Kinda Quiet in here lately!

[Deitz Dittrich]

I have found fishing to be pretty tough lately. Not horrible by any means, but not easy either. I have been trying very hard to reach the 500 mark before I go back to school on Monday(tomorrow).. and I fell a bit short(493 for the season, biggest fish has been 5lb 10oz)..

I did have a bit of fun last evening. I watched a boat fish a spot I wanted to fish for about an hour(its a point with some rock on it on a lake that doesnt have a whole lot of points with rock on it. I watched them pull 4 fish in about 45 mins... I pulled 4 fish in that same time flipping a tube in some pads(I didn't want to crouwd them)... Soon after they left I pulled up and got out the dropshot rod. In about 15 mins I had boated 6 fish on the drop shot then pulled out the crankbait and boated another 3 on a crank.

Just goes to show, if you want to fish a spot, and someone is on it, dont assume they caught them all...

Good luck fishing to you all as some of the best fishing approaches. I however do split my time with bow hunting.

[SluggoMaster]

I concur with both statements.

Fishing has been hit and miss at best. Nothing helps the old ego more than catching fish behind folks.

[TurnUpTheFishing]

I hit a lake today I consider to be my 'home lake.' Couldnt figure the fish out. The recent crank pattern wasnt working, the docks/shallows only gave up two fish. Between my dad and I we could only scratch out a 9 fish in 6 hours.

I did give the "stupid rig" a shot today for the first time and caught 2 nice 18-19" fish. I gotta say I can see myself using it much more than a standard carolina rig.

[Ray Esboldt]

I got out today on that giant sea north of the cities for some smallmouth action. It was O.K. We caught about 30 fish with the biggest being an 18". Just a fish here and a fish there, and only one time did I see another fish following a hooked fish. I bet 90% of the fish came on wacky rigs that were laying on the bottom for about 15-30 seconds after the initial drop. Good Lord do I hate fishing those rigs that slow.

[grab the net]

Had some great numbers fishing on our last tueday night league. Cookie cutters all about 15 inches, some a little bigger some a little smaller. About 20 fish in a little over an hour. All off one isolated cattail clump with a clean edge and coon tail clumps scattered in front. Stick baits were the ticket, (although I think any soft plastic with a slow fall would have worked, they were red hot) Four fish limit weighed just over 9.5 pounds. First place for the night went to Jiimy Proell and his partner, Again, they had two beautiful smallies, both about 3.75 lbs, a 3lb smallile and a a smaller LM. 2nd 3rd and 4th were all within 3 ounces of each other. We were 4th. fun night though, another team within sight of us were getting bit on frogs in the slop, estimated they had 30 blowups with a very low hook up rate, dropped a couple of big fish they just could not get hooks into. Overall everybody had fun and caught a bunch of fish.

[ikeslayer]

i almost started a post the other day and was going to title it "is any one home" i would agree things have been quiet in here lately and they have for me as well i have only been out 2 times since Aug 12th. That is how it goes sometimes. i am looking forward to the fall bite when they start to really strap on the feed bag. good luck to all and for those like me that are going out pictures wouldn't hurt every now and then either. ike

[RK]

Hiya -

Yeah it has sort of been quiet.

Sort of funny that Dietz brought up fishing a spot behind someone and doing well... Been thinking about that lately.

Last time I was out bass fishing the BOSS (a.k.a. my wife) and I went smallie fishing on a lake near our cabin. Could only get out for a couple hours but we did pretty well. Well, she did pretty well.

