After a few PMs Dave (JT) and I hit the bog yesterday morning, shortly after sunrise. The target species were crappie and carp, with the intention to give the fly rods a bit of a workout.
Even though it was overcast when we started out it was a nice morning to be out on the water. The bugs were really light and so were the winds.
Their were a few carp stirring up the shallow weed bed at the launch, we started out taking a crack at these guys with the fly. Here's Dave getting ready.
After having about 4 carp running circles around my boat, and showing no interest in my flies, I decided that I wanted to go scope out the big shallow bay across the lake from the launch for more carp. I only brought one spinning rod and it was a light rod, plus I forgot alot of my small plastics so I didn't even try for Carp on the spinning gear. I trolled a smaller spinner with a gulp minnow across the lake, I had a couple of light taps on the edge of the weedbed, but by this time I could already see the wakes from all the carp moving around. I tried a couple of different flies, but couldn't get their attention. As I was fishing at this spot Dave made his way out into the middle of the lake on the hunt for Crappie. The wind started to kick-up, and I was having a hard time chucking the flies, this is when Dave came along with a chunky stringer crappie.
We both headed out to the spot and started drift fishing across it, I switched from a spinner to a slip bobber with a small jig head and a gulp. We got a number of hits and finally I boated a small crappie, too small for the stringer unfortunately. Next Dave hooked into a real scrappy fish, we were both suprised when this little fellow popped out (Dave were you using an ultralight rod? Sure had a bend in it!).
A drift or two later and I had an intruder, I hooked an OOS 10-11 inch SMB. By this time the wind was really kicking up, and my presentation wasn't producing any activity, even with a few tweaks, plus it was nearly time for me to head home. I switched to a texas-rigged senko at this point, the only thing that had produced walleye for me on this lake in the past, actually I caught probably 3 out of my last 5 walleye this way. I did about 1.5 more passes with the senko, and at the end of the last full pass I hooked my best SMB of this lake, a nice 16". By the looks of the belly it's post spawn. It was great to feel a nice smallie on the end of a light rod again, it's been a while ( and helped out with the j-bay withdrawals lol ).
I packed up and headed home, just in time to get my son to baseball practice. Dave stayed out a while longer and got a few perch, and this nice 14" SMB.
It was good to get out with Dave for my first inland lake outing of the year, and have some success. I think today finally tipped the scales as for the number of times I've been skunked vs the number of times I've actually caught something at the bog. I might go out next weekend with a big ball of carp chum and some kernels and see if I can't get one of those fatties ..maybe a week night, not sure, with both kids in baseball now time is sparse.
Neil