What a Difference a Day Makes

The wind abated for two days this week and I decided to make the most of the opportunity by getting the boat out for both of them. The lake was high - very high but the rain was determined to make it higher yet. The first day was murky with lots of low cloud and frequent showers but there was no wind whatsoever. The lake usually fishes well in still conditions but there was something a bit odd about this day. I got runs ok, four of them, but never caught a single fish. Every run was a slow, tentative, twitchy affair and on each occasion I struck, I failed to hook the fish properly. I did hook one briefly, but after a couple of feeble kickes the fish was off - it felt very small anyway. The final run of the day was the oddest of all. The float bobbed a couple of times, then moved two feet to the right before all went quiet. When I reeled in, some time later, I discovered that the bait had been snatched from the hooks! Surface temperature was 6.1 degrees.

It was wet that first day - very wet, but not as wet as the night that followed it. I was staying over and barely got a wink of sleep due to the sound of the rain hammering on the roof, so i was a bleary eyed angler that rigged the boat out for another grueller on day two. It started pretty quietly but I wasn't too worried as the action hasn't been starting until around ten in the morning lately. Ten o'clock arrived and sure enough the first rod was away. What do you know, another slow take that I failed to connect with. "Oh no!" I thought "Not another day like that."
I needn't have worried for over the next mad half-hour I took a fifteen pounder, a ten pounder and an eight pounder. Things were looking up.

Sounder's a Pound

I decided, after a while, to move swims and as I motored slowly along I spotted a little piece of gold dust on the sounder. There, on the bottom in 32ft of water, was a big fish arch. I stopped the boat and dropped anchor. Four baits went out around the area where the fish was sitting and I settled back to await developments. It didn't take long. Just five minutes later a bluey was taken and I struck into a nice fish - 20lbs 14oz as it happens.
No more fish came from that swim and the final move of the day put me on a big clay mound - a favourite spot. I took another fish from that one, 16lb 2oz and with work the next day, packed up at that and left.

It had been a good day but it was tinged with disappointment in the end. After comparing photographs I found that the twenty was the same fish which I had caught just before Christmas at the same weight. Still, the season's shaping up now with twenty doubles, four of them over twenty pounds.