The north wind blew last night. Hate the north wind for fishing at Lincoln Beach. It turns the water chocolate and the fishing takes a couple of days to recover. TubeBabe and I went anyway. She has been out of town a lot an still had not caught a catfish. That’s serious for the “KITTY QUEEN”.
Launched off the sand beach in front of the “facilities” about 7:30 AM. Air temp 24 and water temp only 38 in the shallows. Went to 44 in deeper water. Water clarity was terrible but I decided to throw some plastic first anyhooters. After about fifteen minutes of “washing lures”, I had a nice thump on the black and chartreuse grub I was using. Same lure I had a little wally on last week. Set the hook and had some heavy head shakes. Too hefty for a small wallie. Yeee Hawww! It had to be a big mama. Well…it was…sorta. A big mama carp…a toothless golden walleye. Had the hook in its lips fair and square. I did a little CPR (Catch, Perforate and Release) as my part of the June sucker recovery program.
Finally got out into the 5 foot deep zone and sent out a minnow on my bait rod. Dragged that bait over a lot of underwater real estate, in the muddy water, without so much as a whisper. I was beginning to wonder if that bunged up buglemouth was going to be my only stick bender for the day. NOPE. Pop…zing…line peeled off the reel as a kitty tried to abscond with my minnow. NOPE. I put a hook in the corner of her mouth and persuaded her to swim to my tube…not without some struggling on her part. 24" and a bit over 4 pounds.
**That was at 9 AM. At 9:30 AM TubeBabe announced over the walkie talkie that something had whacked the piece of carp meat she was dragging…but must have been an inexperienced fish. Didn’t know how to hang on. A couple of minutes later she was nice enough to allow the fish a second chance and this time the fish got it right. A 26" 6 pounder. TubeBabe had banished the skunk. **
**At 9:45 the north wind came up. We expected it, since the forecast was for south breezes…again. Two hours later the north wind died for a few minutes. Wiggle wiggle. I caught an ugly mudder. Wham bam…I missed another channel, but TubeBabe landed another one. This one was about 3.5 pounds. **
The north wind came back up and the fishing went back down. We quit at 1 PM. No wallies or whities. I lost one small white bass at the tube. Saw very little on sonar. You can see the brown water in the pictures. Not good.
Water temp when we got out was up to just under 48 degrees. Air temp was only a couple of degrees warmer. Saw several boats go out, and return. Also several vehicles with bank tanglers. Nobody stayed long. The guy that stayed the longest stayed only because he ran the back tires of his two wheel drive pickup over the sharp edge at the end of the dike. He was gunning the engine, smoking his tires and probably putting some serious hurt on his engine and tranny when some nice guy in another pickemup helped pull his sorry behind up onto the dike. Wonder if he learned.
TubeBabe was happy. I let her outdo me on kitties again. I got the first, but she got the biggest and the most (big deal…one more). I managed to get three species, but would have loved to bring in a wallie or two and some white bass…to complete my “grand slime”. Done it before, but not today. Still beats the heck out of almost anything I could have been doing at home.