A perfect evening

Yesterday - Friday June 12 -turned out to be a nearly perfect day. Weather was good - a little on the cool side, but missing all the weather elements I hate - no downpours, no horrendous winds, no scorching sun. One of the guys I work with - Jesse - had dropped his boat in the pond over lunch - he was coming back the next morning to get a load of 'gills for his pond. We fished for about a half hour over lunch to "scout" for him. Gills were plentiful on small grubs. I mentioned that I might come back in the evening, and he said to take the boat if I did.

My wife Stacy called at work and suggested we grab a pizza and go to the pond for the evening. Now, she goes along with me quite a bit in the spring, but rarely is she the one who suggests we go fishing. She likes to fish, but it has to be perfect conditions -no bugs, not too hot or cold, not much wind, and the fish have to be biting. That's a pretty tall order of circumstances to fill for one outing. Well, the everything came together last evening.

Stacy with one of the crappies.

I usually fish these ponds from shore, but having a Ranger to tool around with the trolling motor was a nice change of pace. Plenty of room for me, Stacy, and Joey. Joey didn't feel like fishing - he took a few casts and caught a few fish, but mostly he just watched us and read. No problem. We started fishing with 1/16 oz. jigheads and dark 2" grubs, and never looked back. Stacy started catching a fish on just about every cast. If she didn't land one, she had a hit on probably 90% of her casts. Same with me, even though I was experimenting with different baits. One interesting aspect of the evenings catch - very few largemouth, and none of any size. a few of them are still guarding nests, but most have moved off beds. The most interesting catch stat, in reviewing the evenings tally, was that we caught about 20 walleye. Most were the small ones - 8" - 10" - but 4 were around 15". We both fished UL outfits with 4 pound test, making every catch fun!





Another small walleye from the pond





The end of the evening showed a tally of an uncountable number of bluegills, around 20 walleye, 8-10 crappie, 2 pretty nice rainbow trout, and the catfish shown, that Stacy caught in the first 15 minutes. I'm not really sure what it weighed, but it was all her UL gear could handle. Some of the guys have told me they caught cats over 10 from here, but this is the biggest one I've seen personally from this pond. She got it on a 2" Yamamoto grub and fought it like a pro. Fittingly, it slapped me with it's tail when I put back in the water.

Stacy's catfish (She doesn't like to hold these)

No bugs, no wind, lots of hungry fish. I LOVE days like that on the water. The thing is, you have to spend a lot of time when it's NOT like that before you finally run into the great days. We had a blast fishing together as a family, and nothing beats that.








A contented son enjoying the evening

Picture Perfect