Willard--Anybody Lose These?

[fishday]

Went to Willard on Saturday and was the first vehicle at the north marina ramp 6am. Never have I seen the water that high up on the ramp. The weather was fine and bugs not so bad. Started out near the light pole and got one smaller eye after about a half hour. With no further love I moved to the north-northwest openness and came upon a pack of eyes. By 9:30 I had a limit of teen inch eyes and one around 20 something. 3 on a purple back shad imitation, 2 on a worm harness that has a fire tiger floating flatfish like head on it and one on a fire tiger scatter rap. My observation on the walleyes is that they were not on the bottom, or anywhere close.

I was hoping for a wiper or two so I dropped my stuff back another 10-20 feet and sped up some. After about 15 minutes my shad rap started going backwards so I thought I had finally snagged a decent wiper--snagged being the operative word. I reel it up and it feels heavy. What do I see after reeling in my 50 plus feet of line? My lure insnared in a rats nets of line with another lure--first picture with my lure in the middle. With that gob of line and lures at the tip of my rod I was done reeling but I still felt a good tug on my rod. What the heck? Snagged? I had already lost a worm harness on that snag near the light pole!! But no--I grabbed the tag end of the line and it was still pulling and wanted to wrap around my motor--jeez! After getting the rod and the line situated where I could get a good clear grip on the line I pulled in the remaining 20+ feet of line hand over hand. I thought for sure it was a nice wiper but low and behold it was a 21" cat with a big ole belly. It had a lure stuck in the corner of its mouth---middle pic. For its trouble I threw the fish back and started to unwind the mess. Never had that happen before. No luck on wipers by the time I left around noon.

My question is this--did anyone on here lose one or both of those lures? If so I would love to hear the story because I bet it was a fire drill on that boat when that cat took both those lures and broke them off. It looks like it was a fairly recent event judging by how clean everything was.
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[Bduck]

Where's the pic?
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[fishday]

Sorry I tried to put them inline but I guess it didn't work. They are not inline but they are there now.
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[wiperhunter2]

Great story and congrats on the limit of eyes. I had a similar experience last month but we got a wiper out of the deal[], here is a link to that post, incase you missed it:
http://www.bigfishtackle.com/cgi-bin/gfo...ead#unread
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[fishday]

Ya I saw that at the time. That was one lucky day and/or one hungry fish. Of course it was a wiper. If a fish out there breaks braided line you might be doing something wrong. The line on those lures I got was mono I think and a big wad at that. It was a strange deal for sure but I picked up a couple of almost new minnow imitations so it was worth the effort I guess. The lure in the fish's mouth was a Rapala.
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[wiperhunter2]

LOL, you cleaned up on lures, that's for sure, I'd gladly trade you a wiper for three lures[].
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[fishday]

LOL You would have to keep a wiper to make that trade. One of the lures was already tied to my line. I guess I could have lost it to that cat also, so in away I guess I did get three. Hopefully be able get back out there next week sometime.
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[wiperhunter2]

A lot of what we do was learned by trial and error, so it just takes time to figure it all out but it's always fun when you catch something unexpected like a couple of lures. One thing about fishing with lead core, make sure to have a least ten colors on your reel and some backing too, if you reel is large enough, that way if you get snagged, you can quickly turn around before you get spooled.
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[fishday]

Good advice and I agree you have try different things to find what works for you. I think my new lead core has 5 colors and plenty of backing. I had ten on with the last line and never used the last few.
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[wiperhunter2]

Unless you are fishing in very deep water most never use more than five colors but I was fishing at Lost Creek many many years ago, I put out 9 colors because we were marking fish about 90' deep, ended up catching an 8.5 lb cutt. Also before I got downriggers I did the same thing at the Gorge, so sometimes it pays off. One thing I do with my lead core line is after 5 years or so, I take it off my reel and put it on in the opposite direction, it looks like brand new line[], when down that way.
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