So I was out on a local lake with my son Saturday morning. It’s an army corps of engineers flood control lake which means no cottages, nice natural setting, first time on the lake. Local legend says that there are no fish because the water is too alkaline from run off from an upstream mine of some sort. Never have heard of any mining, the river water is beautiful emerald green color as you drive by way up on the interstate highway.

We gave up on the bridge pilings with only two 7 inch bream, headed back across the open lake for the river to the launch site. In the open lake in 14 feet smooth bottom I see a log with a corps marker buoy on it so the ski boats won’t run over it if the water level is raised a bit. We coast into it (literally) and my son drops his hook with slip shot and remains of a night crawler over the edge of the boat.

Next I see his rod tip bent up under the boat and I’m sure he snagged a limb but he ‘gets it free’ and pulls in a 12 inch crappie! His first ever keeper! (third fishing trip) Drop anchor! Switched to jig and nibbles, tube and nibbles. Boated 13 – all keepers from 10 to 14 inch. Had to head for home at 1:30, not that we were done.

Early Sunday morning I return to the same log, boated 7 more keepers (pictures taken awaiting downloading). Seemed more like harvesting than fishing!

Question is do you think we caught them all or did something change that made them quit biting? And how long before that log has time to ‘reload’ and we could do that again? We took 20 fish off there in under 24 hours. Once they stopped about 9:00 Sunday morning, I fished all over and never got another bite.

Yep – there’s just no fish in that lake! Shhhhh.