Thursday, December 10, 2009

Slow, Slow Day in Cold, Cold Water 12/08/09

Josh and I got together for or weekly Tuesday fishing trip on December 8th. We decided to take a road trip north of Harrisburg, Pa. Josh's Dodge Ram was in the shop and it was my turn to tow the G3 1860DLX... I like being up front every now and then, Josh ;) ... LOL!

I picked Josh up at 5:30 a.m. and we headed to breakfast to discuss our upcoming day. The weather has been rather cold and we expected a tough bite since we weren't going to be fishing a warm water discharge power plant. We both had hair jigs and soft plastics along that we hoped would get the job done.

The air temperature was 28 degrees at home. As we approached the ramp, the air temp was in the low 30's... already warmer than this past Sunday when Petey and I were fishing.

There were several duck hunter trailers in the parking lot, but no angler trailers. We launched the boat only to find the water temperature had dipped into the mid-30's!! 35.4 degrees on the Lowrance to be exact... We weren't too optimistic, but we would give it our best effort.

The sun was in and out behind clouds all morning. When it was out, it felt really good on our heavily clothed bodies. The water color was perfect with a slight green stain to it. The water level had dropped about 2 inches since Sunday (5.06' at the Harrisburg gauge), but they were calling for more rain that evening (over an inch) which will cause another rise in the river (predicted to go as high as 6.1' by Friday). We knew we were fishing a pre-front condition which lifted our hopes somewhat.

After about an hour of nothingness, I finally had a tap. It woke me up! This is exactly what happened during our Sunday fishing trip. First a tap and then a few very nice walleyes hit. This first tap was a clue that the fish were still there, but now we needed to entice them to hit. We worked our lures slowly and methodically, casting at each and every boulder and rock we could see. Finally, a 17.5" walleye took my sift plastic... It took almost 80 minutes, but we had our first fish in the boat.

A few minutes later, as we ended our drift, a nice 14" smallie hit the same soft plastic lure that brought the walleye to the boat. Sad thing was, it was the one and only smallie yielded by this area. Dang!

We trailered the boat and headed back down river to another launch above Harrisburg, Pa. Once we launched at the second ramp and ran to our fishing destination, Josh mentioned that he was feeling out of sorts. He felt very tired, but not like he was sick. I asked him if he wanted to leave, but he said absolutely, "No!" :D

We only brought one other smallie to hand at this site and decided to leave soon after. The water temp was 36 to 37 degrees at this site. The skies had cleared and the sun was shining most of the time we were here. The air temp had risen to the low 40's which surprised me since the weatherman wasn't expecting the air temp to go above 40 degrees.

We had only seen two other anglers on the water all day long. That sort of surprised us both since it was turning into a very nice day after all. A couple of smallies and a legal walleye wasn't too bad for the water temps we were fishing in.

Thanks to Josh for putting up with and entertaining this "old man" once again. He can be strange at times in a funny sort of way. Just check out this picture he took as we were heading to our first fishing spot. This boy definitely needs help...

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