3-4-11 Fishing Report

[Stoneroller]

Took the yaks out to break in the upgrades I made to mine over the 'off' season, sonar and rudder mostly, and to check out my new rods and reels. We put in at Carlock point, water temp was 50 degrees. wind was out of south at 20 gusting to 25-30. overcast, 60 degree air temps, 30.10 inches of Hg and falling. put in at 11:30am fished till 4:30pm.

started throwing a squarebilled sexy shad colored crankbait. also tried a white 4 inch grub, a blue and black jig and craw, and a gizzard shad bleeding jerkbait. steve and bob both caught a couple of small bass on black and yellow roostertails. So i switched to a chartreuse safety pin style spinnerbait with a brass willow blade and a chrome oklahoma blade. at this point, i was down, first fish, most fish, and most # of species (bob caught a small bluegill too). we were all floating withing 40 or so feet of each other and chatting about this or that. I tossed the spinner bait over towards the shore near the leeward side of the hill we were near and bam! fish on! I reeled it and it was a nice fat 15 inch largemouth. encouraged, and now sporting the biggest fish, i started looking for similar areas. the next cove we went into I hooked up with another nice fish around 15 inches or so, but it spit my spinner bait on the first jump. I was pretty disappointed because landing that fish would have cemented, biggest and most fish 'awards' for me. (we have a gentlemen's style bet on first, biggest, most, and most species of fish caught on each outing)

steve, being the blood sucking vulture that he is, comes over and starts hogging my water. the next cast after I lost my fish, steve hooks up with a decent 13-14 inch largemouth. it stays on the hook long enough for him to give me a gloating glance and wry smile, one of those "yeah, you just got owned" kind of looks. Guess the fish gods didn't appreciate that and his fish spits the hooks. 4-5 casts later he hooks up with another largemouth in the 13-15 inch range and before he can ruin his karma, this fish spits his lure too.

water temp where we caught our fish, which was closer to the warm water discharge was in the 66-60 degree range. we saw some larger shad breaking the surface occasionally, looked like singles, and i suspect it was small groups of gizzard shad breeding in the 1-3 shallow areas that had quick access to deeper water, but only saw that in the 60+ degree areas. Thanks to the girlfriend looking out for me, she messaged us with just enough time to spare, to let us konw that the storm was headed our way. we managed to get all our butts off the water just before the first lightning strikes could be seen and got everything loaded up and pulled out of the parking are just as it went dark and the rain began to pour.

[montana angler]

I have been fishing with a friend and he was saying lets go to whatever cove (some nickname) do you know where i could find a map with these names on it?