Jim K: Roosevelt - 3/19

Left the dock at about noon, and scouted my way with my son Seth all the way up to buy 5… was just taking photographs with my Gaia GPS app for future reference of structure once they are submerged.   We fished our way back to Fort Spokane, and caught three pitching jigs on flats in 25 FOW.

For SWC:

Water temps averaged about 44 degrees, but found pockets of up to 53… warmest was on shoreline South of the mouth of Blue Creek.  We began pitching jigs in eddy downstream of body 5, but I fear I was swimming it too much, and didn’t have a heavy enough jig head on to cast, hit bottom, lift rod slowly or crank slowly a bit, then wait for jig to slowly drop back to bottom.   This was the technique that worked once I made my way back downstream.  I fished our way back down to the mouth of Blue Creek by 5:00PM, stopping in two locations to fish on the way.  I tried the warmest water, but did not work the jig on the bottom by here for some crazy reason (stupid me).  We then began cruising the flats nearby and with trolling motor down, Seth’s eyes glued to the bow HDS, and me driving the big motor, we would swing back and fish the area every time we passed over any bottom marks on the graph.  I had all of our success with a black 1/2 oz jig, casting it far, waiting for it to drop to bottom, bring rod tight, then reel two cranks of my reel, then on a tight line wait for jig to hit bottom.  I was simply using a green grub with orange tail, but also smeared it with scent.  Caught one 21” and one 15” walleye by 5:45PM.  Seth then asked to hit one of his favorite spots that we had luck on last fall at sunset.  Of course that spot is high and dry, but I still obliged and found some submerged structure nearby and began pitching jigs… after 10 minutes Seth began having trouble casting the jigs.  To keep him interested, I offered him the idea of casting his “favorite lure”, a pearl jerk bait he had great luck on last fall at sunset.  We were in 30 FOW casting to 10’ deep structure, but Seth casts off to what was probably 20’ deep area…. bam, he hooks a nice 16” walleye on his first cast.  The bragging then began!  We only fished for 20 more minutes or so before running back to our ramp.