Just spent 3 1/2 days in Northern Wisconsin with my 10year old son. After breaking his right hand last week, we got word that no surgery (yet..) but use soft cast all the time. You guys can see he took it off to reel and set the hook (wife will KILL me if she sees pics!!). He held all the fish up with his left hand as he could not hold them with his right. I posted up 15 pics of some of the best. We lost count of how many we caught but I will guess over 100 now that I look back over all the pics.
Here are some details.... Water temps.. 66-70 Air temps... 72-80
Caught all the smallies either on bed or on spawning flats. Best baits were watermelon red flake ANYTHING!!! We used Wutz-Its, hand poured MD 3XL's, 1 hawg sticker (we glued it together a couple times..LOL), 5" carrots and some of my other baits. Watermelon gold was also good. My son did get a nice 30" pike as well. No pic as it slipped out of his arms before the shot!!! All texas rigged with a 4/0 EWG hook and 1/4oz tungsten weight on 12lb mono...
We had to fish out of a 20' pontoon boat for this trip as I decided not to lug my boat 1300 miles. No depth finder, no trolling moter!!! Boat positioning was a BIG challenge! Having deck to roam was fun though as we doubled plenty of times each day.
The lake we were on is a 120,000 acre lake mostly fished during summer. I have been fishing the lake for 40 some years but never this early in the summer. I guessed that a couple areas of the lake that really don't ever produce over the summer might have been neglected by the few anglers on the lake as most fish later in summer like me. BINGO!!! In 200 yard stretches, we would boat 30-40 fish. We did catch some largemouth as well but nothing over 4 so no pics. My son will be ready for that spawn in a week or 2.
Didn't post up all the pics but we certainly were happy to be together catching 4-5lb smallies most of the day! Made for some awesome memories for sure! I know I won't forget them! Sure was glad to have plenty of CCM baits along to help make the catching easy!
Jim
