Erik's fishing rants

The crappie lake by me has been cleaned out too. Now its just bass and bluegill. But im fine with those fish.

I did take some of the kids fishing this morning, neighbors kid caught a goldfish on a curly tail grub under a bobber. This lake was infested with goldfish long ago, but most died out. Then the city stocked it with green sunfish and they keep the population in check. There are a few big ones, but nothing like it used to be.

I want to throw a few pike in there to clean up the rest of the big goldfish, but its illegal to move the fish to a new pond.

 

Caught my first walleye tonight! Was going for pike, but I guess this will do!

 

Ha ha, thats a little guy. I've caught a few that size to when fishing for them in connecticut. Up in quebec you'll catch them all day between 2-3 lbs. They like to hang out in moving water, or you'll catch them along sand bars..at any rate they make a great shore lunch.

 

Its funny cause the bait I got him on was nearly half the length he was. I got him on a rapala balsa extreme swimmer

 

I've caught them trolling here with everything from spoons to rapala crank baits. Had the best luck late in the summer after i find them is to anchor the boat, and jig with sinking rapala's. Seems your more prone to catching the bigger ones.

 

I'll have to try that, I have a ton of jigging raps for ice fishing I can use.

 

Casting and jigging with plastic minnows work well to.

 

I went out on the lake this morning. Was one of those days between equipment malfunctions and later the boat motor quitting from lack of fuel getting to it, i Just about called it quits early. Managed to salvage the last 1/2 hr of real fishing. Its was strange once i got everything operational with a line finally in the water i caught the first, and last brown trout of the within 5 minutes, before heading back in. This was by far the closest i've gotten to getting skunked this season.

 

So the other day the kids were at grandmas, wife was sleeping, so I went out to the river. Just like every time I snagged a rock and lost a $15 bait.... I had not even gotten a fish on that bait yet either

Today I had the day off, kids in school and wife at work, so I went out to fleetfarm and grabbed another of the $15 rapalas. Spent a part of the day cleaning the river mud off my lines and reels and putting on new flouro leader on my heavy rod.

I need to fix the 4 kids rods soon, they are using "hide a hook" bobbers, but the hooks snag the inside of the bobber too much. Im going to swap them all to nice slip bobbers this week.

 

I kept collecting long strands of milfoil floating in the water wrapping around my lines, spinners, and dodgers fouling them. Then it was 2 of my favorite reels, one of them the handle came apart and fell in the boat, the other the bail screw on a spinning reel backed out causing a cluster fluck. After that trolling the outboard motor fuel pump would suck air, run out of fuel and quit....found a filter section in the remote fuel tank to have rotted off. Imo, only thing that could have gone worse if the boat sprung a major leak.

 

Got my hair cut today, and I figure while I am in the area I will check out camping worlds fishing section. Well its been cleared out! They are redoing it all, so they just straight clearanced everything 75%

All that was really there was jig heads (tons of them) and mono line. So I grabbed three 12lb 110y rolls, three 8lb 110y rolls, one 6lb 110y roll, and two 17lb 330y rolls.... came to a total of $10 and some change I wish they had some 4lb, but the 6lb will do just fine on my ultra light when its time to respool it (soon as im almost out of line on it)

 

This morning i went online at every outdoor sporting dealer that sells fish crank baits. Wanted to order a couple more yakami 2.5 mag lip bleeding frogs. Wtf, every place is sold out on those, and gives no date when more available. I'm thinking the company produces just a certain quite for the season. I have several other variations of this, but nothing seems to work like this one i want. Fish seem to attack it like candy.

 

Hit up camping world again today since I figure they may be at a higher discount.... 90% off!

But they were pretty limited on stock, its was 99% jigheads, so I stocked up for the next 10 years. Also got some catfish bait, a googan skirted jig, some spinshot hooks (has a swivel built in), various catfish hooks. Total came down to $9.89 I think the googan jig would of cost that much itself.

 

Holy crap...good deal for all that stuff. Last time i used jig heads was fishing for shad in the connecticut river. We caught a bunch of them just below the enfield dam.

 

Yeah, I dont usually use jig heads much, but for the price I had to get a bunch. I got 3 packs of UV green short hooked jigheads that I can use on minnows, most of the rest I will just throw grubs on.


There was also a ton of walleye trolling stuff left, but since I dont have a boat I cant even use that stuff anyways.

 

Be going out tomorrow, got some new red, and orange hoochie's i'll tip with some cured, and scented white corn kernels trolling for kokanee to try. Hopefully the trout will lay off them, but i'm not holding my breath.

 

Nice! let us know what you come up with. Im going out on friday to hit up the river. My dad brought frozen squid with from florida, so lets see if the catfish go for it. But also I got a new lure retriever from daiwa... hoping to not lose more lures to the rocks in the river.

 

Fished from 8 am to 12 pm nearly getting skunked....no kokanee, except some very light hits. Decided to fish for trout instead of these kokanee switching rods. Very slow, other boats weren't catching anything either as chatted passing by. Well about 10:30 one of my rods rigged with a yakami mag-lip nearly gets yanked out of the boats rod holder. I had about 50 yards of line out yet it felt like nothing, but some crap that may have fouled my line again. WRONG...all hell broke loose a few feet from the boat as i began to reel up from the depths. A big brown was giving me a battle. Finally netted it after several power surges like a pike. 6lbs 11 oz., was so slimly i couldn't pick it up plus the hooked jaw with sharp teeth sliced a finger. Weighed it and couldn't wait to get that slime monster back in the lake. Other that caught a bluegill, and a yellow perch later in about 50' of water.

 

You guys are making me jealous! I’ve been working 6-12’s all month. Hoping to get out next month-the trout stocking will begin then.

 

They've been doing some late season trout, and kokanee fingerling stocking here, but its usually at the very end of the season after most of us have pulled our boats out. At any rate theres plenty of trout still to be caught....their just smarter. Many fishermen clip a notch in the dorsal find of the trout they catching release, so you know right away when you catch a trout you can tell it was previously caught. Browns especially, but this large trout i landed didn't have any.....sure was a chunky sob.