09-11-2023, 08:51 PM
Beautiful morning out there today: calm and 55 degree air, 66 degree water. Only one other boat prepping in the lot when I launched, and I was first out. Tried four different lures, all guaranteed to catch smallmouth. Only the Ned rig succeeded, and it only caught dinks. Had a lot of rattle-rattle bites that had to be perch, but no decent smallies at all. Talked to one pair of trout trollers who were quitting when I did, and they managed only one.
Still lots of waterlogged limbs on the bottom. Snag city everywhere. The good news is if you just pull slow and don't yank, you can usually get the snag to the surface. The lake is down about 12 feet from full and there's plenty of ramp and docks. Passed over one bit of brush that showed a dozen or so fish right around it - looked a lot like crappie would look - if there are crappie in Echo.
I don't know where the smallies went. If they went deep already I didn't look at anything below 30 feet because I don't like to winch them up from that deep.
Still lots of waterlogged limbs on the bottom. Snag city everywhere. The good news is if you just pull slow and don't yank, you can usually get the snag to the surface. The lake is down about 12 feet from full and there's plenty of ramp and docks. Passed over one bit of brush that showed a dozen or so fish right around it - looked a lot like crappie would look - if there are crappie in Echo.
I don't know where the smallies went. If they went deep already I didn't look at anything below 30 feet because I don't like to winch them up from that deep.