Much more of the same. Things really haven't changed much one way or another for us. We are still working our butts off to come up with decent boxes of fish for all of our guests. The only difference this past week was that most days we had to do so under extremely harsh conditions. This heat wave that we have been under is really starting to get to me. On top of struggling with everything else that seems to be stacked against us this summer, I’ve just about had my fill now of sweat mixed with sun block running into my eyes and other body cavities where it just don’t belong. Exhausting, miserable and frustrating is about how I sum up my week this past week. Not nearly as tough for the others that are onboard each day because between bites they get a chance to duck under the hard top and get some shade. But for myself stuck in the back acting the part of both captain and first mate and overseeing everything including untangling crap and trying to work miracles with these stubborn fish this year, it was pretty brutal.
We had several days of eventual limit catches and a couple of near limit catches but all of the days were long hard drawn out affairs. The lake was quite rough several days as well even with the heat and that just made for even tougher fishing. Tough to stand, tough to stay on the fish and very tough trolling into the waves when we had to turn on them. Maybe I’m just wearing down or something. I don’t know. I’ve all but given up on the big schools of Walleye magically appearing this late into summer already making for easy fishing. It’s really hard to get excited knowing that each day is going to be yet another beating. But somehow I pull it together each day, put on as a happy face as possible and go to work. But it wouldn’t make me mad if somebody turned down this freakin heat some! Sheeze! Enough already with the 90 degree plus days!
I think one of the more frustrating things for me that seems to be going on right now is the lack of a good pre dawn bite. I’ve had no problem getting my crews to show up at 4am but I’ve had a real problem getting the fish to go good until well after the sun comes up here as of late. It seems like we manage to catch one or two monsters each day in the pre dawn darkness and then we ride around forever before rods start to bend again. It never used to be like that in past Augusts of other years. Heck, it wasn’t like that earlier this summer! It just seems like everything is different this summer especially this month. Maybe somehow this is all tied in with this big heat wave? I don’t know but I’m not liking it. No strong early morning bite right now pretty much insures us that we are going to be out all day long and fishing in the heat of the day. If things don’t start popping better in the dark this coming week, I think I’m going to adjust our departure times accordingly. It’s about time to roll it back some anyway as it’s starting to stay dark longer and longer now each morning as we approach summers end.
We did have one interesting thing happen to us this past week aboard “The Trophy”. We caught a nice monster Walleye maybe 28-29 inches long that still had a rather fresh 11 inch Walleye stuck in his throat! Walleyes eating other Walleyes! It was one of the small one year old Walleyes that seem to be everywhere in the lake right now no matter where you go . Is that what’s going on? Are there so many of the baby Walleyes in the lake right now that the big Walleyes are simply turning on them? Feeding on the zillions of little ones that are polluting the lake to the point where they could care less about our lures? The things that make you go hmmmm! I know that I’ve never seen so many little Walleyes before in all of my years on the lake. I also know that I’ve never seen the Walleye fishing this tough before out this way in August. Coincidence? I don’t know. I don’t think anybody does. I do know that most everybody likes a good conspiracy story and maybe this one will be mine! Yup, that’s it! Their not hitting our lures because they are ALL full from eating other little Walleyes! That’s my story and I’m sticking to it! Lol! Stay tuned!
Capt. Walt
Celebrating Our 30th Season!
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