Green&Gold - Ya got a copy, this is crazy Cooter

[Cooter]

Just curious if you made it to Shell and if so how things went. I'll be there the 20-22nd.

[Green&Gold]

You beat me to it...I was going to post my results this afternoon!

Yes, a friend and I made it to Shell all day on Sunday. Couldn't have asked for better conditions. T-shirt and shorts weather all day with moderate wind, but nothing that would really blow us around too bad. On the other hand, fishing was pretty slow. Its hard when you are trying a new lake for the first time. We launched at around 7am from the only access that was open (campground, west side by town) and went south right away. Our game plan was to start by trolling, hoping to cover some ground and narrow down spots that were holding fish. We quickly found the cribs, or should I say my spinners did! We trolled both cranks and spinner rigs and ended up doing better with the spinners and a leech. I should mention we did not see any walleyes. I managed a nice 20" smallie right off the bat on the north side of the large island that basically separates the north and south bays. She slammed a blue spinner with a leech on it. There are cribs all along the north side of that island in about 15 fow. We just trolled back and forth along there. Picked up one other snake northern as well in that vicinity. (We ended up using slip bobbers and jigs there later on with no success.)

Moving on in the day, we worked basically the whole south bay including weedy shorelines, and the small island in the middle. This produced another nice 19" smallie which also came on a leech on a green spinner this time. I found her on the weedy shoreline adjacent to the airstrip in about 7 fow.

After feeling like we had pretty much exhausted the south bay, we headed north and began to troll rapalas all along the east shorelines, staying in about 14 to 18 fow (trying to relate to the cribs all through there.) We also payed special attention to several of the smaller points, one of which I managed one more 15" smallie. This was pretty much the extent of our day and we called her quits by around 4:30. I would have liked to stay for the evening bite, but my buddy had some business he had to attend to.

So all in all, it was slow, with us catching only 3 smallmouth and 1 northern. But the positive side is that I learned another lake and it was a gorgeous day to be outside. I should mention too, that we marked just gobbs of fish suspended out deep (30 fow) from about 15 to 25 feet down. I don't know if they were just schools of bait fish or what. We tried to jig and slip bobber them with no success, but there were several other boats that were drifting across the top of them too. We noticed this in several spots, but the main concentration was in the saddle between the 2 bays, a little north of, and closer to the east point. Let me know how you do next weekend.

[DeathRoe]

I would say any day you bang a 20" smallie is not bad!!

[Green&Gold]

Yeah, that's what I am hearing. Both of those fish were really fun to catch, they fought like a sunzabitch! (Excuse my french.) Funny thing is, I never really fish for bass at all, so I'm kind of clueless when it comes to size. I know my naivity is showing by saying this, but although they seemed nice sized to me, I don't really know if that is a good sized smallie. I guess you could tell me that 20" is average, or huge, and I would believe you either way. Sorry, I'm more of a walleye guy. Though now, after fighting those guys, I might have to target them more often. I know a 20" walleye would have felt like an old sock coming in compared to those bass!

[Cooter]

Am assuming you are using a standard walleye live-bait spinner rig with a bottom bouncer or something?

[Green&Gold]

Correct, Cooter. Actually we started using like a 1/2 oz. bottom bouncer, but it was much too heavy causing us to drag into the cribs and get snagged. So then we just tried the plain spinner with a small split shot about 4 feet up. Rigged this way, it seemed we could control the depth of our spinners better, letting out more line to go deeper and vice versa. As far as the spinners go: 2 hooks, some beads, and a Colorado blade.