Fishing Report 4-11-10

[sandmannd]

BigWade and I went out this morning for the fist open water of 2010 for us. We left my house around 5:30 and got to the Prescott Landing a little after six. I want to start by saying, I forgot how much fun watching a landing can be. My boat was pretty well setup before we got there. Just had to remove the straps and transom saver before we hit the water. There were a couple of folks in a Warrior ahead of us. We watched them back in and struggle to get the boat off the trailer. They had the motor running and opened up to back it off the trailer but it wouldn't budge. We backed up to the other side of the dock and by that time their truck was so far in the river that the exhaust pipe was just gurgling water.  confused2 Wade was backing the boat in and the guy in their boat started screaming at his buddy in the truck to pull out. He pulled up and it was very evident why the boat wouldn't come off the roller trailer, you see, you have to take the straps off it!! So they started cussing and yelling at it other.  headbang headbang

Our boat went right in and while I was waiting for wade another boat was coming in. They got it in the water, guy in the truck started pulling out and the guy by the boat started screaming. It would appear no one took the strap off the front of the boat on this one.  icon_thumright So more yelling at each other and they got the boat back in only to find they forgot the plug!  headbang headbang

OK, enough humor. After that and a bunch of laughing we putted away from the launch and headed out to fish. Now, my normal pattern is to put around with the trolling motor and locate the fish. So we moved around a little. First fish hit my dead stick with a chartreuse #6 hook and a crawler on it. Turned out just to be a Rock Bass but it was nice to get a fish on the rod again. Wade only used one rod with a gold 1/4 oz jig and fathead. My other rod had a pink 3/8 oz jig head and fathead. We moved around and both got a sauger at the same time. The first two saugers in the boat were only about 11" each, maybe 12 if you stepped on 'em so back they went.

We continued to move around and Wade started getting some good hits on his gold jig. I switched out to a gold blade bait and got no action off it. Wade pulled in a couple of small ones and then a decent 14-15 incher. I switched my gold blade bait out to a 3/8 oz gold jig head with a sea blue worm (plastic) on it. Got no hits and after watching Wade get a couple more small ones I switched and took off the plastic and put on a fathead.

By this time we had found our spot that was producing pretty well. Lots of action with very light bites and some fish coming here and there. So, using my trolling motor, we hovered in about a 10 foot area. Other boats were drifting down by us and then motoring back to drift. They weren't catching much, a fish here and there, but Wade and I continued to pull in fish every few minutes.  headbang

By this time we had about 3 keepers in the boat and had caught quite a few. Again, we were hovering in a very small area. Now we started to hear a few comments from folks in other boats. Most guys came buy and chatted a bit. One boat started whining that, while other boats were drifting up and down the channel, we chose to hover over "the Hot Spot". Um, DUH!!!!!!!  hmh We searched out fish, found where they were biting and stayed on that spot. That's pretty much the idea of fishing, correct?  confused2 So we just chuckled and continued fishing. We caught a couple of more off the jigs and my dead stick doubled over. Pulled it in and there was one of the nicer saugers of the day on it.

We pulled up and headed down river to one of my favorite back water areas. The farther down stream we got the faster the current was. Lots and lots of debris along the way. There were some mighty big deadheads along the way and if you were to hit them, you could get tossed pretty quickly. To put it a little into perspective, on the way down we were doing 34 mph and on the way back, wide open, it was hard to maintain 29 mph. So we got down to the spot and back in the slack there is a nice little 24 foot hole that holds some fish at most times. We noticed the current going in was quite heavy and as we went back into it, it was a pretty constant flow. Went back around to the hole and couldn't get the boat to sit in one area. I had the trolling motor on 10 and could manage .1 mph against the current and could hardly keep the boat straight. So we moved around down there a little but the current was so strong you couldn't get a line to hit bottom so we headed back up.

It was nice to get the boat out and stretch the motor out some with those runs. We got back to our original area, slotted back into the spot that produced but didn't manage anymore than a bite here or there. So we went back to the landing, loaded up the boat and headed home with a decent meal of fish for both of us.

It was a great day weather wise, great company and we managed about 20 saugers and a couple of small eyes with 5 decent sauger averaging about 14 inches for the day.