NBC At Willard 8-26-21

[TubeDude]

Met up with Lee at the north marina this morning.  Wow.  The tide is going out fast.  Had to launch in the far west corner with my tube.  Too much "ramp snot" to launch on the slick concrete.  Air temp at 7 am launch was a nice 60...warming to 80 by noon departure.  Water temp was 69...gaining a couple of degrees by noon.  Depth in the channel going out was 7 feet. 



Was hoping for a multi-species day, but alas it was not to be.  No wipers, walleyes, crappies or other non-cat species were harmed today.  Okay, I did catch a small bullhead...along with the channel cats...but that don't count.  Only the second bullhead I have caught in recent years from Willard.

Lee and I split up and went different directions...both of us making S turns from shallow to deeper and fishing different lures and baits.  I was dragging a minnow-sweetened whirly flig on one rod and throwing plastics on the other.  Only had a couple of pop and drops before 8 am.  Then I caught my first cat on a blue back silver mini whirly flig.  And that turned out to be the lure dujour.  Although I rotated through several other colors, every cat (and bullhead) came on the blue-silver.













It was what I would call slow fishing for Willard.  Didn't find any concentrations of fish...that would bite.  Saw lots of bait balls and larger fish on sonar but saw a lot more than I caught.  There  were long gaps of time between bites.  And some bites were just WHAM and then nothing.  Not the typical gulp and go of catfish.  Lots of small dead shad in the water so I suspect the fish were mostly well fed and were not being aggressive.

Over the course of the morning, I worked water anywhere from 4 feet deep to over 12 feet deep.  Most of my hookups occurred in 10-11 feet of water.  But I did get some tentative "inquiries" in other depths.

As others have reported, there were a lot of dead baby shad on the surface of the lake.  But there were few birds actively working them.  I could swear I heard a nearby grebe burping.

Only one boat on the lake today...a fairly stout one.  And there was a 2-axle trailer in the lot when we came in.  So launching is still feasible for larger boats...as long as you stay in the middle of the ramp.

Last cat of the morning was fun.  I was almost all the way back in to the boat channel when the fish climbed on.  There were several young ladies on paddleboards passing nearby and they got all excited about me catching that fish.  I warned them that they needed to maintain wakeless speed...but I think my senior attempt at humor was largely wasted.  Anyway, that was the worst of the power squadron today.


Lee had a tougher time today and only had one fish between him and skunkdom.  But at least the smell of catfish is better than the other smell.  I ended up with five cats caught...and kept two for the table.  Could be worse.