Bass Fisherman

Wednesday, July 11, 2012 -- Fishing day.  Bob has set up a couple of boats and guides from Walleye Dan's operation.  They are supplying all the rods, reels and bait.  This is the first time I've fished with live minnows.

Our guide says the idea is to drop the line right into the weeds on the bottom where the walleye are hiding out.  We set the length so that the line just drags along a little above the lake bottom.  Sometimes that's six feet, more often it is 12 or 14 feet.

Amazingly, you can feel it when the fish start working on the lure.  There are little tugs and jerks.  They could be the hook catching on weeds as we troll, but you soon learn which ones are fish hitting the line.

We fished in a lot of different spots, and tried different ways of doing it, but we could not get the walleye to come out and play on such a hot day.  We did however get a lot of action -- from large mouth bass.  Most of them were pretty small, but we could have made lunch of them if we wanted to.  The other boat did.

But we -- in my boat -- were fixated on getting a walleye.  That's the fish for which this East Gull Lake is famous, and that's what we came for.  We threw all the bass back.  Including this one.