Another slow day at Willard

[TubeDude]

Inquiring minds wanna know.  Were you not finding fish...or were you finding a lot of fish with lockjaw?  Also, the larger fish you could see on sonar...what seemed to be their preferred cruising depth...on or above the bottom...at in what depths of water?

One thing that has seemed to develop in years past is that the fish will typically be more active at one time of day rather than the others.  Not sure if it is a moon phase (tides), weather patterns, light/dark situation, bait (shad) location and activity or what.  But there are some days when it is an early morning bite...and other days when it is midday or late bite.  And those patterns may remain the same for several days...or not.  Those wascally wipers and walleyes pretty much do whatever they want...according to their own schedules.

I have been trying to get back up there to try out some new goodies I have been playing with.  But Mama Nature keeps having hot flashes and/or hissy fits and my float tube prefers calmer and more comfy conditions.  Maybe next week some day.  Maybe.

Yes, we were finding lots of fish, not quite as many as Monday, they for sure they had lockjaw or our lures were running too deep. Early most of the fish were shallow, in the 3 to 10 ft range. We tried pulling shallow running lures, slow, fast and faster but it did not help. As far as the depth the larger fish were cruising, they were all over the place, depending on the location. Early most were shallow, as I said above, later in the morning, we were finding them at mid depth and in one location we found a lot near the bottom or right on the bottom. We fished all depths depending on where we were seeing the fish. We even tried worm harnesses using some of your hand painted blades, in that area where we were marking fish either on or near the bottom but the cats or what ever they were, didn't even seem interested. 
We were thinking the same thing about the morning vs evening bite thing, so maybe the evening bite could be better.
Hopefully you will do better, if you make it up here next week. We think it was just one of those days.

Sometimes we have to accept that it was "just one of those days".  Usually there is no single identifiable factor that contributes to either a bananner day or an oh %$#@ day.  Always helps to have a good variety of offerings and to try different presentations...at different speeds and depths.  At the end  of the day you might still not know what worked best...but you dang sure know a whole bunch of things that didn't.

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Well said Tube dude.

And as you know I am no stranger to the skunk smell at Willard, but I have an arsenal now of lets go try this and see if it works. LOL.

Last outing nothing really worked very well and the only pattern that was consistent was trolling the rocks. Picked up tons of nice cats and 4 of our walleye doing that. The wipers were far and few between throughout the day and we picked up the two biggest right before dark.

We are going to try to drift fish some mussels tomorrow in an area I think the wipers are holding in. While those are soaking we will cast some crankbaits using different retrieves to see if we can get anything that way.

I like the thrill of the chase and trying to figure out what to do to catch fish. I have caught the biggest wiper out of Willard casting crank baits to the rocks and using a reel and pause retrieve to try to bring it down the rocks in steps without getting hooked in the rocks. I haven't even done that this year so I might as well give it a go first thing in the morning.

To each there own. I will report back Sunday morning if not tomorrow evening.

fnf

Looking forward to your report.  With the limitations of my float tube I'm pretty well confined to fishing along the rocks and casting rather than trolling.  Almost always do okay on cats and sometimes I find a few of the other guys.  There are even times when I do better "up close and personal" than the guys dragging cranks at mach 3 all over the lake.  So when the wipers and walleyes are not going for the steady movement of a trolled lure, it can be effective to do some casting...with a varied retrieve.

There is a little trick I discovered while living in Arizona...fishing for white bass and stripers.  If they are suspending at middepth and not hitting anything you throw at them, try making a long cast beyond the fish and letting your sinking lure settle to the bottom.  Once it touches down, start cranking hard and burn it back up through the fish.  After a few of these retrieves you may feel a bump or two, but don't set the hook.  Wait until you have them riled up enough to grab hold and load up the rod.  And once they get agitated it can be fast action.  This works good with lipless cranks and with good action tail plastics.  It really is like a cat and mouse thing.