Summer has officially arrived and let its presence be known by all. Water temperatures have warmed
up and it has caused weed growth to start growing very quickly and causing a few spots just a week or
two ago to be overgrown with weeds and unfishable unless you vertical jig them. Also because of water
temperatures finally warming up, it has caused the fish to get very aggressive feeding and it’s making
fishing a lot of fun because we are catching fish, it might not be the right species or size but its action.
Reports have been very positive for almost all fish species. I snuck out Thursday morning to try one of
my favorite lakes and went trout fishing. Fishing was hard due to the windy conditions, but the fish
were very active, and it was fun to bring home some nice rainbow trout for the dinner table. Crappies
are finishing spawning and are very aggressive and we were catching them walleye fishing with using
four-inch-long soft plastics. Bluegills are spawning and should be slipping into their summer spots and
start feeding aggressively to recover from spawning. Right now, if you find the edges of the weeds you
will find almost every fish species near you and it makes it fun because you do not know exactly for sure
what just bite your line.
Over the past weekend I focused a lot of time on walleyes because we were entered into the FM
Walleyes Unlimited tournament on Big Pine, so it kept me very busy on focusing on walleyes on a
specific lake which is good and bad at the same time. We pre-fished Thursday night, Friday all day,
Saturday most of the day and fished on Father’s Day in the wind and extremely hot conditions. As I type
this report I am still trying to recover from the conditions we faced on the water.
We found all our fish prior to Sunday sitting at the base of sharp breaks, depth didn’t matter necessarily
but it was more of where the break met the flat on the bottom side. We had best luck with minnows
but if we got onto a school of fish a jig and leech produced some nice fish if you could stay on top of
them. Walleyes were extremely aggressive and as a result we were cutting our lines since we couldn’t
see our hooks in their mouths. Jigging raps were also producing and helped cover water quickly if the
schools were spreading out over structure.
Tournament day hit and it went from calm conditions to extremely rough in a matter of minutes. We
fished all our spots and our fish had moved or wouldn’t bite. We put on the miles moving spots,
changing presentations, and bait options to try and put together a game plan to put fish in our boat and
we just couldn’t produce anything that would be counted on the score card. If we were able to keep the
fish, we would have had one amazing shore lunch Sunday evening but our fish being landed just weren’t
big enough to be counted.
Good luck on the water and stay safe, please do not forget to wear your lifejacket.