When I'm on search mode for smallies I almost always start out swimming a 4" grub (if my life depended on catching a smallmouth that's what I'd choose). I gave her a pearl white grub while I started with a different color, casting over a couple different rock points that top out at about 5 feet. She caught the first 5 smallies, fishing behind me, and just to experiment, rather than switching to the color that was obviously working, I started going through my grub box trying different colors. Clear, smoke, chartreuse, school bus yellow, pumpkinseed, brown, black, black/pearl two tone. Then I tried other baits - stick baits, tubes, suspending jerkbaits, cranks, buzzbaits. She clobbered me. I caught fish here and there, though with no consistency. Fishing behind everything but the kitchen sink, she outfished me 5 to 1. (Which was was really cool, by the way - she had a blast and so did I...) It reminded me again of how freakishly color selective smallies can be at times. The fish were active as all get out. For a while, she was getting hit every 4th or 5th cast. So it wasn't as though they were in a funk and being picky. They just wanted a pearl white grub. Period. Having color matter that much bugs me, but in this case, there's no doubt that was the determining factor. It was a pretty interesting experiment. I hate it when color matters that much, and to me it seems to happen way more with smallmouth than LMB. I guess it's justification for having a grub box tha weights about 6 pounds if nothing else

Cheers,

Rob Kimm

[blakjack23]

Ray, What part of the lake were you on? I was out there with a buddy on saturday huntin' smallies and we only managed 6 fish. The good news is that the smallest of the bunch was 17.5 inches. Only the big girls were biting for us. Three of our fish came in with a couple other smallies also giving chase. This was our first time ever on Mille Lacs and pretty much our first time going after smallies anywhere. We launched at Coves bay and fished a few rock bars that were within 10 minutes of there. We threw everything we had at them and ended up getting them on top water lures "walking the dog". We had a lot more blow-ups but they kept missing the lure. I suppose we could have got more fish if we had fished slower like you did, but I too hate fishing that slow. And seeing those smallies blow up on topwater is just incredible. I don't know if I can go back to fishing largemouth!

Do you twitch the worm at all when its laying on the bottom or do you keep it completely "dead" for that 15-30 seconds?

Here's a 19 incher from Saturday...

[Ray Esboldt]

Blackjack,

Nice! We were fishing up the lake quite a ways from Cove.

I just let the bait sit there with a semi tight line. The fish would pick it right off the bottom. I kind of had the feeling that the fish had been picked on quite a bit in the areas we fished. For one, there were very few fish on the easily hit pieces of the structure we were fishing. Second, they wanted nothing to with a topwater or crank. There was really nothing aggressive about these fish.

On a side note, has anyone noticed that just about every fish on M.L. has a raw spot on top just behind the eyes. The best I can figure is that these fish literally turn upside down to suck crayfish out of the rocks and bump their head in the process.

[delmuts]

i went to a pond this moring. did ok.( caught 5 , lost two and missed three!) lost a 3lb. + next to the dock! some thing that surprised me though was that when i started the fish would pick up the lure( a weightless stick bait!) , but when i would reel down and set the hook i would miss them. so i would let them have it an extra second or two. hook would be in the corner of the mouth. about a half hour later, the fish were jumping all over it and i had trouble with hooking them deep ! strange!

[ssaamm]

Been having decent luck using DT-10 Raps over a sunken island--about 8ft deep surrounded by 20ft. Good quality, but just not very many fish-- using my scale 3-4.5 lbs. Was fishing shallow the other day and have a good story. I was fishing a wacky worm and got my pocket picked-- nothing but my hook was left. So, I re-rigged with another wacky worm. I set the hook and missed the fish again. But, this time I brought back two worms-- the one I started with and the one I missed the previous cast. Sort of broke even I guess.

[RK]

Quote:

---

On a side note, has anyone noticed that just about every fish on M.L. has a raw spot on top just behind the eyes. The best I can figure is that these fish literally turn upside down to suck crayfish out of the rocks and bump their head in the process.

---

Ray -

Have seen the same thing on Lake of the Woods. I think it's from chasing craws into the boulders...they ram in there pretty hard and knock their noggin. In the spring on the Woods when they're after the crayfish hard every fish looks like it's wearing lipstick - red, bruised up lips. Hard way to make a living if you ask me... Then again, now that I think about it, my job feels an awful lot like spending the day banging my head against the boulders sometimes too...

Cheers,

Rob Kimm

[Slyster]

It was a great summer!... but alas.. I am back to skewl too. But am really going to attempt much more fall fishing than before.. I imagine even weekends aren't as busy now as summer wanes. My total for this season (so far...) is somewhere around 175. SO fun to be involved with the tournament. And was also involved with a casual fishing league at Eagle Brook Church.