I just finished reading a post on another site about someone only catching 1-2 fish in a day of fishing on a particular lake. Several posted and finally someone posted catchin a nice limit 2-3 times a week for the last couple months. He gave bait, sizes and most importantly depth.
He was catching most of his fish in 25 - 32 FOW. The original poster comes back with I fish 12 - 15 feet, maybe I should try deeper.
Brought me back to some experiences from this fall which are gooing to get better next week. We are fishing a solid 6-7 hours and usually get our limit or close to it but are having to work very hard to do so. A couple days ago, we were catching lots of fish (shorts) and an occasional keeper. Three boats in the course of an hour nosed along side to see what baits we were using. Neither I nor my buddy made any effort to hide our activities but we both knew that no one would fish 35 - 50 FOW this time of year which is where we are catching the nicer fish. 15 - 30 feet range sometimes yeilds a fish or 2 but most are shorts.
A while back, we decided to drift out into deeper water and work our way along until we started finding something. We had a decent line in the 42 - 45 foot range, I caught a really nice fish. Decided it had to have been a fluke and restarted our drift. Shortly, I noticed we were back in 43 FOW and my buddy had a nice fish on as he was telling me to get the net ready. I lifted my rod and wham. I had a fish on as well and it was big.
I had the net in hand and was trying to work my fish and keep the net ready. I netted his fish and dropped net in the boat and told him to hurry up I had another fish on. It was a nice one and beat 24" his Walleye by 2".
We changed our pattern a bit and stuck to the 40 - 45 FOW and pulled our limit in 2 hours. In the 5 trips since, we have had easy limits in the 35 - 50 FOW range. They folks we have shared the info with think we are fibbing and even when we are out at the same time, the arent getting out of the 30 FOW.
Not getting into the bait, will say we are vertical jigging and will also say that there are only 2 colors that have produced thus far and they arent the standard go to colors for this time of year. Still trying to figure that one out. One of the colors is an on and off producer. The other color is one that until this fall, had never produced a fish for me.
So remember, when bite is slow, change size, change color, change depth, and change jigging stroke and speed. Have had a lot of days this fall where 2-3 inches of lift were the only way to get a hit and have seen days where you really had to work the jig 3-5 foot rips followed by 2 foot lift and on the fall you would get a hit.
The more I fish, the less I know, but it is a lot of fun trying to figure it out.
He was catching most of his fish in 25 - 32 FOW. The original poster comes back with I fish 12 - 15 feet, maybe I should try deeper.
Brought me back to some experiences from this fall which are gooing to get better next week. We are fishing a solid 6-7 hours and usually get our limit or close to it but are having to work very hard to do so. A couple days ago, we were catching lots of fish (shorts) and an occasional keeper. Three boats in the course of an hour nosed along side to see what baits we were using. Neither I nor my buddy made any effort to hide our activities but we both knew that no one would fish 35 - 50 FOW this time of year which is where we are catching the nicer fish. 15 - 30 feet range sometimes yeilds a fish or 2 but most are shorts.
A while back, we decided to drift out into deeper water and work our way along until we started finding something. We had a decent line in the 42 - 45 foot range, I caught a really nice fish. Decided it had to have been a fluke and restarted our drift. Shortly, I noticed we were back in 43 FOW and my buddy had a nice fish on as he was telling me to get the net ready. I lifted my rod and wham. I had a fish on as well and it was big.
I had the net in hand and was trying to work my fish and keep the net ready. I netted his fish and dropped net in the boat and told him to hurry up I had another fish on. It was a nice one and beat 24" his Walleye by 2".
We changed our pattern a bit and stuck to the 40 - 45 FOW and pulled our limit in 2 hours. In the 5 trips since, we have had easy limits in the 35 - 50 FOW range. They folks we have shared the info with think we are fibbing and even when we are out at the same time, the arent getting out of the 30 FOW.
Not getting into the bait, will say we are vertical jigging and will also say that there are only 2 colors that have produced thus far and they arent the standard go to colors for this time of year. Still trying to figure that one out. One of the colors is an on and off producer. The other color is one that until this fall, had never produced a fish for me.
So remember, when bite is slow, change size, change color, change depth, and change jigging stroke and speed. Have had a lot of days this fall where 2-3 inches of lift were the only way to get a hit and have seen days where you really had to work the jig 3-5 foot rips followed by 2 foot lift and on the fall you would get a hit.
The more I fish, the less I know, but it is a lot of fun trying to figure it out.
