08-14-2016, 09:52 PM
This is more of a conditions report than a fishing report as we weren't able to entice any fish in the boat. My son and I hit Willard Saturday evening about 6pm. The parking was 3/4 full. Launching went fine and everyone was very courteous even with 4 boats across the ramp at a time launching. So, we headed out into the wash tub.
The water clarity is about 3ft with heavy algie in the water. Water temp was 79.8 degrees. It doesn't look like the pea soup we get at strawberry with the hunky chunky's in it. It's a finer blend. As we motored out, there are green foam bubbles all over the lake. I would slow down as I would come up to what would look like floating vegetation at a distance but as I got closer it was just bright green foam. Water depth was 15ft average with the deepest spot we fished at 18ft. The lake was very crowded so we decided not to troll with side planers out. Our plan was to wash mussels and watch the lake for boils to chase and see how the evening developed.
We went over to the feed lot and anchored up for about 1 1/2 hrs to wash mussels and keep a eye out for boils to chase. No bites and no boils.
So we pulled anchore and headed over to the light pole and anchored up to try our luck. No bites there either. We fished about 80 yards off shore as we could see big schools of shad on the sonar. We had 2 birds make a few dives for shad not more than a few feet off the shore line. I looked through my bino's and didn't see any disturbances under the water and no shad coming out of the water. The birds only dove for about 30 seconds then left. We watched a beautiful sunset and stayed out until dark.
The lake was calm as we headed in. As we got close to the north marina we watched some people damn near run their boat right up on shore at full throttle trying to find the entrance of the north marina. It amazes me that people stay out after dark and they have the required running lights on their boat but no spot light to see the shore line with. I have a spot light mounted on my bow and a hand held to watch the shore line. Anyway they ended up following me in to the marina.
When we were pulling the boat out of the water there were oh, about 3,000 mosquitos at the boat and truck (we were both sprayed down with deet 100 proof) I told my son he could stay in the truck while I trailered the boat, but when I turned around he was right there and asked what he could help with. He helped me get the boat loaded and everything tied down. Amazingly neither one of us got bit. I did have one mosquito that was determined I was going to eat him and stuck to the back of my throat like it was fly paper. I couldn't spit it out, I couldn't swallow it, I just sat and gaged until I barfed up about 1/2 my lunch... That took care of it.
Anyway, I had a great evening with my son even if we got skunked. I have never seen algie at Willard bay like this before but I am also fairly new to fishing it. Maybe someone that has fished it more can chime in. I ended up stopping by the car wash to wash the algie off the boat on the way home.
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The water clarity is about 3ft with heavy algie in the water. Water temp was 79.8 degrees. It doesn't look like the pea soup we get at strawberry with the hunky chunky's in it. It's a finer blend. As we motored out, there are green foam bubbles all over the lake. I would slow down as I would come up to what would look like floating vegetation at a distance but as I got closer it was just bright green foam. Water depth was 15ft average with the deepest spot we fished at 18ft. The lake was very crowded so we decided not to troll with side planers out. Our plan was to wash mussels and watch the lake for boils to chase and see how the evening developed.
We went over to the feed lot and anchored up for about 1 1/2 hrs to wash mussels and keep a eye out for boils to chase. No bites and no boils.
So we pulled anchore and headed over to the light pole and anchored up to try our luck. No bites there either. We fished about 80 yards off shore as we could see big schools of shad on the sonar. We had 2 birds make a few dives for shad not more than a few feet off the shore line. I looked through my bino's and didn't see any disturbances under the water and no shad coming out of the water. The birds only dove for about 30 seconds then left. We watched a beautiful sunset and stayed out until dark.
The lake was calm as we headed in. As we got close to the north marina we watched some people damn near run their boat right up on shore at full throttle trying to find the entrance of the north marina. It amazes me that people stay out after dark and they have the required running lights on their boat but no spot light to see the shore line with. I have a spot light mounted on my bow and a hand held to watch the shore line. Anyway they ended up following me in to the marina.
When we were pulling the boat out of the water there were oh, about 3,000 mosquitos at the boat and truck (we were both sprayed down with deet 100 proof) I told my son he could stay in the truck while I trailered the boat, but when I turned around he was right there and asked what he could help with. He helped me get the boat loaded and everything tied down. Amazingly neither one of us got bit. I did have one mosquito that was determined I was going to eat him and stuck to the back of my throat like it was fly paper. I couldn't spit it out, I couldn't swallow it, I just sat and gaged until I barfed up about 1/2 my lunch... That took care of it.
Anyway, I had a great evening with my son even if we got skunked. I have never seen algie at Willard bay like this before but I am also fairly new to fishing it. Maybe someone that has fished it more can chime in. I ended up stopping by the car wash to wash the algie off the boat on the way home.
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