Hair Jiggin & Crankbait Trollin

  A few weeks ago I had tied up some hair jigs, and I was anxiously awaiting to put them to the test. Saturday brought us some warmer temps and the rain stayed away so it was time to get em wet. I pulled the old Sylvan out of the garage to get her dusted off and run some fresh fuel through the Johnson. I headed out around 4 P.M. to Candlewick Lake just around the bend from my house. To my surprise the Johnson fired up on one pull of the rope, it was like it was running just yesterday.

   As this was my first time out on the open lake this year, I knew the main task of the day was going to be locating fish. With the warmer temps and it being spawn time, I figured the fish may be in shallow. I headed to a big flat in the lake that consisted of mostly 5 foot depths. I started by casting the hair jigs with a crawler attached, slowly reeling and jigging them back to the boat. This caught me 1 fish in an hours worth of time. It was no monster, but a nice 12 inch Largemouth Bass.

  A little time had passed without much success so I moved on to the next tactic to see if I could locate some more quality fish. 

 When the time is right in the year, especially spring time, I like to troll crankbaits over the shallows as fish move in to spawn. This is a great tactic when searching for fish because you can cover a lot of water in a short period of time. Once you find the fish you can set-up and start throwing some hardware at them. I started trolling one of my favorite shorelines of this lake for this time of year where I have had a decent amount of success. I was trolling a rapala size 7 in a firetiger pattern running the boat between 1.7 and 1.9 mph. First pass I missed 2 fish and one felt nice. I made 3 more passes with no luck, so I started back at the jig and crawler where I had missed the fish on the first pass. No luck... time to move on. While I was trolling though I had some company following a mere 4 feet from the boat.

  After no trolling success, I was at a loss of where to head next. Candlewick is a man made lake that was formed back in the late 60's. It has a dam on its Southern edge with a steep break that usually is a good jigging spot. I had recently heard of some nice Walleye being caught here and figured I should give it a shot. I started pitching jigs toward the shore and jigging them back, and had one miss down towards 14 fow. So I started the vertical jig. Pounding my jig against the bottom with a nice chunk of crawler attached to my hook. I finally found some fish! I ended up catching 3-4 Bluegill that where all 8+ inches in length and fully loaded with eggs.

   After a quick photo shoot with the gills I released them back to there spawning beds. The sun was setting on the horizon and I called it a day. All in all it was great to be out on the water, and I even caught a couple fish to make it worth while.