Weekend Fishing Fun (9pics)

[crazyice]

I had the pleasure of getting out this weekend to do some fishing on some of our local area waters. I had some friends come down here from my hometown and was able to show them a good time and then was also able to get out with Tyler on Sunday as well. Overall I would say that the panfish bite was a little slower than it has been the past few days, but some of that could be due to increased pressure from anglers and also from recreational traffic(Zumbro). We were still able to find a few pannies, but they definately were not in the same areas as they were just a few days ago. Culprit paddletails and Mini-Mites both seemed to put fish in the boat, with or with out tipping with a waxie. I actually didn't even touch the live bait, it was just a plastic bite for me. But some of my fishing partners this weekend did find some luck in the waxies, and small angle worms. But I wouldn't say that they had more or less luck with the live bait compared to what I had, as the fishing was pretty tough no matter how you looked at it.

Here is a nice 10"+ black crappie that was caught on a chartruese culprit with an orange jig head.

Here is another 10"

We also were able to find the pike this weekend as well, as that is usually not a hard thing to do. And for those of you who know me well, you know how much I like to target these toothy critters. We also tried live bait, suckers, and artificials. I caught pike on all of the following, glass shad rap, plastic minnow with the lead head built into it, a spinner bait that I put together at home, and also a couple on suckers as well.

Here is a really dandy 6lb 3oz that was caught on a sucker minnow.

This one was caught on that plastic minnow that I was trying to describe, you can see it in the picture if you look.

I also was able to hit the water with Tyler this weekend at another body of water and man did we have fun!! This was the first time we both had targeted channel cats on our own, and I think that we were successful in finding a few. We had crawlers, Power Bait, and nasty ole chicken liver in the boat. I think we missed as many as we caught, one of our main problems that we had was the fish would pick it up and then swim directly for the boat. So we would get a nice hard tap on the rod, and then just slack as they swam for us, so I think that we missed a few by not reeling up to them fast enough before they dropped the bait, but hey, we still caught our share and had a good time.

Here is the first fish of the night, a real nice 24" with a 14 1\2" girth. We forgot to weigh this fish, but we guessed it to be in the upper part of 6-7 pounds.

Shortly after that thing hit I caught this 27"er also with a 14 1\2" girth. This one we weighed, it came in at 8lb 15oz, WHAT A FUN FIGHT!!!!

Here are a couple more photos from that night.

And of course these were all CPRd.

[Tyler Holm]

Yeah, what a cool night.

27", 25", 2@ 24" 22" 20", and 17"

7 fish total with most of them over 6lbs.

Maybe it was beginners luck??? This is the first time I've really tried cattin on my own or with somebody else that is new to it. I really have no clue if that's an average size fish for the body of water we tried, or iffn we hit the motherload of nice fish. I think there's room for improvement in terms of our hookup percentage, but there will be another trip (or 2) in the near future for alterations.

We dropped anchor in 14FOW and dropped our baits in 6-10FOW (guessing). 1/0 true turn hooks in blood red.