posted on August 26, 2013 15:04
Hello,
Thank goodness for all this new technology! My son has been able to post reports to our Facebook page as we head in from fishing on a fairly regular basis. This is a good thing as we've been running twice a day for as long as I can remember (I'm old so that's only a few weeks) with no down time for me to write and because by the time the "ink" dries the information in the report has been made obsolete by the fish. August has been consistently inconsistent and from the looks of the weather forecast that pattern will hold true for a while yet. I'll try to pass along the few things that have been fairly reliable. If you're looking for a big king fish the 80 - 120' depths as long as there's cool water there. Big fish have been hanging in this area for nearly a month and while there's not always many there it seems to be the spot that always gives up the biggest fish. Meat rigs have taken a good number of these fish with colors changing daily. Early in the morning a good bet is a 10" glow pattern Spin Dr. with a Moo Moo rig. After the sun pops up it's anybody's guess but the Fat Nancy with UV Ice rig has taken a vacation on my boat lately and White with double slick or fish scale tape and the purple meat rig have picked up some of the slack for Nancy. I've spent a considerable amount of time in less than 70 fow the past couple weeks and meat rigs have not been really active for me. Coho's have been around in good numbers and have provided pretty consistent action throughout the day and have ignored water temperatures often biting in water nearly 70 degrees. While fishing the skinny water the Pearl with Black Dot Tomics, Wonderbread J-Plugs and the Red Headed/Chrome J-Plug in the number 3 size have been permanent fixtures on my lead cores in lengths from 3 - 10 colors and 150' copper lines. The best spoons lately, regardless of location, have been the Freekin Veggie, Orange Killer, Hello Darlin, Green Mongoose and Blue Dolphin in the standard Stinger and Super Slim Dreamweaver sizes. These baits have been good on lead cores too but they've been hot on my braided line Dipsies fished from 75 - 125' back. For those that like to fish Paddles and flies, don't despair as all that money has not gone to waste. The 11" White Double Slick Paddle with a No See-um Fly or other white/clear fly pattern has been pretty reliable lately too. In the last few days white rotators with kelly green tape paired with a Green Crinkle, Pickled Sunshine or Frosted Fern fly pattern have also fooled a fair number of fish. A number of people have tried deeper water over the last week and the results have been mixed. Saturday night was very good in the 150 - 170' range with excellent numbers of steelhead taken by the few boats that were there to chase them. Coppers in 100 - 300' lengths were apparently top producers with plenty of orange spoons doing the work. We set up shallow Sunday as our Saturday night was filled with action in 45 -65 fow. By 8:30 things were not going well so I pulled and ran to the steelhead hot spot only to find that this area was already looking pretty deserted. We wandered out as far as 220 but after several hours all we found were a few small pockets of fish in the 150 - 170' range. Our customers gamely tried a little chumming and fish calling in the southerly swells but even the extra effort went largely unnoticed.
As many of you are aware, the perch fishing over the past couple weeks has been good to great around the piers and out to 35 fow. Minnows, alewives, shrimp chunks, worms and just about anything else on a hook seemed to be working for bait. Early morning and late afternoon seemed to produce the biggest fish according to the few people I know that had time to fish for the tasty invaders. The warm water currently marching in will unfortunately slow this fishery down but someday, when fall temps return to our area, we'll hopefully get to welcome these guys back to town for another feast.
The catfish are back and the big ones, 4 - 7 lbs, are hungry. A couple of the guys with private boats at our dock have been grabbing spawn off the cleaning table, sticking it on a hook and chucking it in around the marina (slips with 7 - 9' of water were best) and having a blast. I'm pretty good with a fillet knife but it seemed like more bait was needed each time I grabbed another fish to clean. Apparently there was quite a catfish fry one evening but I have no idea how it turned out as I was on the lake again and there weren't any leftovers when I came back in. I had to settle for one of the few remaining cold beverages that had survived the crowd instead.
Good Luck this week and have a super Labor Day Weekend!
Matt