Another windy trip

With the weather looking poor for this Memorial Day weekend, I chose to hit the water on Thursday evening after work. Different water than my windy trip last week but similar conditions, if not even a bit worse. Wind was coming right down the lake, pushing whitecaps the whole way. I pushed off just after 5 and really had my work cut out for me to get to the first weed line I wanted to try. Got my 3 trolling poles rigged up and tossed out one of my usual 3 Stingers, the blue/black with chartreuse tail. Took one lick on the oars and the pole bent over; maybe 15 seconds from cast to first hook-up. About a 9"er to start off with. In the first 5-6 minutes, 5 more just like it on the same bait.


This was shaping up to be an interesting trip for sure. Every time I'd hook a fish, I'd lose about 100' of water due to the fierce wind but I kept at it. Eventually, I'd get all 3 lines in the water and the crappie just kept hitting. I was busy all evening until I ran out of energy from fighting the wind at 7:20 and left them biting and called it a day. By that time, I'd landed 2 average bluegill, a pickerel of about 14" (almost legal and the bugger broke me off just as I got him in the boat) and upwards of 30 crappie, with a few that would have been keepers of 11-12", maybe 7-8 of those, and the rest anywhere from 7-10".
Here is a couple of the better ones:









It sure was a workout but lots of fun was had. Quite a few folks on the water but they all had motors of some sort; I was the only fool rowing around manually. While the blue/black/chartreuse hooked the most fish, the best fish came on the green/white tail Stinger. The bite was becoming better as the sun went behind the hill but I was running out of steam by that point and turned the bow for home. All were returned for another trip.