10-25-2015, 04:25 PM
Fished Strawberry yesterday with Barry and Troy. It was a great day of catching, beautiful weather and great company. The first stop was a non-producer and we were fighting the light breeze trying to move into it with the Minn Kota.
I decided to move to where the wind was blowing from so that we wouldn't needlessly run down the trolling motor. On the way to the end of the bay I noticed a boat anchored up and fishing in really shallow water (we're talking probably 5 to 6' deep water). Decided to anchor up (love the virtual anchor) around a block from them and see if the fish were in shallower. We were in 12.5' of water and from then (about 8:00 AM to about 1:00 PM) it was highly unusual to go 5 minutes without getting a bite. We had numerous doubles and came close several times to having triples.
During the week I had gotten the jig hook on one of my rods hooked into some cloth and so I had bent the barb down in order to get it out of the clothing. Of course, that was the primary rod I was fishing with at the start and lost three fish in a row. The last one I lost I believe was the largest fish I have had on my line at Strawberry.[frown]
I went through two bags of minnows, one bag of shrimp, and over a dozen night crawlers. We caught fish on tubes tipped with cut bait, shrimp, night crawlers, and meal worms. We caught them vertically, under a bobber, casting and reeling up in the water column, and casting and bouncing back to the boat. I noticed that when I made a cast, and put my rod in the rod holder to hook a fish on my second rod that was hanging vertically, that I often looked up to see the rod that I had just cast bent over. A light bulb turned on in my brain and I tried a different method of casting and bouncing back with great success. I would cast as far as I could cast, and let my tube drop to the bottom, lift my rod to bounce it back towards me a little, and then let it sit about 5 to 10 seconds before bouncing it again and repeating the process.
About 1:30, the bite slowed way down and we moved around trying to find the fish again. We had little success for a couple hours until locating a decent school of them again to end the day. We were off the water about 5:30.
Algae was thick, except where we fished at the end, and the fish didn't seem to mind at all. Water temperature ranged between 53 and 55 degrees.
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I decided to move to where the wind was blowing from so that we wouldn't needlessly run down the trolling motor. On the way to the end of the bay I noticed a boat anchored up and fishing in really shallow water (we're talking probably 5 to 6' deep water). Decided to anchor up (love the virtual anchor) around a block from them and see if the fish were in shallower. We were in 12.5' of water and from then (about 8:00 AM to about 1:00 PM) it was highly unusual to go 5 minutes without getting a bite. We had numerous doubles and came close several times to having triples.
During the week I had gotten the jig hook on one of my rods hooked into some cloth and so I had bent the barb down in order to get it out of the clothing. Of course, that was the primary rod I was fishing with at the start and lost three fish in a row. The last one I lost I believe was the largest fish I have had on my line at Strawberry.[frown]
I went through two bags of minnows, one bag of shrimp, and over a dozen night crawlers. We caught fish on tubes tipped with cut bait, shrimp, night crawlers, and meal worms. We caught them vertically, under a bobber, casting and reeling up in the water column, and casting and bouncing back to the boat. I noticed that when I made a cast, and put my rod in the rod holder to hook a fish on my second rod that was hanging vertically, that I often looked up to see the rod that I had just cast bent over. A light bulb turned on in my brain and I tried a different method of casting and bouncing back with great success. I would cast as far as I could cast, and let my tube drop to the bottom, lift my rod to bounce it back towards me a little, and then let it sit about 5 to 10 seconds before bouncing it again and repeating the process.
About 1:30, the bite slowed way down and we moved around trying to find the fish again. We had little success for a couple hours until locating a decent school of them again to end the day. We were off the water about 5:30.
Algae was thick, except where we fished at the end, and the fish didn't seem to mind at all. Water temperature ranged between 53 and 55 degrees.
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] Way to show us how its done.
