By:Rick Greene
Show six
Today’s show finds us fishing a small lake not too far from the Town of Woodstock with my guest Mike Eagles. Mike is the athletic director for St. Thomas University and a former NHL player and he is one busy guy. Took me two years to get him on the show and that was with both of us trying to make it happen. As it turns out it was worth the wait.
Mike tied on a copper Blue Fox in-line spinner to start the day off. The point we were fishing has about 18 inches of water on the top with mixed grass and rocks. It has a very abrupt drop on the sides from those 18 inches into almost five feet of water. The fish move along that break and feed along the sides and the top but usually close to the safety of the deeper water. I held the boat out off the break with the Minn Kota and picked up a rod that was rigged with a big Skitter Pop. The low light, foggy start to the day just screamed top water at me but it was not to be. Mike nailed a bass on his first cast which is not a bad way to start the day. I tried the top water for the next fifteen minutes and only had one fish blow up on it and miss while Mike kept catching fish. I’m not real slow to realize I am getting tuned up from the back of the boat so I switched to a silver Blue Fox and tried to catch up to Mike. I don’t know how many fish we caught on the point but it was a great start to the day as I worked the boat around the edges for over an hour.
Our next stop was a shallow gravel bar that comes out off of shore for about fifty feet. Very shallow on top and a quick roll off to seven feet. I suggested to Mike that it would be a good place to throw a Flutter Worm or tube on the break but he was liking the Blue Fox and almost immediately pulled a couple of fish off of the top. Go figure, in that clear shallow water they shouldn’t have been up there this time of day. That being said, I did pick up a half a dozen fish on the deeper side and they were all decent size fish. The Flutter Worm was Black / Blue fleck fished Texas rigged on a 4/0 Gamakatsu EWG worm hook. Big wide gap and needle sharp right out of the package. The tube was one of my tournament favourites in dark melon with a bit of copper flake in it. It was fished on a 1/8 ounce tube head. Mike and I were both using 6’6” medium Crucial rods with 8lb Suffix Seige line in green for our Blue Fox spinners. I like the little bit extra flex in the tip for throwing these baits. I bumped up to a 6’6” Crucial in medium heavy when I switched to the Flutter Worm and tube. The same setup was also used for the top water. Our reels for the morning were all Stradics.
We left this spot around noon and proceeded out to deeper water to look for fish that were sitting in the open water around bait fish. I switched to a 6’8” Crucial rod rigged with the new CI4 Stradic 2500 and Mike went to a 6’8” Cumara rod rigged with a 25oo series Stradic. We stuck with the 8lb Seige. We idled around until we marked some fish on the Lowrance and dropped a marker buoy off to the side. We brought the boat back on the trolling motor to keep the noise to a minimum. The fish were sitting just off of the bottom in 25’. We tied up a couple of drop shot rigs with the hook about 18 inches above the sinker. These fish are not sophisticated by any means so we were not aiming for finesse and instead used a 3/0 Gammy and a Wacky rigged Flutter Worm. Just lower it to the bottom until the line just goes slack, then a turn of the reel handle to put some tension on the line. With this rig your weight in tied on below the hook and sits on the bottom. The idea is to keep the line tight enough that your bait is sitting just off the bottom. In our case about 18 inches. Sometimes the bite is distinct and at others you lose the feel of the weight because the fish has come up and taken the bait and lifted the sinker off of the bottom. Set the hook and reel as fast as you can because they usually rocket right to the surface. We had a double on as soon as we dropped the baits on the fish we had graphed. Not too shabby at all. Unfortunately we had some unforeseen difficulties and did not get any of this taped and our day came to an end as far as shooting more footage. Maybe I will get to go back in and do a show on drop shot before we wrap up for the year. If you are even a little bit competent with your electronics this can be a great way to catch fish that most guys never find. One of the guys told me after a tournament that I fish in some of the strangest places. That is because I am not focused on the banks all of the time and I am willing to spend some time idling around looking for isolated cover or balls of bait that may have big fish around it. Twenty five feet sounds deep but my boat is twenty feet long and it sure doesn’t seem to be a big distance from the Evinrude at the back to the Minn Kota at the front.
Today’s gear:
6’6” Crucial and Compre rods in Medium and Medium Heavy
Suffix Seige Green mono in 8lb test.
2500 series Shimano Stradic reels including the new Carbon Fiber model CI4 which is a super light weight reel and a dream to fish with.
6’8’ Cumara Medium Heavy
6.8’ Crucial Medium
TriggerX Flutter Worms in Black/Blue Fleck
Rite Bite Melon Orange Tube
#3 Silver and Copper Blue Fox in-line spinners
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