on the mud, 6 were hooked in the top or side lip and one had the hook in his gullet. I tried the technique talked about to go in thru the gills and amazingly enough it is easier to get to the hook and maneuver it out with out doing damage to fish.

On the way back i stopped at 4 mile gravel and did a quick drift and picked up a 25" fighter.

The bolts on my kicker throttle assembly bracket broke mid day out on the flats, so i had to run to the hardware store and fix that...then made it out for the friday evening bite. I backtrolled the Graveyard again and picked up 5 more keeper size fish until 11PM. Then got back to the access at FHSP and it was like a snow storm of bugs. I've never been there for a hatch, but this time it was full bloom...I've got lights mounted on the back rack for plowing and I had them on at the access and at the campgrounds while packing up and it was like a bee's hive with bugs in the back of my truck....WOW.

Saturday was pretty windy again and stayed on the south side...picked up 4 keeper size fish on Doe Island reef and lost 3 more on short strikes. Picked up 2 more on 4 mile gravel again, then moved over to sloppy joes and missed 3, caught 1 and had a good run from a pike that i never saw.

Finally ended the night back on Graveyard anchoring for the evening...When that last front came thru and the winds kicked up to 34-40 mph, about half the boats broke loose from anchor and you could tell who was using the water spike and who wasn't. Only caught 2 fish in the evening unfortunately.

I should add that most of the time i was using 9-10' snells. Mostly was using red hook with varying color beads. Then Saturday when it was a little slower, i tried orange and yellow and purple hooks with differnt color beads. Best combo was the red hook with a glow bead and a pink glass bead.

Chatter on the radio and a few of the fish that i caught were 12" fish...that is a good thing for future year classes too.

All fish were released for another day.

I wanted to troll cranks around because i noticed a lot of the fish were suspended on the graph, but on friday my kicker mount was broken and then it got to windy for the boat control. Definately next week i'm going to give it a shot, but might be a day late and a dollar short.

[outdoorav]

Good report!! Thanks for the info. Adam