Saturday Fishing Report - 12/24/16

It's Christmas Eve and welcome to the fishing report for less than competent anglers.  Here's how the previous week shook out.

Saturday - Started the day out at 54F and cloudy with a good wind.  First thing, I went to the spot where I caught that walleye.  Got some good bites, but didn't manage to land a ding-dang thing.  Still on the worms.  I was out for two hours, but the temperature was dropping rapidly, so I beat feet home.

Tuesday - Cajoled Hubs into going out with me in the afternoon.  It was a lovely, surprisingly warm day for December 20th.  There was a spot I'd been wanting to try again because it seems like it would be perfect for fish to hang out at.  Unfortunately, the lake is down about 8 ft and what seemed like perfect habitat before is now just a gentle slope toward the main channel.  Needless to say, we got no bites there.  So, we moved to an old standby locale that is currently so dry we finally have bank accessibility to some standing trees that would normally be under water.  Both Hubs and I were doing the worm thing again.  He caught a 12" smallmouth.  I caught a 13" largemouth.  No keepers, but at least we didn't get skunked.

Wednesday - Got skunked.  It was still lovely and warm for this time of year.  Cloudy.  Just enough wind to give the water a little ripple and give the bait a bit of drift.  One good bite was all I got.  Oh well.  I did find an awesome lure while I was out there and I picked up about a hundred yards of line.  Seriously, people, pick up line whenever you can.  Line, hooks, swivels, sinkers... That stuff is hard on wildlife.  Note: most of the line I picked up was from where people had gotten snagged when the water level was way higher, so it wasn't a 'lazy fisherman dropped it on purpose' kind of thing.  It's part of the hazards of fishing.  But as a fisherman who ought to value the areas where you fish, pick it up when you can.  K?

That's it for me this past week.   But I do want to talk about some of the fishing gear we got for each other as presents this year. 

A Yamamoto Senko artificial bait kit.  It has 6 different colors in two different sizes (4" and 5") in a nice plastic case.  Roland Martin swears by them, I guess.  I know the reviews on these things are through the roof, so we thought we'd try them.  Later.  When we can get the boat out again. I'll let you know if they live up to the hype.

We also got a kit of bullet weights and one of hooks.  We got some beads, too.  And o-rings (to keep the bait on the hook when you rig 'wacky').  I got a little booklet thing on tying knots, too, because I am not that great at it.  And I picked up a soft sided tackle 'box' with plastic cases, so we now have something specifically dedicated to bass fishing.

All of it should help bring those bass into the boat.  For now, though, I'll still be using worms.

I'm not going to tell you to drown worms this week.  It's too cold.  And it's Christmas tomorrow.  You'll probably want to spend that with your family.  Me?  I'll try to get out today while it's nice. 

Happy Holidays, fishermen.