Barrett Report May 11
Posted: Sun May 12, 2024 10:55 am
Nice day on the water at Barrett, was reasonably warm even in the dark. Not sure I like traversing the lake in the fog, in the dark though.
Water started out at 68F and wind was pretty calm. First fish was on a bad cast ( backlash and me picking it out in the dark). I hit the shoreline and it was before I thumbed the reel, so you can all imagine the birdsnest that resulted. Well, apparently this is all the fish needed to know and figured since I couldn't reel, my popper was a safe meal. It wasn't, I had enough of the nest cleared that I reeled over the mess and picked up a 2.5 pounder in the dark, which was kind of fun. I stayed near the shore in the shallow bay at the opening of Hauser and picked up a decent number of fish over the next couple hours on poppers, surface crawling baits and jerkbaits. I'm not sure if that whole area is called Becky's cove or not, but that's more or less where it is. What it is, is shallow on the shoreline, most fish were in less than 2 feet of water. Size was decent to good. Biggest one of the day was a little over 4, several in the 3s and most in the 2 pound range. There's a lot of vegetation too, so even a 2 pound fish can be a struggle.
Left that area to meet John and C towards Pine. Found some bait balls and caught a few sight fishing the bait balls on small cranks and John and C were using reapers and jigs to clearly dominate. Had to go to a Mother's day dinner, so my day was done around 0930 and then I headed back in impressive wind and some whitecaps. Water temp had climbed to 70F.
Water started out at 68F and wind was pretty calm. First fish was on a bad cast ( backlash and me picking it out in the dark). I hit the shoreline and it was before I thumbed the reel, so you can all imagine the birdsnest that resulted. Well, apparently this is all the fish needed to know and figured since I couldn't reel, my popper was a safe meal. It wasn't, I had enough of the nest cleared that I reeled over the mess and picked up a 2.5 pounder in the dark, which was kind of fun. I stayed near the shore in the shallow bay at the opening of Hauser and picked up a decent number of fish over the next couple hours on poppers, surface crawling baits and jerkbaits. I'm not sure if that whole area is called Becky's cove or not, but that's more or less where it is. What it is, is shallow on the shoreline, most fish were in less than 2 feet of water. Size was decent to good. Biggest one of the day was a little over 4, several in the 3s and most in the 2 pound range. There's a lot of vegetation too, so even a 2 pound fish can be a struggle.
Left that area to meet John and C towards Pine. Found some bait balls and caught a few sight fishing the bait balls on small cranks and John and C were using reapers and jigs to clearly dominate. Had to go to a Mother's day dinner, so my day was done around 0930 and then I headed back in impressive wind and some whitecaps. Water temp had climbed to 70F.
- Pretty dark out, but nice fish
- Another taker for the walking/crawling bait