the tripod

Check out this tripod that was in our closet for oh, probably a million years. Valerie told me of it; I didn't even know we had it. This is really going to help me when I am fishing alone in taking pictures of me posing with bigger fish.

4/25 Saturday outing with Lucas

Me and Lucas went out for a little bit of fishing saturday. Being that a cold front just passed by I wasn't sure we would catch anything, but it didn't feel wickedly cold so I thought our chances of catching something were pretty good. I decided to try Lake Sarah first and our results were disappointing...all we caught was runty little bluegills. Lucas did catch this small LM bass...


Sad, but Sarah does not seem to have the size quality fish in it as it did a few years ago, although I am sure there are some good ones in there.

So after fishing Sarah for an hour we went to Dutch hoping to find the nice bluegills in the shallows. We found fish but most were crappies, with nothing bigger that 9.5". Lucas caught a couple gills and this small perch. He likes perch so I took a picture...


Along with those fish we also caught several largemouth bass, nothing big, but entertaining for Lucas. So we fished for a couple hours and kept enough crappies for a meal. It shouldn't take long before the gills come shallow em masse!

First outing in my boat for 2009

I finally got out in the the boat for the first time this year and did some fishing on Pelican lake in Wright county. The temps were in the 80's and the wind was screaming out of the south. The parking lot was a zoo!!! I wanted to get away from the crowds so I made my way over to a spot after studying a map of the lake, fishing the wind blown shoreline. There was only one other boat there so I started fishing quite a bit away from them. My target species were bluegills and crappies; I selected Pelican because of the potential for bonus bass. Well, five seconds after my first cast This 4lb Largemouth bass pounced on my Culprit paddletail....



The wind really kept me from moving around. The best I could do was move to a spot, anchor, fish, pull up and move to a new spot! I caught a few bluegills doing this, biggest being about 8.5". Here's one I caught...


While fishing for the gills, this big gater came along and nabbed my tiny jig. Just under 31"...



About 6 o'clock I decided to head back toward the landing. I knew I would be battling some huge waves in my tiny boat and the going would be slow. Took me quite awhile to get back. I didn't want to go in so I fished inside the bay for awhile. I didn't catch anything there so I moved outside of the bay a bit where there were a bunch of boats catching chip crappies. I decided to join them and see if upsizing my presentation would get me any nice fish. Didn't happen. The biggest I caught was this one, probably 10"...


I really don't like pictures on bigger fish laying on side. One thing I have to set up in my boat is some sort of system so I can take pictures of me holding the fish when I am fishing alone. I am looking at the music stand in my basement right now and thinking of the possibilities...

Tubing after work 4/16/09

Did some float tubing today on the same lake I have been slaughtering crappies and gills on. I found a few fish outside of the bay but nothing noteworthy. The bay is still holding crappies, but the numbers were way down. I was able to scratch out enough for a meal though. The first crappie I popped was this 11.5" mule...

The bluegills were on a tear though, biting aggressively. I decided to upsize to a Culprit paddletail and that seemed to bring in some bigger bluegills. Caught many in the 8-8.5" class like this one...

Also caught this bull @ 9"...

4/13/09 spring metro fishing with Lucas

I got Lucas out for some fishing for the first time this year on my honey hole lake. Fish were active and we caught lots of nice crappies and bluegills...