NATHAN

January 30th, 2009: Sunny and Windy, Water Temp 45* and Clear.

Spoke to Nathan last night about the wind that was suppose to blow today giving him his options of fishing today or rescheduling to another day. He said the other 2 guys that were going to go backed out, that it was his birthday and he wanted to catch fish on his birthday. I thought I could oblige him, at least for the first part of the day, so we went. We met at o dark thirty, went out in the fog by GPS, set out my spread of boards, told him to throw some excess baits I had in the lake and before he knew what happened [Thirty minutes] we had 8 Stripers in the cooler and had been throwing others back. It was so early still we could not see the bank in most places due to the fog. At 7:30 we decided that since it was his birthday and him being 28 today we would try to catch 28 Stripers this morning. We ended up getting blown off the water after boating 26 Stripers, 2 shy of our goal. We both had a great morning, Nathan is a very good fisherman, he listened well and understood what it would take for us to catch the fish we did today in the windy conditions just by ourselves. He probably won't forget his 28th birthday. Pictured are the stringer of keepers from early this morning and a couple of other fish we caught later. Eighteen Stripers were returned to the lake to fight another day.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

NATHAN

Bill Hamilton

January 29th, 2009: Sunny and Cold, Water Temps 40* to 45* and Clear. Bill and I caught bait early and hit a 20 foot flat first thing this morning. In the first hour we boated 8 or 9 Stripers then went to pick up a friend at the dock. Set up on another deeper flat, boated a couple and Bill caught the first Bass. We moved on and hit yet another flat with some brush on it and Bill boated another Bass. We finished out the day pulling 10 to 40 foot flats, getting numerous hits, catching a few but not hooking up well. Although we caught 14 Stripers and a couple of Bass fishing was SLOW today as I knew it would be after 4 days of clouds, snow and rain then followed by a Bluebird Day. Alot of strikes we had today the stripers just mouthed the bait. The water temps had dropped also making the fish more lethargic. Bill released all the fish today to fight again.

Striperholic

January 25, 2009: Cloudy and Cold, Water Temp 41* to 46* and Clear. Anthony got out early and caught bait while I stayed home enjoying my grandson. I looked at the thermometer around 6am and it was 14*, had a cup of coffee and turned a fishing show on TV. Didn't think much of going out on the water today, Mike [my grandson ] and myself having a ball playing indoors where it was warm. My daughter came to get Mike and I called Anthony, he said fishing had been slow, caught a bunch of punks, but thought he was on to something. I told him I could not stand it , come pick me up at the marina in an hour, we would have a couple hours to fish. Got on board and asked to see his fish, he had been releasing them and had none. We set up pulling boards and hit his spot, everything hooked up, we got these 6 fish in on the first pass. We released these and hit another area similar to the first and Anthony caught the 14 pounder. We hooked up with a few more on different areas and called it a day. I got my fix for fishing for the day, got a few pictures and was home by 5:30 for dinner.

Walt Weeks and Mark Mautte

January 23rd, 2009: Sunny and Pleasant, Water Temp 41* to 46* and Clear.

We set up before daylight way out on a long tapering point that dropped off into a 40 foot flat, hoping to get a spread of 12 boards and a bobber out without getting hit, but before we could we hooked up with doubles. We were really waiting on Mark to show up and

was fishing an area nearby the ramp. We picked Mark up an hour after daylight, by then we had already caught 8 Stripers. We had to go elsewhere to set up again because we got busted reeling in fish and a guy kept trolling back and forth where he saw us boat the fish. We pulled 40 foot flats with humps on them rising up to 10 feet and ended up catching 18 Stripers today. The guys had to hold the fish by hand today for the camera, I had misplaced my fish stick. Mark caught a nice Bass, the largest he has ever caught. The wind got up pretty bad around noon and ran us off the water. All day Walt kept mumbling something about Mary Tracy comparing her to Joan Devoe and fish, I am really not sure what they all have in common!

Todd and Cathy

January 19th, 2009: Cloudy and Cold, Water Temp 42* to 48* and Clear.

