October mixed bag-Barry County Middle Lake
Steve and I headed down to Middle Lake this morning hoping to get into a few fall crappie. The weather was beautiful, high 50's at daylight with a steady breeze. Steve had never been on this lake before so he was counting on me to put him on fish. Problem is, I haven't fished it in quite a while and never in the fall, we were flying blind. We motored to the south end and let the wind drift us as we pulled jigs tipped with plastics and minnows. It wasn't long into the first drift and Steve got a solid hit. After a nice fight I slid the net under a dandy 26" northern pike. Pike is one of my favorites so into the box it went. The rest of the drift failed to produce anything but conversation so we changed tactics and tried long lining jigs along the drop off/ weed edge. This part of the story is a bit jumbled together and hard to describe. I had several cups of coffee this morning and was in the process of recycling it, kneeling in the bottom of the boat with the jug, when the boat started being pushed towards shore by the cross wind. I had a jug full and was trying to reach the foot control when my rod started bouncing, fish on. To reel, steer or empty, that is the question. To top it off, Steve hooked up, too. Whatever we did, we did it right because I didn't hit the dock, didn't spill and we landed both fish, twin 10"+ crappie. Within a few minutes, Steve hooked up again, another crappie. We thought we were onto them, but it wasn't to be. Those were the only crappie we caught even though we trolled the same shoreline a number of times. Steve did catch a nice perch on one pass and we anchored up for a while and caught a couple more perch but that was it for the day. We were off the water by 3:00, home by 4:00 and I had the fish cleaned and fried golden brown by 6:00. It was a nice, relaxing day on the water. Steve will add the pictures.
