I had one day to fish this week and Tuesday was the day with cool temps, lurking storm center lurking overhead and light winds to start and picked up in the late morning. Air temps to start were 36 degrees and steam rising off of the water is always something that I enjoy seeing while out fishing.
The big boat has been put away for the winter and this trip marks the excursions out in the kayak to some of the smaller lakes and ponds. This time of year I generally start switching over to panfish and fishing with my ice gear in the kayak, but wanted to give a smallmouth lake a try today as well as some of the big crappies that swim in the lake.
This lake has been drawn down 6-8 feet already and kind of makes the lake quite a bit smaller when they do that. My objective today was to fish deep water and look for suspending fish there. Concentrated in water depths from 25 to 30 feet of water and as long as the winds hold off should be able to hover in these depths.
I usually fish with my Vexilar and hang the transducer over the side and then using my ice fishing gear, vertical jig for the fish that I seek. This lake has a good mixture of fish with crappies, perch, large and smallmouth bass swimming in some decent sizes as well. When vertical fishing for these species I generally use the Salmo Chubby Darter and bring along a selection of various colors.
First area I started in 28 feet of water and had fish marked on the flasher fairly quickly but more lookers than any takers. I am finding over the seasons that if the fish are locked to the bottom, they will generally come up and look, but don't like to commit. I hovered around this area for a little while before paddling off to the next spot.
In the open water fishing that I have done here, I generally stay on one side of the lake and wanted to make sure today that I would get to the other side to try. So that was where I was headed. While paddling there I would keep my eyes on the flasher and watch for suspending fish as these generally are more aggressive fish.
Arrived where I wanted to hit and wasn't long and a fish came flying off of the bottom and slammed the bait. Fight was on and you never know what you are going to bring up but to my surprise the first fish was a nice 14" crappie. These crappies are not as long as they should be but some have thick backs to make up for that. Worked around this area for a while but couldn't seem to find another crappie.
Moved out a little deeper and then another flash came flying up to take a look at my bait and slam, another fish on the hook. Couldn't tell what this one was either and when the fish surfaced a nice 2 pound largemouth was thrashing on the waters surface. Was feeling pretty good now and figured that as long as the wind wasn't blowing to much yet I was going to work this area over.
I moved over to some irregular bottom features and the screen lit up like a Christmas tree and the fishing rod loaded right up for a strong battle. While fighting this fish you could definitely tell that this one was going to be a smallmouth and it did not want to come up or give up the fight. Was a lot of fun catching this 2.5 pound smallie on my ice gear and this gets me pumped up for the coming ice season.
The wind was starting to pick up and fished a little longer around this area and caught another small largemouth bass. Moved back across the lake to try and get out of the ever building wind but wasn't able to find any activity in this location.
Pulled the plug before noon and for the 2-2.5 hours out there, wasn't a bad day with a crappie, smallmouth and 2 largemouth bass. All in all felt good to be on the water again and if I can find another day that the winds are laid down, I want to go back out there and try and find more of these fish.
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