Fishing Report, Whitney Charters

Hello,

The roller coaster weather pattern lately has made the fishing a bit more challenging lately. This past weekend provided lots of opportunities to catch up on your rest if you weren't lucky enough to find a pocket of fish and stick with them. Catches on charters ranged from 1 to 15 fish per boat with the most wide spread success taking place Saturday evening. I'm not sure what made them decide to go into their attack mode but we had over 2 dozen fish on in 165 to 205 feet of water and other boats had equally fast action in 80 - 100 feet. Apparently the fish are getting smarter and have finally realized that alewives taste just as good later in the day as they do at dawn. The most active rigs I had were a rigger set at 68' with a Fuzzy Bear gold Alley Cat (mag), a Fuzzy Bear silver Alley Cat (mag) on a 450 copper, the Hello Darlin Super Slim on a 10 color lead core, a Super Slim Jager Bomb behind a standard size Dipsy fished 100' back on 3, and a Trash Can dodger with a yellow/red dot Spin-n-Glo set from 180' to 235' down with a 14 lb weight. All of these produced throughout the weekend for us. Our best trolls were due east and west with a 2.5 mph over ground on the west troll and 3.1 mph on the east troll. The guys inside were doing well on similar spoons with their divers and 150' to 250' coppers and full cores doing most of the work. I'm hoping the brief cool front the last couple days will keep good numbers of fish in similar areas for the upcoming weekend but things will likely be very different by Monday. Look for trout to begin to settle in near bottom in the 100 to 200 foot depths and keep at least one rod set for them to keep something happening.

The news for inland fisherman with the weekend off couldn't be much better. The recent warm weather has excellent numbers of very aggressive spawning bluegills showing up in 1 to 4 feet of water on just about every local body of water. Check county park websites for areas near you for easy access. Bass are feeding heavily too and with the opener this weekend it should be a lot of fun fishing for them with just about every type of method you know. My favorite is to toss a larger floating Rapala near a weed line and work it like a wounded bait fish on the surface. My kids usually out fish me with Wacky Worms and jigs but I like surface action better. Catfish continue to entertain us as we relax around the marina so if nothing else is biting, find a spot along the river bank and bait a hook with just about any type of meat from your refrigerator or fresh minnow chunks from the bait store and hold on.

The pier is a great place to spend some time when the sun is out and the temps are high but fishing won't likely be the best part of your trip. However, if you toss a crawler into the channel side and fish it on the bottom I'm sure you'll catch a few catfish and sheep head but it's a tough place to get perch or salmon from lately. You may find a few bass around the rocks though so if you want to try a little casting bring a few jigs or medium to deep diving body baits and fish parallel to the pier.

Regardless of what you do this weekend though, take a moment to reflect on the reason for the holiday.

Best of luck,

Matt