April Fool’s Fishing

[Ham]

It was a VERY Long time in the coming, but I finally got my Hobie Pro Angler 12 in the water. 
there will be a learning curve I am sure, but it went pretty well as far as the boat goes. I won’t be bench pressing it any time soon, but I can manipulate it on and off the truck OK. I got a set of wheels if I need to drag it around very far or over abrasive terrain. 
I would rather it had not been so windy for the debut, but I went anyway. I went to  Oxbow off the Black River that I had been wanting to fish for quite a while. It has a “ramp”, but I didn’t trust it with a 20 ft Waldo. I could see me bogging the trailer in gumbo mud alone on BFE.

water was stained, but looked very fishy. I had 4 bait casters ready. Spinnerbait, Squarebill crankbait, Chatterbait, And Buzzbait. 
I fished the outside edges of the cypress trees. The inside row of cypress trees. I fished the inside edge of the lake. I fished laydowns and stumps. 
I changed size and color of spinnerbaits and crankbaits. 
I fished for hours and never had a bite.

so, I relocated. 
my goal for the day was 10 fish. I did not start fast.

i switched spots and switched to fly rods. 
I got a red spotted sunfish and a warmouth pretty quickly. 
I saw a bunch of small gar and eventually caught a couple of small ones. 
The larger ones played hard to get. 
I saw a bowfin, but I could not get it to eat. I saw some common carp and they trolled me pretty hard.

i rounded out my numbers with more panfish and went home. I got really irritated with the wind. The Hobie does well with prefab drive or a paddle. Very stable but responds well. It does catch a lot of wind. 
good to get out. Good to fish old school. I wish I could have gotten a few fish in the bait casters.

 

[ness]

Cool looking water!

[FishnDave]

With big ol' sunfish like those on patrol... I can see why the bowfin were spooky.  And those sunfish and small gar probably had the bass  all scared and pinned into a corner somewhere.  

[Ham]

8 hours ago, ness said:

Cool looking water!

Man, I sure thought so. It is flooded by the Black River almost every year and I thought would help with fish populations, but I didn’t see much and caught even less. 

[Ham]

43 minutes ago, FishnDave said:

With big ol' sunfish like those on patrol... I can see why the bowfin were spooky.  And those sunfish and small gar probably had the bass  all scared and pinned into a corner somewhere.  

I saw way more bass than I did Bowfin. 🙁

I have plenty of other places to bass fish.