Fished Strawberry today with my dad and my two sons (age 6 and 2) The wind had already put a chop on the water at 7:00AM and it got progressively worse throughout the morning. MGB had mentioned in a post that he had found some school of fish around Mud Creek so we headed that direction looking for fish. We threw white tube jigs out the back about the time we passed mosquito bay and trolled around toward mud creek watching the sonar for any schools of fish. Well we never really found any thick schools of fish but we caught plenty of fish trolling tube jigs. After awhile we found an area that we caught several fish in (but not really seeing many on the finder) so we anchored there and vertical jigged. We caught several more fish in about 15 minutes before the wind intensified and the anchor wouldn't hold us any longer. So we just let the tube jigs trail behind the boat as the wind blew us and we caught several more fish that way. By 10:30 it was white capping pretty good and my kids were tired and cold and ready to go home. We landed about 20 fish (all slot cutts except for one 13 incher) and had many short and long distance releases when the kids where reeling in the fish and would let slack get in the line. All in all another excellent day on the pond. I could do without the wind but the colors up there are amazing right now and whats better than fishing with your dad and your kids and watching them all have a blast reeling in fish. Stopped at the visitor center and there are lots of red kokes in the river. very cool to go and watch.
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I left at 3:30 and the wind had'nt really died down all day but never got real bad.
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Another amazing report by the “fishing stud”. I talked to a friend of mine that tried fishing today also at the “Berry” he did not get there until about 10:00am ish and did not even launch the boat because of the (“W”) white caps. I think I will take my girls for a ride after church and see the leaves and the Kokes. LESS THAN 7 MONTHS!!!!
jrs4x4 father of jr8fish
JRS4X4
Glad to see your still around. Good idea for the drive tomorrow. Well worth the trip even at todays gas prices. I too can't wait til your son gets home. Maybe just in time for ice off.... Tell him hello, I owe him a letter.
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Rough conditions and not much time you spent on the water but at least you still caught quite afew fish.
Last weekend I had that same experience, not spotting many fish on the finder. The few that I did see where 40', 35'and 25' I wasn't sure what depth I should concentrate in. I thought they might be shallow and the fish where moving out of the way of the boat as I drove threw them so I tried trolling a shallow runner while searching but only picked up three small ones. Then finally found them over by mud creek.
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Ya kinda a wierd day. The fish definetly seem to be in some sort of transition stage. We caught fish trolling, drifting, vert. jigging, and casting with a fast retrieve in water depth from 25-45 feet. Judging from the depth of our jigs while trolling (maybe 10 feet down) and also getting them vert. jigging on the bottom in 35 feet I would say they are pretty scattered throughout the water column. They were however very agressive today and would hit over and over until they got hooked. Good luck tomorrow, I look forward to your report. I am heading up again on tuesday....
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[cool]Nice report, Bigcat. I have a question for ya though. When trolling tube jigs, at what speed were you trolling with them. Seems like you'd have to go awfully slow to get them to stay beneath the surface.
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O4T-
We were trolling about 2.5 MPH GPS speed. I usually throw out 2 five gallon buckets to slow me down to 2.1 MPH but we were basically cruising around looking for fish on the finder and decided to throw the tube jigs out the back while we look for fish. We hooked up every 2-3 minutes doing that. It was fast enough action that I never got my pole out because I was too busy helping my 2 and 6 year olds land fish and trying to drive the boat. We pulled the jigs behind the boat the length of a good cast and then another 10-15 yards (so maybe 40 yards behind the boat I guess). I know the jigs were not running very deep because usually within a second or two after the fish got hooked you would see it boil the surface behind the boat. I would guess the jig was running less than 8 feet deep but we never had any prob keeping them below the surface. Also when one of the kids would hook up my dad would reel in to get out of the way and cast the other direction and reel in fast and irratic and caught lots of fish doing that. We also caught fish drifting quite slow (the anchor was down but too much wind) but not so slow that the jigs would hit the bottom. So I'm not sure speed really mattered. The fish were very agressive. I'm going back tomorrow. The forcast is for stormy so that means wind so we will prob troll or drift again tomorrow however I would really like to find a school and vert jig for them again.
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