Trav's Fishing Report

[Trav]

I started slow but finished strong.

It took me a long time to find a pattern today. We put in at Nemo and found most the water was between 65 and 68 degrees. You would think perfect huh?

It was a flip flop of what I expected.

They were still deep, very deep. After spending hours working points, bluffs, inlets, flats and humps, using everything in my arsenal, I had little to show for my efforts.

As the day warmed we found a few short stretches of deep banks which would hover between 68 and 70 degrees and it turned out to be the key. I picked up few incidental bass in these areas with a deep diver earlier in the day but dismissed them since the areas were so far and few between.

The only way to describe it would be small pockets of doldrums. Where the wind switched on the main lake but didn’t quite get any consistent breeze from any one direction.

You could literally drift in and out and north to south like some crisscross circle.

Eventually, scratching my head, we returned to where I found those fish and forced myself to slow down with a grub, starting with fifteen feet of water and working myself into thirty feet.

You had to do it painstakingly slow and very close to the bottom, almost bouncing the floor every six inches but never pausing to let it rest. It only took a single catch and there would be a quick frenzy by others who would get excited about the action. Then you could quicken your retrieve and run your grub higher in the water column. Yet you had to continue to work over fifteen to thirty feet of water.

After a few excited fish you would then have to reposition the boat to approach the area with the same angles but when you did you had to start real slow again and initiate the next little frenzy bite. Then reposition and repeat again. Tedious but it was the only game for bass I could find and it was productive. The last hour of daylight was the best.

Like on the James arm of the Rock two weeks ago, there wasn’t a female in the bunch. Just buck bass holing up in little groups. And like The Rock two weeks ago, I am going to predict they are on the verge. We need those night time temps to stay above fifty for a week and it will be on.

Just an observation…..

The traffic was very light on bass. I found close to seventy percent of those who were on the water today were crappie fishing. Some of the guys were complaining they only caught twenty to thirty keeper crappies, so I take it the crappie have been very good there the past week or so and the colder nights have slowed them down a bit.

Not a word on the walleye or muskie.

And the whites seem to continue to be running deep. The deep water humps which I am accustomed to working were packed with fish. Huge schools of bait and the graph showed hundreds of stalkers in the thirty to fifty foot range. Probably, the majority were walleye and whites. I couldn’t get any of them to budge though.

I found areas between the humps and the shore where there were huge fish on the graph just sitting on the bottom in twenty-five to thirty feet. Those I can promise you are the muskie, which is very typical for this time of year. They seem to be on track for a normal pattern. Look for them to start tailing the surface in mid May to early June like they do every year.

It is a matter of time for sure.

When those deep fish start moving they will have a lot of missed time to catch up on. Usually by the end of March they have already started spreading out, but not this year. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if all of the fish at Pomme bust loose all at once. It very well could be a good May this year.

A hyper multispecies rampage is quite likely.

This is bad news for the LM spawn though. Just as those big females go to the beds they will be bum rushed by the competitive species when usually they do a better job of spreading out the season. I am not concerned with it however, Pomme had an exceptional spawn the last couple years. I would say their numbers are probably twice what they were five years ago. A little competition will probably make the population stronger in the long run.

Do expect a lot more from Trav on Pomme in the next couple months. I will be watching it very close.

[conman]

Thanks for the report Trav, nice job figuring out a pattern. After a slow Sat morning, things picked up very nice for us Sat afternoon and continued on Sunday. Fishing mostly Senkos and Shakey Heads on points near spawning coves. Nothing big. Averaged 1 keeper for every 9 caught, but keepers were barely over 13" with only one over 15. I think you are right, things are getting ready to bust loose.

Chris