Weekend Report

[Garry2Rs]

When I let my dog, Buck, out at about 6:30 on Saturday morning it was cold and rainy.

 

I made some breakfast, turned on the TV, and started to write a shopping list.

At 9:30 my neighbour, Mike, and his eight year old daughter, Natalie, showed up. I'm retired and Mike works from home, so during the summer, the three of us fish together 3 or 4 times a week.

 

 

They pointed out that the sky was showing some large blue patches, there was sunshine, and they claimed, the rain was finished for the day. Their truck was going "shoe shopping" with his wife and older daughter, so if I didn't want to go fishing, they had to go shoe shopping too...a fate worse than death!!!

I was a little suspicious of their weather predictions, but figured what the heck, riding in the boat is always better than riding the couch.

 

We decided to try Lake Chandos, 20 minutes east of my place. With the cooler weather of these past few days, we hoped that some of the big Pike might have returned to the shoals. The public launch is into a creek off #620. We hit the water around 11 o'clock and headed toward West Bay.

 

By one o'clock, we needed to get out of the wind for awhile. The sun was gone, we had seen a couple of sprinkles of rain and the breeze had picked up to a strong north wind that was making it feel colder. By now we had worked a couple of shoals, a point, and some docks and rocks. We had found no Pike, only a couple of Smallmouth. The docks and rocks, produced nothing...not even a Rock Bass!?!? In the open, the wind was shoving us around and it was getting pretty miserable. The little kid had stowed her rod and pulled her hands inside her sleeves, she didn't complain, but that has to be a clue than you need to find some shelter for awhile, Right? Okay, okay, my fingers were wet and pretty cold too! GRIN.

 

 

The north shore of West Bay has many small coves and inlets so we pulled into one of these, to give ourselves a break. Casting from the calmer water back to the wind blown edges of the opening produced a couple of SM. Bass, and we found two Large Mouth and some Rock Bass tucked in tight to the shoreline cover. We worked the cover over with 4 inch Wacky worms and a curly-tail Shaky worm on a Crappie jig...assuming that with the cold front the bait would have to land right on their noses to get a hit.

 

I might note here, that I had lost two or three bass that had gone air-born and thrown the little hook on my jig...More to the point, I had no fish in the boat and the little girl was riding me pretty good...grin.

 

Now that we had defrosted, we were still interested in Pike and figured we needed to fish the windy side of the lake to find them. Leaving the sheltered area we crossed West Bay. I finally broke my skunk with a 30 something Pike on a crankbait cast parallel to a wind swept point, that came off a rockpile in open water. Before the rain drove us off the water at around 3:30, we had a one more heavy bass in the boat ( three pounds?) and a couple that came off the finesse worm close to the boat.

 

I seemed to be suffering from what you might call "premature-release"...HAHAHA

 

Sunday looked like a better day. The sun was shinning and the winds were calm. Over night they had swung around to blow out of the south. Mike and Natalie came over at 8:30. Stony was today's destination and the objective was to jig the shoals for Smallies and hopefully some Walleye.

 

It took us 20 minutes to reach the public launch at Mt. Julian on the north shore. Once at the launch, we found the breeze had become stronger, but we were dressed warmly and with the sun shinning, the day felt quite pleasant. Although we intended to fish shoals, we started shallow, working some docks and rocks near the launch. The weeds are covered with moss, and we didn't find any fish until we tried a couple of rocks. Following that pattern, and returning to our game-plan, we moved off shore to check-out a group of rocks and the saddles between them. These mid-lake rocks were barren today.

First thing this morning I had two premature releases...again...grin.

When we moved westward, toward a big island that had a small island beside it, I replaced my Crappie jig with a slightly heavier one with a larger hook. On the edge of the saddle, between the two islands, I landed a nice Smallmouth of about two pounds. It came from between the weeds and rocks. This was on the wind-blown side, so we moved into the wind, to a location infront of the small island and dropped anchor. From this point we could cast the whole windward side effectively. We caught one more Bass and missed a couple of hits that might have been dinks.

 

There was another Bass boat in the area, that had come from the lea-side of the large island. Rather than circle the island, possibly fishing the waters they had just left, we opted to head toward the middle of the lake, where there was another rock pile, with a saddle to a small island with a single cottage. Again I dropped the anchor. We found four Smallies, one small LM. Bass, and a couple of good size Perch that took our baits at this location. Mike also had a premature release on a Walleye, so we stayed on that spot for quite awhile hoping he had friends...

 

Today it was Natalie's turn to be skunked...Aw, Sweet Revenge!...grin.

 

Around 2:30 we weighed anchor and let the wind push us back to the big island. On the west side, we found a sheltered area and Natalie pulled a three pounder out from beside a rock in shallow water using a watermelon/chartreuse tail Wacky worm. We caught a couple more small ones before calling it a day at 3:30. They had strict orders to be home for supper at 4PM.

 

Sum-up the weekend it feels like this:

The fishing was slow, but we all caught a few...so that's a positive.

The Cold Front definitely had the fish in a passive state and holding tight to cover.

Finesse techniques may have saved both days, since only two bass and the Pike hit anything else we offered.

Fall is here, some of the shallow weeds are dead...

And more Philosophically:

The moss in Stony will keep me off that lake until I hear it's gone.

It was 100 degrees in Yuma Arizona yesterday and I have a trailer there...that's still too warm, but with a 97 cent dollar and this cooler than normal weather...well, it's got me thinking...GRIN...Garry2R's

[douG]

Thanks for the report, 2Rs.

 

As for the last picture, MEEP MEEP.

Edited September 17, 2007 by douG

[misfish]

You havent lost a thing on your reporting of reports Garry.

Thanks for sharing bud.

 

Looks like Buck has lost some wieght there aswell.

[Guest mistyriver1]

Great report Garry.

 

Thanks for sharing.

[Krisco]

Looks like you had a great weekend Gary, thanks for the report. I'm heading up to Chandos on Sunday for 6 days myself. Hopefully I'll find them.

[Guest Johnny Bass]

Great Report Garry! I was thinking of going to Chandos last weekend but we(I) changed our minds last minute. It was certainly a tough weekend for fishing, but like you said. Always better than staying home!

[Roy]

I saw your report earlier but didn't have time to read it. I just did that now. That Saturday looks pretty dreary and it seems as though you really worked for your fish. Thanks for the great report and pics. You know of course that that little girl will remember you for the rest of her life. Good on ya. Nice seeing Buck again too.

[MuskyBill]

Great report, Garry!

 

I felt like I was right there....

[Spiel]

It was 100 degrees in Yuma Arizona yesterday and I have a trailer there...that's still too warm, but with a 97 cent dollar and this cooler than normal weather...well, it's got me thinking...GRIN...Garry2R's

 

 

....Ah come on Garry, the weather is finally shaping up for some fall steelie fishing and 100* anywhere is too hot.

 

That being said thanks for the report.

[Terry]

great report

[ccmtcanada]

Awesome report! I felt like I was there with you...well almost....I'm pretty comfy and warm here in my office....haha.

 

Great job out there, in tough fishing conditions.

[Garry2Rs]

Thanks for all the kind words guys...Blush...Grin.

Garry2R's

Edited September 19, 2007 by garry2rs