GOMH Morning/ In the Trophy in the Evening

13" Shower Blows 105 (Bone)

5:00-8:30AM GOMH NE SW SE
47-45℉, Cloudy, 4-6 ESE
LOw and falling

Excellent morning at the GOMH.  Sunrise Spectacular! The bullheads were there and biting.  The first one was a 17" jumper that hit the second the Grass Pig hit the water on the far end of the tube.  Caught a bunch on the Jerk Shad on the NE side.  On the SW side I got several jumpers on the Jerk Shad as well.  Had several bites on topwater, but only caught a little guy.

15 Jumpin' Bullheads
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4-4oz 19.33" Poison (Blue/Black)

4-4oz 19.33" Craw Tube (Junebug)

3-6oz 17.75" Poison/Swim Fluke Jr.

Not a bad day at all

Trophy Back In the Water w/'93 Johnson
5:30-9:00PM River Mouth SPRO Sullivan Lake
51-50℉, Cloudy some light rain, 6-15mph SSE
53℉ Low and falling

Launched out of the NE access on Sulivan, and everything checked out, so I headed to the River Mouth.  Boy, it was windy out of the East.  It sprinkled on and off the whole time.  I missed several bites to start, very frustrating.   I did get a couple of bass.  I spent way too much time at the River Mouth.  I then made my way along the NSPRO, connecting with a good bass when I got into some emerging Lillies. I caught bass and pike as I made my way across the flat.  Then I hit a school anchored and put the wood to them with the Poison and Crawtube.  Missing several fish, unfortunately.  That finally died down.  I tried to mark a couple spots on the Garmin Striker but only managed to get one to save, doh.  I caught the last pig of the night on the Poison in the general vicinity of the school, which was some green cabbage in the Lillies.  John W. was landing a toothy when I went through at the GOMH.  I lost a lot of fish tonight. My game has just not been on this year.  At least I've got the Trophy back in the water. 

16 Bass
3 Pike 

Which Opener Is It?

All night walleye fishing on ML must have tired me out cause I slept in till 5PM. I didn't get out onto Platte until right around 7PM. It was a beautiful, mild, calm night after a day that had been sunny and in the 70's with light wind. Because it was so late I elected to fish out front on the trolling motor from our place towards Jenny's.

Within my first couple of casts, I had a hit on an all-white Strike King Spinnerbait right in front of our neighbor Sherman's dock.
Sure, it wasn't a walleye or pike, but I didn't care; It was a fish, and I was no longer skunked. A few minutes later, I was burning in a chartreuse Strike King Spinnerbait that got slashed at and finally hit by a pike. I got the fish to the boat, but it got off. I got over towards the big reed bed and missed a hit on the spinnerbait because the fish hit just as I was pausing the lure. I moved closer to shore and got this 15.5" bass around a small lily pad cluster on a purple Berkley Frenzy Popper.
The next fish was also a bass caught on a char/white white grub Monsoor Swim Jig.

I cast the Frenzy Popper into an area with a bunch of old reed stalks and had a small pike take a run at it but it didn't hook up. A little farther down the line I caught a couple more bass and missed a couple on the Frenzy Popper.

I made a cast up by some standing reeds near shore with the Frenzy Popper and this 23" pike took it out.
The fish put up a good fight.

I think I missed one more bite and that was it.

Conditions being what they were, I would have expected more fish but for some reason the pike just didn't seem to be around.

In The Water, On The Water with the '93 Johnson

The weather is about to turn nasty for a couple of days so I figured I better get the boat with the new/used motor in the lake today when it was going to be reasonably decent outside. I had everything ready to roll around 6PM. Much to my amazement as I pulled in to the Rock Lake Public Access, the Rock Dock was in.
The motor started right up and so I took her out for a spin to see how fast the 25 horse would go. I had loaded in a bunch of gear to weigh down the boat just like when I will be using it in the summer, plus I had the trolling motor battery in front because I planned on doing some fishing. I was a bit disappointed that out of the gate the motor only just barely made 21mph. However I had the manual trim at it's lowest setting and so I started putting the motor up one notch at a time. Each notch gained me about .5 miles per hour and I settled in at the hole that pushed the boat right at about 24mph. Still a little disappointing as I was hoping this motor would put me in the 26 to 27mph range. It will be interesting to see how fast I can go with a passenger.

Once I was satisfied that I had gotten the best performance I was going to get. I ran into the Platte River Outlet (PRO) to do some fishing. The PRO is basically a fair sized shallow bay that gets weed choked in the summer and it is where the water flows out from Rock down a small navigable stream (best if by canoe, but I did make it from Rock to Platte with a motor boat once) into Platte Lake. I was surprised to see that the lily pads had already come up big time in the PRO.

I ran all the way back to where it narrows down to the stream and there is a beaver lodge. I cast out my glow Cubby below a bobber and on about the 5th cast a fish made a V wake right at my bobber and the fish nailed the bobber taking it under. The bobber came out of the fishes mouth when I set the bobber and I reeled in real fast and quickly changed up to a blk/red Monsoor Swim Jig with blk/red Zoom Speed Craw and threw back in hopes it was a big dogfish. On about my third cast the fish waked right behind the jig and took a nip at the speed craw and turned away before I had a chance to see it. It was calm but cloudy and so seeing down into the water away from the boat wasn't the best, thus I had to blind cast and couldn't sight fish. I am pretty sure it was either a big dogfish or a fair sized pike. I had a couple more wakes that didn't hook up down by the beaver lodge and then I slowly made my way East working the Northern area of the bay. I had a couple of fish bump my lures and one fish stole a tail on a white Zoom Super Speed Craw. Basically it was starting to get dark and I had worked my way back to where the PRO bay narrows before it opens up to Rock Lake and I thought I was going to get skunked, when this little bass hit the Monsoor Swim Jig over some dead rice.
. A couple minutes later I got another bass that was just a bit bigger. A couple minutes later I made a long cast to an irregular feature that is something akin to an old beaver lodge, but I am not certain if that is what it actually is and I got hit by this 17.25" bass.
I accidentally changed some adjustment on the camera and so this pic for some reason looks lighter even though it was taken 10 minutes later and it was darker out than the first fish picture. Also this was the only pic of about 5 I took that was reasonably in focus.

As I made my way into Rock Lake I had a hit and brought in a 24" pike and that was it.