Post by mwardncsu on Jul 8, 2013 8:40:17 GMT -5
My wife's parents and her sister & family were coming up for the weekend after the 4th, so we planned to take the kids, my father-in-law and brother-in-law out fishing on Saturday morning. Thursday night after returning from a great 4th striper & catfish cookout at Travis' place, I headed out to catch some bait so that it could cure out or Saturday AM (and more importantly so that I could sleep in on Fri, and not have to be out catching bait on Fri night or getting up real early on Sat 
) Bait was slow to move into the lights but it finally did around 11 and I put about 4-5 dozen ales and 5 money-maker gizzards in the tank to chill.
Side note - I did get to use my new deep water pump rig - I'll post more about it in the other sub-board, but it's the deal - filled my 40 gal Vest in under 4 minutes vs something around 15-20 minutes with the old rig.
With three kids 10 and under, getting out the door early can be a bit of a challenge, but we had a 5:30 wake-up call and managed to get everyone on the boat and pulling away from the dock about 6am - a little later than I would have liked to be out, but still an achievement.
As we came down we saw Tyler heading out with a crew of his own and we popped into a near-by cove to check it out briefly - no fish but did manage to get a few nice early morning photos with the EarlyRiser in the background.
Headed on down to the mid-lake summer hot-spot to see if we could find some decent sized schools - found schools - of boats that is...... looked very briefly and decided to move on to other spots with less boats to see what we could find. Checked a few other nearby creeks, working our way on down the lake. Was only marking singles here and there, at best - finally marked a small pod of fish as we turned across a point towards the back of one of the creeks, so we put out lines - you can only do so much searching and looking with a 7, 9 & 10 yr old aboard.....
Fortunately, not too long after putting out lines we had a fish - James, the youngest had honors - and caught what was the smallest of the day
He also managed one of those green trash fish (no pics warranted) and a little channel cat.
We worked that creek for several hours - there were just enough scattered fish to make it hard to leave, and only one, then two other boards in the area as well - we slowly picked up in the range of 4-5, with one that was big enough to put in the cooler for dinner. About 9:30 or so we picked up and moved to the spot where Tyler and I found them last weekend - didn't see the school or large #s, but we did find some more fish hanging off a point and picked up a few more.
The cousins even let Matthew get in on the action
Wanted each of the boys to get a "keeper" to bring back for dinner, especially since we had the ladies back at the house expecting a fresh catch for dinner, so we stuck it out a bit longer than I had planned, pulling back out towards the mouth of the creek. We began to mark a larger # of scattered fish and I was watching some marks on the fish-finder and said "get ready" when one of the rods took off and one of the boys went to work - about the time we got that one close to the boat another line went off - our 1st and only double of the day
A bad pic - Matt was crowded out when he tried to get this one out by the boy's dad and grand-father taking pics
A slower day than I hoped, but with the double we decided that was a good place to wrap it up - each boy had caught a couple and we had three in the cooler in the 24-26", 5-7 lb range, just enough for dinner, so we packed it in and headed back.
Oh, and dinner was good!
) Bait was slow to move into the lights but it finally did around 11 and I put about 4-5 dozen ales and 5 money-maker gizzards in the tank to chill.Side note - I did get to use my new deep water pump rig - I'll post more about it in the other sub-board, but it's the deal - filled my 40 gal Vest in under 4 minutes vs something around 15-20 minutes with the old rig.
With three kids 10 and under, getting out the door early can be a bit of a challenge, but we had a 5:30 wake-up call and managed to get everyone on the boat and pulling away from the dock about 6am - a little later than I would have liked to be out, but still an achievement.
As we came down we saw Tyler heading out with a crew of his own and we popped into a near-by cove to check it out briefly - no fish but did manage to get a few nice early morning photos with the EarlyRiser in the background.
Headed on down to the mid-lake summer hot-spot to see if we could find some decent sized schools - found schools - of boats that is...... looked very briefly and decided to move on to other spots with less boats to see what we could find. Checked a few other nearby creeks, working our way on down the lake. Was only marking singles here and there, at best - finally marked a small pod of fish as we turned across a point towards the back of one of the creeks, so we put out lines - you can only do so much searching and looking with a 7, 9 & 10 yr old aboard.....
Fortunately, not too long after putting out lines we had a fish - James, the youngest had honors - and caught what was the smallest of the day
He also managed one of those green trash fish (no pics warranted) and a little channel cat.
We worked that creek for several hours - there were just enough scattered fish to make it hard to leave, and only one, then two other boards in the area as well - we slowly picked up in the range of 4-5, with one that was big enough to put in the cooler for dinner. About 9:30 or so we picked up and moved to the spot where Tyler and I found them last weekend - didn't see the school or large #s, but we did find some more fish hanging off a point and picked up a few more.
The cousins even let Matthew get in on the action
Wanted each of the boys to get a "keeper" to bring back for dinner, especially since we had the ladies back at the house expecting a fresh catch for dinner, so we stuck it out a bit longer than I had planned, pulling back out towards the mouth of the creek. We began to mark a larger # of scattered fish and I was watching some marks on the fish-finder and said "get ready" when one of the rods took off and one of the boys went to work - about the time we got that one close to the boat another line went off - our 1st and only double of the day
A bad pic - Matt was crowded out when he tried to get this one out by the boy's dad and grand-father taking pics
A slower day than I hoped, but with the double we decided that was a good place to wrap it up - each boy had caught a couple and we had three in the cooler in the 24-26", 5-7 lb range, just enough for dinner, so we packed it in and headed back.
Oh, and dinner was good!
