02-21-2009, 10:00 AM
Headed out to the lake today to try Rsimm's trolling idea. Got on the main lake and didn't find bait fish on on the graph. Headed back in the creeks and found a few balls of bait fish and set up to troll through them using a "christmas tree" rig, with one live minnow and 2 crappie stingers in different colors. Water temp on the main lake was 45, back in the creeks in was around 48-49. We managed 31 fish in 3 hours, but only 11 were keepers. Pigment on the fish was super pale so they have been staying deep, at least the ones we hooked up with. Most were caught in around 12 to 14 feet, slow trolling at .8 mph. I can honestly say that I don't think we would have caught many at all without the graph. The Hummingbird 797c would indicate a bait ball, we'd mark it and troll through it. 8 times out of 10 we'd hook up. The really strange thing was I didn't see that many bait balls in the creek, although I may not have went far enough up. I got up in Polo's neck of the woods and found the water to be really stained and lots of leaves and debris. All in all a fair day, but I think the cold weather has put them back in deeper waters and not in the creeks. We need a few days in the upper 60's with plenty of sun to get the bite started that shallow. By the way, got to see a huge bald eagle on a tree limb up in Wolftever. He sat and watched us troll by. Beautiful bird! No pics as it just wasn't impressive enough to take some of 11 average keepers. Spoke to a couple of boats trolling the banks and it was pretty slow for them too. But hey, it was great to get out of the office for a day!