Went out fishing today, sunny/overcast. Not much chop in the water. Water temps were around 77-78F. We tried around the sunken railroads but had no luck. On tic island tho we actually saw fish on our finders. At least we thought they were fish. Never had something like that before. After tic island we went and checked out Shearers point. The drop off is sick!!! You can actually see it from the boat, you see weeds and then BAM there’s an abyss. No luck here either. Was only using crank baits (2 types) and spinning rod, and that fluke/ned rig. Next time we have to be more brave and perhaps use something else? Try different colours, AND different baits!? I wonder what the luck would have been like if we threw a jig or a t rigged plastic / legit ned rig.
Also checked out that cove we used to go to with the shit boat. There’s another distinct weedline there too. I think it’s because the bottom must be rocks.
Out in front of shearers point closer to the docks you can see a weed bed around 30 feet in front of the docks. It’s cool because this bed you could see had an inner and outer line. I wonder why. Also, there was a lot of dead weeds on the shoreline in this area and I guess why it smelled like ass. Saw a ton of seagulls here though, and feeding bluegills. Also hooked a fish here too!
Things learned:
1. Fishfinder works, use it to scope out weeds and dropoffs. Using the fishfinder and paying attention to the weeds, you can actually tell when a weedline starts on the fishfinder since the weeds show up and make the graph go nuts. I tested this. I went out from the shallow weeded area and into the dropoffs, and you could see clearly that the weeds dissapear. Next time what I should do is check out the bottom and compare bottom compositions – soft / hard bottom
2. Weed edge dropoffs are real – so watching lindners angling edge really helped me out here. Before we were fishing dropoffs by docks. In the summer months we should take advantage of the weed growth and see if we can find dropoffs with weeds. By fishing dropoffs by docks (otanabee), basically there’s not enough sand flats for weed growth to spread roots and grow into a weed empire flat thing. So sometimes you have sparse weeds and then a steep dropoff. At sheareres point, by bills, there’s like 200 m of weedbeds and then the dropoff. This area provides a ton of cover for baitfish and the dropoff works with the gamefish, so all’s good. In addition to structure of the dropoff here, you have the cover of the massive weedbed on the shallower shelf.
3. Try new baits – don’t only change colour – crankbaits, spinner baits, – also change baits. I have to not be afraid of taking 1 min to change a lure rather than fish for 2 hours with the same bait and get nothing and going home skunked.
4. In rice, weeds can grow in depths up to 8/9 feet. It becomes sparse and dissapears at 10 ft +
5. Fished a lot of the top of the water column tdoay. Taking a crankbait and going above the weeds, taking a spinnerbait and going above the weeds. perhaps next time i should try a jig ir a t rigged worm and fish the boottom on those nice looking spots like the dropoff… I mean it’s not a “search” bait but if the bite’s slow… maybe you gotta use the shit that looks the tastiest but is a bit slower.