Mixing it Up

With a light tournament schedule in June, I’ve been able to really mix things up this year. One thing I refuse to pass up in early June is the awesome drum bite around the piers. There is no easier way to get kids into a big fish in a short amount of time than this. The drum are aggressively feeding and fight awesome. Seeing the determination on my 5 year old and 3 year olds face while fighting them is just awesome. It doesn’t matter to them that some people turn their noses up to drum fishing and it doesn’t matter to me either. I think they are one of the most underrated fish out there and the bite can be truly incredible if you know how to time things right.

While drum fishing is a simple task and I prefer to do it with spoons although they will take a bunch of different baits when packed in the channel. If it’s something you ever want to try my best piece of advice to is make sure you buy cheap cheap spoons and make sure they have a hook with a silver finish. Trust me it makes a difference. We also made a whole family fathers day trip for some panfish action complete with a Millie taking all the action in. The girls are starting to get pretty confident when they are catching up. talking about how good at fishing they are and what not. My oldest is doing most of it on her own and was really getting the concept of you have to make the right cast in the right spot to catch them.

We were having perch from the winter for dinner that night and added some bluegills/sunfish to the mix too. It always adds something to the trip if the girls get to keep the fish. They like throwing them into the livewell and it gives them one more thing to focus on. You really can tell the difference between winter fish and summer fish when you eat them though. Not that they were bad but they just aren’t quite as good even with a good ice water bath between coming out of the livewell and filleting. I am really looking forward to when they can go on more lengthy and exciting adventures if they still want to.

I’ve also been hitting the big lake quite a bit and figuring out the trolling game. The last 2 trips have gone pretty dang good although we struggled to keep them hooked up on the last one. Still lots of refining our gear to maximize bite to land ratio. Just like bass fishing there is a lot of tinkering and strategy that goes on to be successful. It has been really fun learning that game a little better and we’ve been good at generating bites from kings, steelhead, and a lone coho. Still can’t catch a lake trout despite a little effort but while the salmon have been around we’ve really been focusing on them. It’s been abnormally good for June and our last 2 trips have been 9-14 and 4-10, we even got my dad out and in on the action. The cold water we’ve had around all spring has really been beneficial for our minimal spread and will no doubt get more challenging as a thermocline sets up. I will say our greatest strength has been staying on top of the fish instead of aimlessly trolling in one direction. Traver is all over that and every trip we get better at handling the current to get on good trolls and making good presentations with our baits. It’s still been mostly a spoon bite for us but we are getting some on flasher/fly and are going to explore meat rigs next. It is going to get tougher for me to salmon fish the rest of the year with everything going on but it sure has been fun.