Lincoln 4/22/23

[catchinon]

Hook_sets and I fished out of Lincoln Beach on Saturday morning. We were the second boat out. Phong had tried for a white bass off the end of the ramp but no luck. It was cold. Water temperature was between 45° and 47° all day under overcast skies. We started off strolling out toward the island. Phong caught a cookie cutter which we put in the live well. It was dead other than that little one so we left off trolling and went to Bird Island. We looked for the deep holes on the west side and achored up there. I put out two rigs for catfish and Phong deployed one. With his other rod he cast a chartruese curly tail for walleye. He had no luck for them working the bottom. He lost a few lures to the rocks but everytime he just tied on another one and went back to casting. As he was doing that he intermittently caught three more cats. I experimented with a few different baits and finally switched back to white bass but still got no love. Depths varied from six to eight feet and got puckerish shallow at some points while we maneuvered around to find the holes. 

I took Phong in at 11:30 and picked up Mooseman for the afternoon shift. We went out a few hundred yards and started strolling parallel to the orchards. A couple of times we got blown in closer to shore where the rocks hung us up. I finally got a cat on. It was 28", the third one I've caught this year; I could almost stretch her to 28.5 for a bump but, alas, it was not to be. Justin had to take the skunk home but he said he was happy to just get a break from his kids. There was a "walleye chop" all day and my back got sore from the constant motion, and Justin's sugar was getting low so we headed back early.