Well what does a fishing guide do on a day off? Fish, of course!! I just got in a quick but productive trip by myself today hoping to keep tabs on fish location. The kitchen pass was good until 10:30a, then it was off to my father-in-law’s house!!

Fish were found both on bottom and suspended at 12-15 feet today and responded well to a jigging spoon in a vertical presentation, but the water is getting cool enough now where horizontal movement after horizontally moving baits will fall off sharply.

Start Time: 7:00a

End Time: 10:10am

Air Temp: 39F at trip’s start.

Water Surface Temp: ~59-61F

Wind: Winds were light from the SW at 3-4 until 10am, then went flat calm for the remainder of the day.

Skies: Skies were clear and bright at sunrise, then slowly became fair over the course of the day.

I launched right at sunrise and headed for some open water in the vicinity of Area 531 (BA: 15HG). Close inspection revealed fish barely dimpling the surface as they chased bait toward the top. The gamefish rarely broke the water’s surface, but pushed bait far enough upward that the bait broke the surface. I caught fish both jigging and smoking, and the 3/8 oz. white TNT 180 was the ticket as a real close match on forage size. I made a couple of attempts with a lift-drop retrieve and with a blade bait with poor results. These fish are really locked into a vertical mode now and will stay that way as the water gets colder. I landed 26 fish here including one 1.75 pound largemouth and 25 white bass. I left these fish biting to find other concentrations of active fish. The action here trended from E to W as time passed.

I didn’t have to look long — as I idled over the Area 54 complex, I found abundant fish here both on bottom and suspended at 12-15 feet. I smoked fish when I could track them on sonar and jigged them when i couldn’t and put together a nice bag here of 54 fish, including one 2 1/3 pound largemouth and 53 white bass of all sizes, but with none exceeding 13.75 inches. The action this morning here trended from S to N as time passed, with a brief resurgence of about 10 minutes in length back on the S. side.

By 10am, as the already light breeze went flat, the fishing died, too.

TALLY = 80 FISH, all caught and released