I thought about hitting LJ in the morning to test out the boat fix. On the morning of the 4th, I finished sealing up the seams and was ready for it to dry by my shakedown run. I actually flipped past the news and saw hours and hours of lines and too many people down at the beach, so I decided to opt for a little lake fishing. With the boat sitting for 3 months, something is always bound to freezer up or not work and with the guys working on my center console, they were also bound to potentially break something without knowing since this boat has a bunch of little intricacies.
I headed out to Jennings and there were a few boats dropping in. No sweat as I wasn't on a timeline.
The lake was beautiful but awfully warm and sunny. First thing I noticed was my newly installed bait pump was on but not pumping so I guess I have a air leak in the line somewhere. I did get it to go so I know it works, but air is getting in somewhere.
Second was the trolling motor. I would occasionally get the spot lock to work, but the motor wasn't responding. I think I have a loose wire somewhere not giving it 24V of power since it turns left no matter which arrow I hit on the remote and then just beeps and does nothing.
In any case, that makes fishing pretty damn tough in this lake.
I cruised around a bit and only saw 5 bass total all morning. I hooked the first one for all of 1 second and had another appear out of the blue when I was ripping my bait in to cast again. Other than that, they didn't want anything to do with my creature bait or anything else I put in front of their face.
I moved around and found a big submerged brush pile with what looked like fish on it. There was no wind, so I knew I could cast there for a bit.
A few casts in and I hooked a small bass but he wasn't big enough to pop the worm hook out of the creature bait. I switched to a night crawler and went to fly line it in his face when a swarm of bluegill came up of all sizes! I was going to keep a few but decided to just release as I caught well over a dozen before that little bass decided he didn't want all of the bluegill feeding without him and I got a little 11" bass on the crawler.
Then I see explosions out in the middle of the lake! They looked like stripers, but definitely weren't largemouth!
I metered some big fish and tried everything but no luck. The lake is in an apparent shad spawn as there were tons of wiggles with eyes out there all over the lake. I even started trolling but nothing.
I called it quits when I started burning to a crisp and found out the lake has Wipers in it. I do remember a picture with someone catching one a few years back, but apparently there are still a population in there that like the mid water column.
Looks like I have a new target when I finally get the trolling motor and bait pump situation resolved. At least the center console seems rigid and safe again!
I'll get pics up later, but I'm here at work at the moment.
Thanks for reading!
I bet it feels good to get the boat back in action 8)
Hopefully the minor things are a quick fix and you will be set for the rest of the season.
Good call on avoiding the chaos at the salt pond, I can only imagine ::) ;D The Youtube channels will be fun to see after the 4th ;D