Caught bait this morning and at first light we were putting baits out over a 20' flat. We only got 4 out before we got our first strike, and things did not slow down for 30 minutes. We could only imagine what it would of been like if we had our spread of 13 baits out when we hit that area. It was fun while it lasted, I could have turned around and baited up and hit it again but Todd was looking to learn the lake and fish different areas rather than fill the livewell so we moved on. We next set up over 40 feet of water wanting to pull a couple of 20 to 30 foot humps but again we got fooled, only had 7 baits out when the fish started banging the baits and every rod hooked up. By the time I got over the first hump we had no baits in the water. We scrambled to rebait and fished the humps and moved on. About noon the wind changed direction and started blowing out of the west, all the gulls sat down on the water and we never caught another fish. Before the wind changed and while it was blowing out of the south we boated 21 Stripers, the guys keeping a few to eat and releasing the rest in great condition. Todd also caught this citation Bass and released it also.

Brian, Joe and John

January 18th, 2009: Cloudy and Cold, Water Temps 38* midlake and 48* downlake.

After 3 days of extremely cold weather it warmed up just enough today to go out. We got out on the water at noon , caught bait and went downlake to the warmest water we could find , at the 3rd Dike. It was so windy that I just ran the trolling motor while Brian baited the lines. We set up a spread of boards and pulled the whole bay, waisting a couple hours only to catch a couple punks. The wind around 3 o'clock laid down to 10mph so we got our lines in and ran uplake to a bay where I located some fish earlier in the week and put out our spread there. We hooked up before we got all of our lines out and played catch up for the next hour. We saw fish deep between 25 and 30 feet but they would not hit, we only caught fish less than 10 feet deep, in the wind. With the wind it was hard to know how many strikes we got but we do know we caught 15 Stripers with the largest one over 12 pounds caught by Joe. The guys kept a couple and released the rest to fight again.

An afternoon of fun

January 14th, 2009: Sunny and Cold, Water Temp 48* and Clear. Got to the lake at noon, caught bait and looked for Stripers. Went right to a hump that was loaded, less than 20 seconds after putting a bait out we hooked up. Brian was gitty, he hadn't ever expected to catch fish the way we did. Since I was looking for fish for clients I left this school and searched for others. We fished 10 to 45 foot flats this afternoon, had over 25 Strikes, Brian boated about 15 and released them all to fight again.

Howard Manweller and Larry Jones

January 12th, 2009: Partly Cloudy and Cold, Water Temp 41* and Clear.

Got out early and caught bait then picked the guys up at 7am. Set out a spread of 10 boards , a bobber and some downlines and pulled 40 foot flats. Before I got them out we started hooking up. It took probably an hour for me to catch up and get the entire spread out due to the action we were having. We fished 40 foot flats till 11am and went and hit some shallower areas for a couple hours only catching a couple of fish then finished the day back over the deeper flats. Today was a great day of fishing, we caught over 20 Stripers , the guys taking home a couple for the table. We had well over 35 strikes today, not bad for a cold January day.

A Cold Rainy Day

I'm Back. I have been off the water hunting lately and today is my first day fishing this year. I will resume my regular postings.

January 7th, 2009 . Cold and Rain, Water Temps 41* Mid Lake to 53* Downlake.


I had today booked with a good client but they did not want to fight the 2 inches of rain today so I called the only other person I knew that was idiot enough to go out on a day like today, Anthony. I got out well before daylight to catch bait while Anthony stayed in town to get his crews off to work. I was having trouble catching bait, caught thousands of 2 inch threadfin. Anthony got to the lake finally and we checked a hole out downlake for 20 minutes getting a couple weak strikes so we decided to move on. We set up boards and pulled a couple 20 foot flats hooking up with a 6 pound Striper and 4 Bass, the one in the picture was a 6.12 pound 22" citation. We had discussed last night where and what we wanted to fish today but bait collection and starting at 11am messed us up a little but we decided to go with our original plan and took off. We set up fishing with boards and downlines working 40 foot flats and the points adjacent to them. Before we got our spread out the action started and for the next 2 hours we played catch up trying to keep our lines baited. [ Anthony's 20 calls from work did not help things much] Although today was miserable weather, it did keep the other boaters off the water which allowed us to fish uninhibited.