Jim K: Roosevelt - 5/9

Similar to Greg’s post from the day before, part of my incentive for my son to finish his at-home schoolwork early was to take the family to Lake Roosevelt on Friday.  He met his goal, and off we went!  We arrived at Porcupine at about noon with the lot about 80% full.  Being mid-day, there was one boat in the process of launching when we arrived, so we got in quickly.  The dock is in the water, but only one lane is available.  After my daughter having been on two more fishing leaning trips recently, I had promised her that this trip would be more slanted to beach time, so we set off immediately to find a beach near Buoy 1.  However as we slowed down to go through the boats there, we quickly saw several fish being caught (There were about 15 boats in the area!)  My SO, Julie commented that we should probably try fishing now rather than later. We ended up catching two fish in two drifts, then headed to the beach, but we talked to a few other fisherman, and everyone was catching many walleyes.

For SWC:
When I arrived at Buoy 1, I noticed that there was a huge amount of current… much more than I had ever seen here before.  With my young son, and SO, I wanted to give them a chance to learn how things felt in heavy current, so I stuck to near shore in slower water, but at the edge of the faster water and slowly maneuvered upstream in about 15'… can’t say I was really trolling, as I was more on spot lock, and hitting my “move forward 5 feet” button every several seconds.  I had a heavier sized jigging rap on Seth’s rod, and a blade bait on Julie’s rod while I did a bottom bouncer.  By the end of our run upstream we hadn’t had a hit, so I switched everyone to jigs and began to drift with the current (25 FOW)… me with a chartreuse & Orange minnow bait, and the others with a grub.  On our first drift, despite quite a bit of distractions in trying to help my family get used to the current, I did end up catching one 18” walleye.  Seth on the 2nd drift picked up our 2nd walleye, a twin of the first.  However, with fish biting, I had a beach promise to uphold to Simone, and Julie needed to work that night, so we ran upstream about a mile, beached the boat, grilled hamburgers, played, and for Julie napped to get ready for her night shift.  Before we left Buoy 1, we talked to two boats, each with two fisherman who were just one fish shy of their limits, plus we kept watching many walleyes being caught.

At about 5:15PM, we made it back to Bouy 1 to try fishing again before heading home.  The current was a small fraction of what it was earlier, and boats had dwindled down less than a handful.  We didn’t witness another fish caught, and we never caught any more after trying for an hour… quite the change from earlier this afternoon!