Mid day trip

We've had a run of cold, wind and rain in these parts but today dawned clear and calm and that put my mind to fishing. Took me a while to get going but I launched and had lines in the water about 10:30. Bit of wind from the NNW, not too strong but persistent. Air temp at 58, water temp just under 62, which is a bit warmer than I expected. 3 kayak fishermen along the shore and I gave them plenty of room as I headed out. I trolled up in to the wind and the first nice pumpkinseed landed in the boat in about 2 minutes from getting going.


Long dry spell and another sunfish, bluegill this time, got measured.



Heard one of the kayakers say "hey look, a bald eagle!" and sure enough, one had come out of the trees over where they were working and lit in another tree further up the shore. I zoomed in all the way with my little camera to capture him.



That eagle would soar around for quite a while but I couldn't capture any other pics of it.
Not too long after the eagle pic, the first crappie of the day was landed. Kinda skinny but I wasn't keeping any today anyway. Still colored up for or from the spawn.



I was trolling along a fairly sharp contour, trying to stay in roughly 13-15' of water and that seemed to be the right place as I began to land more of our target species.









I ended up with 9-10 crappies, what I think were 2 males and the rest females. The females still had some shoulders but the males were worn down some. Couple of good perch and a few more nice 'gills would round out my day, along with 2 decent pickerel.





Most of my catch would come between 11:30 and 12:30 as some big cumulus clouds hid the sun a bit and seemed to turn the fish on. By 1pm the wind had moved over to come from the NW, strengthened and became constant so I decided to call it a day. I let it push me back toward the landing and I'd troll all the way back without another bite. I hit the beach about 1:30.
Clicker says 22 for the day and I'm very pleased with that and the percentage of crappie. I decided against the cooler as I was expecting more fishing than catching. Happy to be proved wrong, though!