Tuesday casting report- Kelleys
Headed out for a few hours from 3 to dusk around Kellys. Spotted some boats including a few charter boats at the SW corner, stretched out from a point about half a mile south of the corner of the island up to the corner itself. Very old school behavior- boats would make a pass, start up, drive back into the wind, and repeat. Haven't seen a pack of boats doing that in awhile.
Picked up 7 walleye (out by myself) with no throwbacks... well, they were all legal in size anyhow, and all 15-16". So I threw them back anyhow, let them grow another season. Gold weapons seemed to produce best, with a purple and silver blade also getting me one. I saw a few guys catch a few bigger fish on other boats, up to about 20".
They were real tight to the bottom. Fact is, I put out a second line drifting with a bottom bouncer rig and got half the fish on that, while I got the others casting... all within a few cranks of taking it off the bottom. Then again, the water there is only 20-24 feet.
Got the usual garbage too including a real clean 22" channel cat I was really tempted to keep and 2 big fish ohio sized sheephead. One 26", the other 25 1/2. Sorry no, it is NOT fun to catch them... soon as you feel one on the rod- and when you're casting it's pretty instantaneous- you feel it pump, make the initial run spooling line off the drag, and you KNOW what you have... then you have to use the net on the thing, and it's too big to hold to unhook so it gets the deck all slimy as you hold it down and bend a hook trying to pry it out of it's rubbery sucker mouth while it voids it's bowels on the deck... yeesh.
Since there was a good drift I put a spoon out for awhile with an inline weight about 4 feet up the line and let that flutter around near the bottom too. Actually hooked a decent sized smallmouth in 20 feet of water but it spit the lure on a jump. A little odd, usually I get smallies in under 10 feet, and while I've hooked one or two on spoons before it's rare I get one on ANYTHING when going after walleye.
All in all, a good day, and glad to see some of these little ones are starting to reach keeping size, even if I didn't feel like keeping them.
