Just Insane Conditions

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What a day from Hell today! Adam, Chris and Marc fished for sturgeon for the first couple of hours and unfortunately only landed a bunch of smaller ones. Despite marking several larger fish, we weren’t fortunate enough to get bit by them before the wind switched and got giant! It didn’t take long before we were in 3 footers and drifting backwards!

I pulled the plug on this area and checked a couple of other places in search of them instead. I marked a lot of fish but nothing that I wanted to set up on and decided to go for walleye instead. We were drifting open water flats in big waves but it was doable, at first! Several fish were missed or completely lost due to quick hook sets and low rods in the big waves. They should have had about 1 limit in the boat but were still at a big zero! I tossed in briefly and boated their first dinner fish! Unfortunately with each drift we made, the return back up was looking bigger and bigger. They continued to miss fish each drift but they did manage to boat a couple of bass and one walleye, eventually. I would have liked to stay on these fish but even with a drift sock out, our passes were way too fast. Along with this, the waves were ocean like and it was actually getting dangerous. It was definitely time to move!

I carefully surfed the 4 & 5 footers getting us closer to the shore and we spent the remainder of our day making multiple passes on ledges for smaller fish. It wasn’t any better here but at least we were somewhat closer to the shore! They continued to catch several more fish and unfortunately missed many more due to the conditions. It was so bad out that I had to run back for each drift, slowly ploughing the water, so as not to swamp the boat. I couldn’t go more than 10 miles per hour or everything would have taken a beating!

After making plenty of drifts and stretching it out, we unanimously agreed to call it a day! I think we had seen about enough of this roller coaster ride. Mother Nature has a strange way of protecting the waters we fish and this is about as extreme as it gets. She was cruel shortly after the start making my life more difficult than usual. All I know is when it started to blow, we were the only boat out there. I think I understand why! At least we were safe with the Ranger and managed to make it through the entire day. Less windy ones to come, I hope!