Fishing Forum

With the nice weather yesterday, the temperature of the water came up at Willard and we got into some fish.  We launched about 10:30 and had everything tied up and fishing by about 11:00.

We started hot with two wipers in the boat as not quite a double, but close.  We managed another one on each pass through Freeway Bay.  As we'd get to one side of the bay, we'd go over a depression in the bottom of the reservoir and catch catfish on a Rapala style shad rap.  I've never caught catfish on a Rapala style lure.  But, there's a first for everything I guess.  They were coming up and hitting the lure at about 10' deep is my guess.  I never saw them as that kind of predator.

On one pass, we had a rod go down and this particular rod is one of my custom downrigger rods for silver salmon.  It was pinned for a little bit while a fish took a run.  Then my avet sx was dragging out on about 3/4 drag setting as we worked the fish.  I had to cut the throttle to gain line back on him.  It was a fight that lasted at least a couple of minutes before a 21" wiper hit the floor in the boat.  He got both trebles and managed to snap the back of the lure off and break the back hook out of the lure.  I haven't had too many fish break the lure from hitting it that hard.

We caught a couple crappie, lost one at the boat, and lost another wiper at the boat that would have finished our limits.  My buddy had never caught a walleye so we went to try walleye fishing for a while, with no luck.  But it was a fun day to be out and it's always nice to crush a big wiper.

Nice write up. That wiper is a tank!

Those big wipers can be tough on lures. At Willard cats will always chase lures, if the water is clear enough. What was the water temps? Any size to the crappie?

(05-27-2020, 03:42 PM)wiperhunter2 Wrote: [ -> ]Those big wipers can be tough on lures. At Willard cats will always chase lures, if the water is clear enough. What was the water temps? Any size to the crappie?

The water fluctuated between 66 and 67 at Freeway Bay.  Off the South Marina, it was flirting with 70.

The crappie we caught was about 11 inches.  I know, because my son got it out several times to measure it.  So, not a bad crappie at all.

Maybe the water cleared up since last week.  I didn't see it last week and it didn't look particularly clear, but maybe the cats say otherwise.  It was fun picking them up one after another in that depression.

Did you catch the crappie on the same lures as the catfish? That is the ticket when it comes to fishing Willard, find where the biter fish are and stay on top of them. On any given day there are likely many spots where the fish are biting, but they can be small areas and if you catch one and keep trolling, you might not find a second spot. When I catch one fish, I usually circle back and see if there are other fish in that location that want to bite, then if there are, I will circle that spot for hours, as long as the fish are biting.

(05-27-2020, 07:12 PM)wiperhunter2 Wrote: [ -> ]Did you catch the crappie on the same lures as the catfish? That is the ticket when it comes to fishing Willard, find where the biter fish are and stay on top of them. On any given day there are likely many spots where the fish are biting, but they can be small areas and if you catch one and keep trolling, you might not find a second spot. When I catch one fish, I usually circle back and see if there are other fish in that location that want to bite, then if there are, I will circle that spot for hours, as long as the fish are biting.

Yes, it was the same lure for everything.  We caught every fish on the same exact plug trolled off of 5 different lines.  Catfish, crappie, and wipers all hit the same lure.  

We basically were pulling a circle between where the wipers were hitting and the depression, picking up a wiper, cat, wiper, cat, wiper, cat, etc.  The crappies came in the same area as the wipers so your strategy totally jives with my experience yesterday.

I wish we could have found one walleye for my buddy.  But, just couldn't pull it off.  There will be other days though.

Thanks for the report, Can I ask which end of freeway bay was your depression north or south.

(05-28-2020, 03:32 PM)obifishkenobi Wrote: [ -> ]Thanks for the report, Can I ask which end of freeway bay was your depression north or south.

North, probably 500 yards off the trees.