Jim K: Potholes - 8/26-29
Camped at state park and split my time between fishing with my kids, family water activities, and one morning of solo fishing. Ended up fishing Wednesdayevening, and Thursday, Friday & Saturday mornings. Wednesday evening I fished with my family along the dam rip rap and nearby shallow rocks with family targeting smallmouth. Managed only getting two bites and one to the boat. Bottom bounced with my daughter (7 years old) Thursday AM and picked up four walleye, all in shallow water. Friday AM by myself was a complete bust… didn’t even have a bite. Saturday AM I fished with my Son (4 years old), and he pulled in several bullhead, a large perch and four walleyes, again all in shallow water.
It was interesting how shallow the walleye were. We caught almost all of our fish in 5-9 FOW on tops of humps near mouth of Crab Creek. I chatted with my camping neighbors before hitting the water the first time and they were having consistent luck in 5’ all week long… proved to be a very good tip. First evening with family we were casting crank baits for bass, and were not targeting walleye at all. Simone was the lucky one to hook a decent sized SMB right along the rocks. Was a milestone since she’s still learning her casting, so it was nice to see her cast, feel a bite, set the hook & almost get it all the way back in the boat. Simone asked me to take her back to the same area the next morning and do the same style of fishing.
Thursday AM, I wanted to start with walleye in order to relay some info to Greg K that the fish were still biting since he was headed out to Potholes that day. (See his post.) Managed to hook up with a few walleye right off the start bottom bouncing in shallow water humps on the West side of the mouth of Crab Creek. Fishing was slowish, but just enough to keep Simone interested including the throw back bullheads brought to the boat. Late AM, we moved to cast cranks for SMB by the large island, and Simone hooked a nice fish… she brought it in fast and ended up trying to lift the fish into the boat before I could ID the fish as a walleye and grab the net. It ended up falling off as she hoisted it into the boat.
Friday AM I solo fished very hard until about 10:30AM, and didn’t even have a bit to show for it. I again targeted the West mouth of Crab Creek humps. After learning the fish were shallow the previous day, I was on the water at 4:30AM and threw a variety of swimbaits across the humps before switching to bottom bouncing. Ended up with family rest of the day enjoying tubing, skiing, etc. Later that day my neighbors again showed up with a good report. I learned they were on the East side of the Crab Creek area, and in fact tried the West side only to return to the East side an hour later.
Saturday AM, I started by myself on the East side of Crab Creek’s mouth and at about 7AM had only caught four bass while bottom bouncing in shallow water. Got a call from my wife to head in and pick up my Son who was by then awake. Retuned to the same spot to a bullhead bonanza. It kept Seth very occupied. Then bite switched to perch, then to walleye. We promptly caught four walleye after that, all in a pin point area of one hump. All fish were caught in about an hour or so. Walleye turned on right as wind started picking up dramatically… time to head in!
There didn’t seem to be any single color that worked, all colors used picked up fish when the fish were biting.