06-26-2006, 04:32 PM
Took my three sons out to Willard Saturday evening to see if we could catch a few cats. Decided not to take the boat and just fish from the south dike. Arrived at about 6:30 p.m. and put on a piece of carp meat under a bobber on my oldest sons pole and he cast it out about 15 feet. I turned around to bait the next pole and my son is yelling that his bobber is gone and I turn to see him holding on to his pole for dear life and his drag zinging out. The big fish was tearing up along the dike, but it was soon over, a snapped line. I got all the poles rigged with carp meat and we had a couple more takers and one cat landed, about 16". Then I started to notice the clouds of baby shad smimming just off the dike. Then I looked up the dike and the wipers were boiling, chasing these baby shad anywhere from right next to the dike to out a couple hundred yards. The shad were only about 1" long. These boils lasted until the sun went down. I had only brought a couple of lures along with us but we did bring two wipers to the shore. It seemed like they would smack the lure, or short striking, but we had a hard time getting hooks into them. I did hook a really large wiper that was taking drag, but the hook came out about 10' from shore. My oldest son caught his first wiper and was very proud. There were quite a few boats casting to the boils. I knew I should have brought the boat, (hindsight is always 20/20). It was neat to see the wipers in full feeding mode. You could always tell where the next boil was going to take place because those baby shad would start jumping like crazy to get out of the way, or out of the water in their case.
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]WOW three sons to take fishing.I would like to know what that was like. I just cant seem to get my wife or daughters interested in fishing with me. Sounds like you all had a ball.I was also out saterday in my boat on the East side. seen a few little boils but couldn't get the close with out spooking them. I ended up with only one wiper.