From pan fish to steelhead
This past weekend was full of high's and low's. Friday while pre fishing in 50mph winds I did more chasing down my ATV than actual fishing which made it a pretty short day. Saturday we decided to pre fish the south end of Delavan lake and it seemed like we couldn't do anything wrong while catching large 13'' crappies and 8-9'' bluegills and a slob of a pumpkinseed. Despite blue bird skies and a warm up fishing actually became stupid as for how active the gills and crappies were. At noon I decided to call it a day with my game plan and starting area set. Sunday morning we took off second in line and once in the area I wanted to fish, we had to move around some locals who decided to plant right on top of where I had pre fished. Once I had the holes punched I went around with my Vexilar and saw the fish were still there. At 0800 the starting horn went off and it didn't take long to catch 3 tiny bluegills. It didn't take but 20mins to figure out all my big fish had moved so we decided to make a short run to the west bay where we had caught a few other nice fish Saturday. Kim ended up tying into something that broke her off in the first hole, taking my last purple and white lady bug jig from Bentley jigs. After getting a handful of fish but nothing of real size, I decided to make a move back to our starting area hoping the big boys decided to move in.... WRONG MOVE! The area was full of small fish still and the pike were extremely active. I watched one guy sprint to his tip down which had gotten pulled over and his rod almost disappeared into the hole before he could get his hands on it. After a 10min fight a mid 30'' pike came top side. It didn't take long to realize that with the pike being so active that was the reason my big fish had moved. We took a run back to the west bay and after rolling four nice fish, we finally got our 8 crappies and 8 bluegills. Despite the hard work and hours of pre fishing we ended up 16th with a weight of 5.22lbs. The winners of Team Extreme Delavan had a big bag of 11lbs. Yesterday i decided to go for some river therapy to clear my mind and the bitter taste that still lingers in my mouth from such a bad tournament. It took a few holes before I ended up with one nice buck steelhead and a spawned out brown.
