No question that fall patterns on our lakes are not yet in full swing. They have been heavily stressed by wildly fluctuating water levels for the past couple of years as we swing between drought and flood. One of the casualties seems to have been the stocked muskies, not gone but very strongly reduced, with very poor success this year for those who concentrate on them. About this time most years the muskie hunters and their big suckers start to show up on the docks, but there are a lot fewer of them this fall than in previous years. I am not crying a tear over that. Native pike have been more in evidence though, which to me is a good sign. The hammerhandles have been around more or less all summer, too, and in places and times that we have seen muskies before, but the big fall movement of the hens up out of the deeps has not yet begun. The native pike have persisted through the muskie stocking and seem to have come back into their own in the last couple of years, apparently handling wildly fluctuating lake levels better than the heavily stocked muskies have. Pike size has recovered to the point that 30" fish are not all that uncommon either, especially early and late in the year, and reports of high 30s fish are around, too. At least one of those was tape verified by myself. It is also my impression that the milfoil is starting to settle already too, and we are seeing increased presence of native cabbage in what used to be pure milfoil stands.

We were out in the wind and drizzle for a while last evening, but it was too cold and wet to really work the water. We managed a scant handful of smaller fish (crappies and a few small perch) from the dock shadow and the deep breaks along it. Color selection and tail size were vital as was position which had to be right on the breaks. Most fish came deep from slow jigging from the bottom up, actually little more than a very slow retrieve. The crappies seemed to require that the plastics come from below with the bite as they moved up through and then above the fish. Eventually we got too cold and tired; so we went home. Normally we get some attention on the drop and some directly on the bottom interspersed with layered sunny nibble, but none of those things happened last evening. Not a sunfish in evidence where they would normally be out and about.

We had misty rain and fog all night here last night. We will certainly take every drop we can get, but there just hasn't been enough of it this fall.

BTW down on the river we have been seeing schools of minnows, a lot of those minnows real tiny, on the surface pretty regularly for a while now. That is in one of the barge channels where there is no current except when a boat moves through the locks, not all that different from your marina, except a whole lot less boat traffic, even in summer. Not shoals of them but quite a few schools. IMO more than in previous years, same in the lakes. It looks to me like we are going into winter with a pretty strong forage base this year at least in some of our waters.