13 Feb 2017 Lake Talquin Report
This is a few days late in coming due to a misfortunate incident with my home PC.. darn thing won't work.
Started out from Enterprise at 0700 with a trolling motor mounted loosely to the bow of the boat. The mounting screws came loose over the past weekend and couldn't find the hardware needed to fix it on Sunday. SoI made a quick stop at Lowes in Marianna on the way down. I was pleased to find the screws I needed and tightened down the TM in the parking lot.
Arrived at Talquin mid-morning to find the lake absent of the many long-lining boats I was accustomed to seeing. Perhaps it was the 10-15 MPH gusting wind and whitecaps LOL. I braved the wind anyway and proceeded to spot that I had caught fish a before. It's a deep part of the river channel close to a creek mouth with a lot of submerged timber. I marked some fish and set out four 14' rods for spider rigging. Two with minnows and the others with jigs (white/yellow/chart). Water temp was 64 degree and I set out bait from 10-12' deep.
The rolling waves really hurt my presentation and it is hard to detect bites with your rod tips dancing with the boat. Any bites I had wee not seen and I stayed in this spot too long. Eventually better sense prevailed and I moved on to another spot similar to the last. Deep water close to shallow water with cover. I caught two sub-10" fish real quick and that was it. Again, I stayed too long in this spot before better sense prevailed. Don't know why it is so hard for me to pack up and move...
About 1330, I moved to a new spot that I had not fished before. Th river channel and a large cove with a jutting point. I marked two really good schools of fish on the channel ledge closest to the point within 100' of each other. Threw out two marker buoys to reference and set out 6 poles - 4 with Aberdeen hooks and minnows and two with 1/32 jigs with white/yellow bodies. these are ted to a leader under a 1/2 egg sinker an swivel.
I dropped the baits a little lower - 15-16' deep in 25-30 FOW. Poles weren't out long and started getting bit. Fortunately, the wind had died to light and variable. The fish bit real good and these were nice. The first fish in the boat weighed 2 even - a new PB for me. Lost count but probably caught 16-17 and put 11 in the live well. Of those, 4 were over 1.6 pounds. Ended the beautiful day and headed back home.
Having trouble uploading a picture but I will get it figured out.