Fishing Forum

Picked up lavaman and headed down to Mantua for the evening. Didn't know what really to expect since I haven't been on that lake since last April. The weed definitely were a pain, but once we got out of them, it was just fine. We took my little Crawdad boat and launched at the Southeast dock by the inlet. It was a bit windy when we got there, but it calmed down after about 30 minutes. We caught our fair share of bluegill - probably somewhere in between 40-50 between the both of us. We just used a little jig tipped with part of a worm. I managed to catch two little bass on a small beetle spin. I hooked up on another couple of small bass on a gold blue fox spinner. I even caught my nicest bluegill of the night on the little blue fox. No trout for us this evening. And no pics. Lava sent me a pic of the perch I caught - probably 7 inches - but my phone is being lame and won't email it me. Sorry. All in all, it was a good evening. And it was fun just catching little gills.

Another note - as we were loading up, good ole Barney drove by. I flagged him down to clarify the launch fees. I asked him if we were launching at the southeast or northeast corner in a small pontoon, canoe, kayak, or little boat such as mine that fits in the back of a pickup truck, if we needed to pay the $5. He said, from his understanding, the fee was there if you were launching a boat. He then said he didn't know about anything else because they really haven't even explained to him what exactly the fee covers. Then he said as long as we were down here (southeast) he is not going to bother anyone.
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FWIW that fat perch was more like 8 1/2" or 9". We shoulda measured. Maybe close to the C&R record. []

Let's get a big kitty manana.
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According to the TyeDyeTwins - the launch fee is only for using the launch. If you go to the docks, or jump in elsewhere - it doesn't apply. So float toobers, canoes, crawdads from the far docks needn't pay.
Guess Barney doesn't know his own job? Or maybe he's not tasked with enforcing that. Surprising - I thought he owned that town/lake.

Good on the Gills. Did they have much for size, or mostly bitty bites? I'd expect you might see boils at sunset this time of year.

Maybe I shoulda gone there, cuz we didn't find any boils at Willard. Saw a few risers, and had some slaps, but must not have marked up the "real" action. TONs of birds toward dusk, but then there were gone (but where?!)
Maybe it was those goons on their jetskis buzzing around that kept them down. Was windy and choppy, but then calmed right around sunset. Ah - such high hopes.
But dang it if I'm not gonna try again! I wanna see that Zook get smashed!!!!

So where to tomorrow? Morning outing?
I need to go try for some minnows with the cast net. Then see about putting them to work!